India - Going to Chennai for a wedding, where else should I visit?

Hi guys,

I have a friend getting married in Chennai in May, and since I haven't made it to India before I was figuring I'd take a 3 or 4 extra days to see more of the country.

I wanted some feedback on this idea.

I'm pretty much a CO/UA flyer, so was thinking about flying to DEL R/T (that way I can apply a SWU each way) spending 3 days around Delhi taking time to visit the Taj Mahal and other locations around town before taking a domestic R/T to Chennai (MAA).

My questions are:
- Should I include other destinations or are 3 days in New Delhi going to be full of things to do? (including getting over jet lag)
- What other activities are available around DEL that are must do? (I tend to love traveling, so as long as it's safe I enjoy sightseeing, museums, etc)
- What airline should I take to go to Chennai?
- Is there anything to see/do in Chennai? (wondering if I should budget an extra day beyond the wedding there).

Thanks for any and all help,

Mike

1. Three days for Delhi and the Taj Mahal is just fine.

2. Any airline should be fine, besides Kingfisher (they are close to bankruptcy and frequently cancel/delay flights these days). There are no *A carriers in India, but certain classes in Jet Airways will get you UA miles (not EQM).
A good place to search for Indian domestic tickets is makemytrip.com (make sure you are on the Indian version of the site since this will have better prices).

3. Not much in Chennai. I would recommend an extra day to see Kanchipuram (famous south Indian temple and very different from what you will see in/near Delhi) and Mahabalipuram (beautiful, famous, ancient temple+stone carvings). You can easily cover these two places in a day trip from Chennai.

I would agree. The 9W qualifying fares are usually higher bucket, and if you book now for flights in May, the cheapest fares will be like half the price or less compared to the miles earning fares. I would say search on cleartrip.com, and just pick the timings you like (excluding kingfisher flights) [also, the cleartrip.com prices are a slightly higher than booking directly through the airlines' websites, but it's nice for doing a search of all options, including the LCCs, in one go]. Personally, ceteris paribus, I would pick 9W > 6E > SG > AI > IT in that order, but others will disagree ;)

Around Delhi, you should be able to visit Agra (Taj, and Fort) and Fatehpur Sikri in a day trip. You can spend one day touring the city sights themselves (if you need help/advice on a city trip I can make some suggestions). On the third day... you can use that for some additional sightseeing or perhaps as a day to get adjusted to the time difference (if you use this as your 'first' day) or both.

Around Madras, with one day only, I would have to agree with hyderago's advice above. But I'm not too familiar with the area myself, so hopefully one of the locals will give you a better answer.

mdt76, the 'india' forum has tons of similar threads regarding your questions....i would suggest reading some of the threads here....

Hyderago and Mr. Bean, thanks for the suggestions... Am really looking forward to the trip!
Mike

mdt76, the 'india' forum has tons of similar threads regarding your questions....i would suggest reading some of the threads here....

Keyser, I did search some of the threads and while helpful they didn't necessarily apply to my specific situation... In the meantime I got some very useful feedback from the other posters.
Thanks for the advice,
Mike