Marina Beach
A Journey of Rediscovery on Chennai's Shores
The Bay of Bengal at dawn — Marina Beach, Chennai
Marina Beach gets a lot of criticism from seasoned travelers. I was one of those critics until about six months ago.
I first visited Chennai in March 2019. A colleague at work, Rajan, kept telling me Marina Beach was something I had to see. I went on a Saturday afternoon. Stayed maybe forty minutes. The crowd was overwhelming. Vendors everywhere. The water looked brown near the shore. I took a few photos, bought a cup of tender coconut, and left. Told Rajan the next week that I didn't get what the fuss was about.
That was my Marina Beach experience for four years.
Last October I was back in Chennai for a wedding. My friend Priya, who grew up in Triplicane, heard me complaining about having nothing to do on my free morning. I mentioned maybe going to Elliot's Beach instead of Marina. She sent me a voice message that I still have on my phone:
"You went once, on a Saturday afternoon, and you think you know Marina Beach. That's like eating at a train station and saying Indian food is bad. Go tomorrow at 5 AM. Walk south from the lighthouse. Don't bring your camera. Just walk."
— Priya, Chennai native of 32 yearsI didn't love getting that message. But Priya knows Chennai better than anyone I know. She's spent thirty-two years in that city.
So I went. October 15th, 2023. Reached the lighthouse end at 5:10 AM. The sun wasn't up yet. I started walking south.
The iconic Chennai lighthouse at dawn
Fishing boats along the southern stretch
The beach at that hour is a different place. I counted maybe sixty people in the first kilometer. Fishermen were pulling in nets near the Foreshore Estate area. Some of them had been out since 3 AM. I watched a group of four men haul in a catch — mostly small fish, some crabs. One of them, an older guy named Selvam (I asked), told me his family has fished this stretch for three generations. His grandfather used to sell fish to the British officers at Fort St. George.
I walked for about an hour and a half. Covered maybe four kilometers.
The sand in the southern section, past the swimming area markers, is noticeably different from the tourist stretch near the memorial statues. Coarser. Fewer plastic wrappers. The municipal cleaning crews focus on the northern section where the crowds gather. Down south, the beach is what it is.
I saw things I missed entirely on my first visit. There's a small shrine about two kilometers south of the lighthouse — just a stone structure with some faded paint, maybe a meter tall. A few fishing families were lighting lamps there. I asked a woman what deity it was for. She said it was for the sea. Not a specific god. Just the sea.
Around 6:30 the light changed. The water, which I remembered as brown, was actually showing greens and grays. The brown near the shore is sediment from the Adyar and Cooum rivers mixing with the Bay of Bengal currents. Move your eye out a few hundred meters and the color shifts.
I ended up at a tea stall near the Broken Bridge around 6:45. The owner, a guy probably in his fifties, has been running that stall since 1996. He charges ten rupees for a glass of tea that most beach vendors sell for twenty. He doesn't get tourist traffic. His customers are the morning walkers and the fishermen finishing their shifts.
My colleague Sundar, who does landscape photography, came to Chennai two months after my October visit. I told him what Priya told me. He went at 5 AM. He called me that evening and talked for forty minutes about the light conditions alone.
Some numbers from my own observations: the beach is 13 kilometers long. The tourist-heavy section, where the memorials and the parking lots are, covers maybe 2 kilometers. That leaves 11 kilometers that most visitors never see. The fishing community along Marina numbers around 3,000 families according to a 2021 survey by the Chennai Corporation. Most of them work the southern stretches.
I've been back twice since October. Once in December, once in February. December visit was at 4:30 AM — caught the fishing boats going out. February I went at sunset instead of sunrise. Different experience. More crowded, but the sky over the Bay of Bengal at 6 PM in February is something I can't really describe without sounding like I'm exaggerating. So I won't try.
My original assessment was wrong. I went at the wrong time, to the wrong section, with the wrong expectations. The beach didn't fail me. I failed the beach.
If You're Planning a Visit
If you're planning a Chennai trip, Marina Beach is worth a morning. A real morning. The 5 AM kind. Start at the lighthouse. Walk south. Skip the memorial section entirely if you want. Bring cash for chai. Leave the camera in the hotel the first time. Just walk and watch.
Priya was right. I spent four years thinking I understood something I'd barely seen.