Raghu Teertha (Water bodies of Chennai - 72)

The Prasanna Venkatesa Narasimha Perumal temple in Saidapet boasts a large, well-maintained holy pond. 

According to legends, the temple was originally dedicated to Rama, and the place was known as Raghunathapuram. The stone image and the metal icon of the presiding deity were discovered later and added to the original Rama temple. The holy pond adjacent to it is still referred to as Raghu Teertha.

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. Most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water, and even some of them that have water had been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake-view roads without any lake in the vicinity. There is a high possibility that even the few water bodies we have today might vanish soon. I thought of visiting the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.