The drive frron Thanjavur to Chennai was a long run, about seven hours, only broken by a stop at the Swaminatha Temple in Swaminalai. Swaminatha is another name for Murugan the son of Shiva and the temple featured many images of the Shiva family. There were several large paintings (I think they must either date from the Nayak period or else be more recent). One showed Ganesh actually riding on his mouse. I knew that the mouse is Ganesh's mount but all depictions I had seen previously (even the Nandi like mouse in Thanjavur) hasd been far to small to realistically [View Full Entry]

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I am now in Thanjavur, which was previously called Tanjore The town is famous for a very decorative style of artwork and for a very large temple erected by Rajaraja, the Chola king who was so good they named him twice. As we drove out of Madurai we went past a painted temple elephant being led along the side of the road. This seemed like a good omen. Further along, just about as we were passing the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court (sic - the court is still that of Madras, though the city has changed its name) on [View Full Entry]

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We set off for Madurai early in the morning, maybe even before ten o'clock. We drove through unremarkable country at first and I started to occasionally nod off. There was level ground on either side, largely bare with a few trees. As we drove on I started to see odd eructations of rock like giant pimples dotting the landscape. They were on our left side as we drove and formed a chain gradually gettng closer to us before we drove past the last of them. Much of the land seeemed uncultivated and waste but there were occasional fields and a few [View Full Entry]

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Ooty is quite unlike any other Indian town that I have visited. I think the reason for this is that it was, from its origin, a European town. Its founder, John Sullivan - I am staying in a hotel named after him, Sullivan's Court - bought up all the land (dirt cheap of course, roughly the same terms as when Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan) and from the beginning European style houses were erected. Many of them look vaguely Swiss, although it may just be that I have Swizerland on my mimd because of the story about the woman the elephants killed. [View Full Entry]

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We left the hotel at about ten o'clock and drove off towards Mysore. However, we did not leave Bangalore until nearly eleven. The traffic and traffic management systems in the city really are awful. I noticed a fried chicken shop called Kentacky Chicken Corner, which I thought was probably a good name. Further on there was a temple with a giant green eagle over its doorway. I saw an attractive building and Rangam told me that it was a hospital. A lot of money seems to be poured into making hospitals here look good. This probably does increase the morale of [View Full Entry]

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The city previously known as Bangalore has now been restored to its original Kannada name of Bengaluru. Unfortunately, this name cannot easily be abbreviated as copyright on Bengal has already been taken. The city's name, is said to have arisen when Veera Ballala II, a local king during the twelth century, was lost and had a dinner of boiled beans cooked for him by a peasant woman. He therefore named the area where she lived as the Place of Boiiled Beans and that's how it's been known ever since. The problem is that this can't actully be true because the place [View Full Entry]

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My car turned up at the hotel at 9.30 sharp and we set off to Bangalore, by way of Kanchipuram (or Kanchi, as the locals rather predictably call it). Thinking about it, maybe it's not really an abbreviation. Perhaps it's just like calling London Town, London. "Puram" just means a small town, after all. As we drove through and out of Mamallapuram I saw more temples on both sides of the road. I justconcentrated on the main sights but to really see most of what the town has to offer, you'd have to stay for more than a week. There was [View Full Entry]

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I moved on, rather reluctantly, from Puducherry to Mamalappuram. No-one seems to have bothered to abbreviate this name (possibly because it is itself a slightly shorter version of Mahabalipuram which is its other current name (Nothing to do with Mahabali or Bali, the demon king tricked by the dwarf, whose annual return to earth is celebrated every year in Kerala). The obvious abbreviation is Mama and then Auroville could relocate a few miles north and the Matrimandir could be in Mama. So much more sensible. Anyway. I am staying at a very nice hotel called Mamallaa Heritage, which is jus [View Full Entry]

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I left Trichy to go to Pondicherry by car. This city is now officially known as Puducherry but that only cuts the name down by one letter, so the old diminutive of Pondy is still in use - and sounds much nicer, I think. The French name is also very slightly shorter, as they spell it Pondichery with only one "r". But any advantage this may give them is lost because they use an acute accent over the "e". The journey here took about four hours and was a very interesting one. Soon after leaving the town we crossed some marshlands [View Full Entry]

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OK, they're not really Cheese Temples. But they are Rock Fort Temples and that's close enough for me. The two principal temples are on a great rock that's in the centre of the old town of Trichy. All the rest of the town is completely flat and then, out of nowhere, there's a massive 300 foot high rock. The first temple, about half way up the rock, is dedicated to Shiva and the other, right at the summit, is dedicated to Ganesh. There used to be a fort on the rock too, but little is left of that. There are also [View Full Entry]

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