Salem Travel Guide
Salem is located on the Central part of Tamilnadu. The major locations are Sankagiri, Mettur & Attur. The District is well connected by Rail & Road Network. Tourist Places are - Yercaud, Sankagiri & Mettur.

The name Salem appears to have been derived from Sela or Shalya which are found inscriptions referring to the country around the hills. Local folklore believes Salem as the birth place of the Tamil poetess Avvaiyar[citation needed]. Inscriptions from the Ganga dynasty have been recovered from parts of the district. Salem along with Coimbatore remained under the Madurai Nayaks. Later, in the early 18th Century, it came under Hyder Ali after a long feud know as Mysore-Madurai war. Salem was then taken from Hyder Ali by Colonel Wood in the beginning of 1768. It was recaptured by Hyder towards the end of the year 1772. Under Lord Clive in 1799, it was again occupied by a detachment of the residents stationed at Sankari drug (pronounced as droog) and remained a military station until 1861 when the troops were altogether withdrawn.

Many great personalities like Salem Ramasamy Mudaliar, C. Vijayaraghavachariar, Pagadala Narasimhalu Naidu, C. Rajagopalachari, Dr. P. Subbarayan, and others started their political careers in Salem.

Access
Road
Three important National Highways NH7, NH47 and NH68 intersect each other at Salem. All three highways are proposed to be upgraded into 4 lane highway and the work is expected to be completed by December 2008. As a result, the city sees an enormous amount of road traffic. The Dr. MGR Central Integrated Bus Terminus has buses for almost all the places of the state and Bangalore/Pondy round the clock.As the traffic increases day by day, the govt has decided to lay fly overs in the main areas of the city.

Rail
Salem is an important rail junction in the Southern Railway. Because of its location almost midway between Chennai, Bangalore, and Coimbatore, the junction sees most Express trains passing through only at night.

Air
Salem also has one airstrip at Kamalapuram, on NH7 towards Dharmapuri. It is not in use because Salem people cannot afford much money in Traveling because of their economic condition. Nearest Inernational airport is Trichy(120 km). Only few of them go to trichy Airport. Contact Address: Airport-in-Charge, Airports Authority of India (NAD), Salem Airport, Salem District, Tamil Nadu, Telephone 91-4290-20060, 91-4290-20166. It is not in process for past few years. Now the private airlines are making arrangement to fly some flights within Tamil Nadu from Salem airport. But they dropped their plan because they came to know about poor economic condition of Salem.