Alavattamman Temple Tank (Waterbodies of Chennai - 4)

This is perhaps one of the best-kept secrets of Chennai. Covering an area of about 4 acres, this vast pond, surrounded by a park and greenery, is a picturesque location. This pond belongs to Alavattaman Temple. This temple and pond are located on the border between two villages, Rajkilpakkam and Sembakkam, on the southern outskirts of Chennai city.

This temple must be around 200 years old. I am sure this pond would have been the water source for these villages in the last two centuries. This is one of those few well-maintained tanks. A few years ago, the Municipal Corporation cleaned this pond and laid a beautiful park around the pond. Since then, we could find water in the tank even during the summer, a rare scene in the city.

Similar to this, there are many lesser-known waterbodies in the southern outskirts of Chennai.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in the Chennai region till the 1980s. Today, only a fraction of them exist. And most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water, and even some of them that have water have been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake view roads without any lake nearby. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies we have today might vanish soon. I thought of visiting the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and writing about them in my blog as a series.