Hill homes in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh

Tirupati exists because of the hill above it. Sri Venkateswara's temple stands at Tirumala on the seventh of the Seshachalam ridges, and the town at the foot of the climb has been organising the arrival of pilgrims for centuries. That produced its own domestic pattern. The agraharam street is a row of houses sharing side walls, each opening onto a thinnai, the raised masonry porch where the family sits out and where a traveller could be put up for a night, with a narrow courtyard and kitchen behind and a long thin plot running back from the road. Chandragiri, twelve kilometres west, holds the fort and palaces of the Vijayanagara successors in a much heavier stone idiom, and the older temple towns of the district, Srikalahasti with its kalamkari workshops among them, keep more of the street pattern than Tirupati's own centre now does.

The Seshachalam hills are protected red-earth forest and steeper than they look from the plain, with Talakona waterfall inside them. The walk up to Tirumala by the Alipiri steps takes most people three to four hours and is started before dawn for good reason.