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Published: September 12th 2009
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Madurai by Night
taken from rooftop restaurant By Graham
We weren't planning on heading into Tamil Nadu but, after a couple of weeks of beach and swimming pool, decided that we should at least TRY and do something cultural.
A short 6 hour bus ride from Kumily got us to Madurai, the most impressive of the many temple towns in Tamil Nadu. It's one of the oldest cities in south Asia and the central Meenakshi temple is truly a sight to behold.
By the way, Indian buses are brilliant. Some of my best memories of India will be of haring across mountain ranges and deserts in the middle of the night, invariably to a screeching, treble-heavy Bollywood soundtrack, with every last drop of volume being squeezed from the bus's knackered old stereo system so that the driver can't fall asleep at the wheel. We really should write a blog on those trips.......
Madurai (BI - 1.10)
Despite it being monsoon season Tamil Nadu had been going through a serious drought, but when we arrived the water was pouring down. Our first choice hostel/hotel proved to be a bit on the expensive side so we ended up taking a 2 minute walk/swim up
Temple view
with beardy Graham the street to our second choice. By the time we'd got there we were both drenched through, water slushing between my toes in a pair of trainers that had, up until then, been almost bone-dry for the entirety of our travels (4 weeks later and they still smell of drain water, damnit).
The porter was grinning from ear to ear when we finally trudged into the hotel reception. "God is great," he beamed, pointing to the sky in delight that his town was finally getting some much needed rainwater. "Yes," I dripped back at him, "yes I suppose he is."
That evening we took dinner (and a much needed Kingfisher) on the roof of a nearby hotel, with an impressive sunset view of the main temple and the rest of the city. The monsoon rains had passed our section of the city but the rain, thunder and lightning carried on the south of our location - it was quite a spectacle!
Highlights included........
Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple Nearly every major city in Tamil Nadu has a temple that dominates the city skyline but I'm told that Madurai's is the most spectacular, and I can believe it.
The temple itself is by far and away the tallest thing in the city. The towers along the outer wall are adorned with thousands of brightly coloured and intricately carved sculptures (see photos when they get uploaded) and inside the place is a hive of activity, both in the shrine areas and the temple market, punctuated by sudden areas of calm and tranquility. Not as big on the inside as I expected but worth the visit for the internal and external carvings alone.
Thali For the record, thali at (veg) New College House was so good that we went there twice. It's a locals' food hall so very cheap, the food is awesome (and comes in generous portions) and their sweet, milky coffee is a perfect morning pick-me-up. By far the best coffee we had in India.
Apollo 96 - a space bar A bar underneath the Supreme Hotel with a 70s space age theme, looked like something off the set of Space 1999, hundreds of LEDs on the walls, swivel chairs, a CONTROL DESK for crying out loud. Weird, just weird. And the soundtrack to this bizarre place: mid 90's cheesy dance, Vengaboys ahoy!
Non-Veg Restaurant Ok, we've all heard about how you're supposed to avoid eating meat in India if you want to, ahem, stay healthy. Whilst that's not entirely true, we have found that reasonably priced meat dishes are tricky to come by - "Veg Only" restaurants are very much the norm.
Imagine our delight then, when we discovered our first "Non-Veg" restaurant, a place that boasted a neon sign advertising "Non-veg" and actively listed meat and only meat on it's menu.
"Dove Chops" was one of the menu items that tickled us, and I had visions of the international symbol for peace being served up with basmati rice and a garlic naan. Unfortunately "Dove" turned out to be pigeon - no we didn't try it.
"Rabbit's Head Curry" was actually a rabbit's head in curry sauce though. Again, one we left for others.
We stuck to tandoori chicken and lamb dishes with veg biryani & butter naan which all arrived within minutes of ordering. Well, they did have a queue of take away orders at the door! This restaurant was also so amazing that we went back the following night for more - and made sure we were starving
when we arrived.
Posh Hotel Yup, our resolve broke again. We worked out/convinced ourselves that it would be more "time efficient" to stay in Maduria for an extra couple of days and then fly to Goa rather than go by a mixture of train and bus which would take us a little over 2 days.
So we checked into a posh hotel for a couple of nights, watched TV, read books and took hot showers. It was awesome.
And then we flew to Goa.........
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Louise
non-member comment
Ah ha ha!!! Apollo 96 - I went there! Hilarious. Think I was the only female in there tho. I have good memories of Madurai. Take care xxx