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Published: February 19th 2010
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Head of reclining Buddha
The whole Buddha wouldn't fit in one picture! The ordeal with the stolen bag was not over yet. When we got to our stop, Jalgaon, it was around 8pm. We had a shower and went straight to the police station to report the stolen bag - bad mistake not getting any dinner before hand. There was a lot of arguing with the police as to why they couldn't do it, then they brought us to another town half an hour away on the train, where they argued amongst themselves over whose jurisdiction it fell under. Finally, the head honcho came in and we've never seen so many people jump to attention so quickly! All of a sudden they were writing up my report for me and we were back on the train. By the time we got back to our hotel it was after 2am, but we had the police report. Unfortunately we had to wake up the hotel staff to get back in, and the owner had been so worried about us he had been down to the police station several times to find out what had happened to us. It may have been the nicest place we have stayed in.
We had an early rise the
next morning and the owner had felt so sorry for us he allowed us a late checkout so we could come back and have a shower after our early morning tour of the Ajanta caves. We took the local bus out there and were amazed at how big the complex was. It is a series of 30 cave temples cut into a horse shoe shaped gorge, all built between 200BC and 650AD. Some are Buddhist caves, some are very simple, while others are really elaborate such as the huge reclining buddha, and there are even caves with frescoes painted in them. We underestimated how much time we would spend at this place (and perhaps how much time would be spent haggling in the souvenir shops afterwards) and ended up getting an autorickshaw the whole way back to Jalgaon - talk about spending the days budget!
After this tour it was back on the train towards Chennai. Chennai was not a planned stop but it was now necessary to get an emergency passport for Carol. Everything in India takes time, but imagine our surprise when we go to get the passport office and find out it will be ready later
that day!
Next day we got the local bus to Pondicherry, aka Pondy. The reason for coming here was simple, steak and cheap drink. The town was once a French colony so has some lovely wide streets and French architecture. There is also a seafront promenade, but unfortunately it rained the whole time we were here. We did manage to eat a few steaks which, although not as good as home, were thoroughly enjoyed.
From here we went to a town called Trichy. We took a nice day trip to another town close by called Thanjavur where we saw the Brihadishwara temple and the Royal Palace and museums. We climbed the clock tower in the palace grounds and the museums were quite good, but the town is definitely worth coming to for the Brihadishwara temples alone. They were built in 1010 and are one of few in India with a world heritage listing. The worshippers seem to wear black here, something we haven't seen until now. There is a huge statue of a cow 6m long 3m high created from a single piece of rock with offerings around it. As is common in most temples in India, you
must remove your shoes to enter. Normally this is fine but today was a bit different with the mud and the rain - when Carol asked if she really had to take her shoes off to walk around several acres of extremely muddy and wet temple grounds all the Indians within earshot had a good laugh at the prissy westerners!
In Trichy itself we saw the rock fort temple and Sri Ranganathaswamy temple. Both very different to what we have seen before. These are much more colourful. The rock fort temple was a climb up 437 steps to a very small and simple temple which is dedicated to Ganesh, the god of good luck. Carol was also blessed by an elephant for a small offering. The Sri Ranganathaswamy temple is a very large, colourful group of temples where we got a guided tour. There were also a few adult themed carvings scattered around the complex here, nothing on the scale of Khajuraho though. However our guide was concerned for Carols modesty and kept performing these elaborate distractions to have her look in one direction whilst he pointed at some of the more "interesting" scenes behind his back so Garry
could get a glimpse. Little did he know Carol was disappointed at missing out on the show! Big grins all round for Garry though. Before we entered the complex, many people outside stopped and asked us to take photos of them, a bit strange but provided us with some good laughs. Unfortunately we still had quite a bit of rain which took away from the experience a little but we're still enjoying it all.
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