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Published: February 27th 2009
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Palace domed ceiling
Beautifully restored We arrived in Madurai at 6 in the morning tired and moody, We found a room at the second attempt, on the 3rd floor of a hotel that had seen better days, it had a double bed with an extra mattress squeezed on to the floor beside it, we dumped our gear and fell asleep.
Sue woke us at 2.00, which after a second check turned out to be 11.00 and we set off to see the Meenakshi temple, unfortunately it is shrouded in bamboo scaffolding and woven palm leaf panels while remedial work is completed and will not be revealed in all its glory until March.
Sue was struggling with a high temperature so she retired back to the room while George and I went for lunch. We met a cycle riksha rider who took us to a restaurant and then on a tour of the town. We went to the palace, which was beautiful although also being renovated and then on to the museum. Madurai is the site of Ghandi's tomb and the little house he was born in. The nearby museum depicts India's struggle for independence against the British and partition, it was a sombre end to
Palace ceiling 2
Colourful and complex our tour and as George had succumbed to Sue's symptoms she went to bed as soon as we got back to the hotel.
We had another train journey booked for the next day and we arrived in plenty of time to march from one end of the platform to the other on advice from various railway employees as to where our carriage would stop. This wasn't helped when the train arrived, uncoupled the engine and added 6 carriages at the front one of them being our elusive sleeper S5!
We had booked a sleeper compartment so at least we had seats for the journey, we sat by the window and watched morre of India go by. The 3 tier arrangement in the carriage means the middle bunk is pushed back against the wall so you can sit on the lower bunk as a seat with the top bunk fixed. This is fine until the person with the middle bed ticket decides he wants to lie down and moves the other 2 passengers off to their bunks to let him do it. We were lucky our middle bed man (after some encouragement from another passenger) decided to wait till
Palace ceiling
Ornate painting we got off at the next stop before pulling his bed down.
We arrived in Tiruchirapalai (Trichy) and met a group of English people outside the station sat in a heap with their rucksacks. As we didn't have a room booked we asked if they were leaving or arriving and if they could recommend a hotel but it turned out they had just arrived too but from Pondicherry.
They had a map and led the way for a 10 minute walk to find the Ashby hotel, that done and after a little negotiation we all managed to get rooms, George sharing with us again this time in a large ground floor room and with her own bed. Sue and George took to their beds exhausted by the journey while I scouted the surrounding area to buy fruit and snacks and find a chemist. You can buy most things over the counter without a prescription so apart from paracetamol I also bought amoxyllin antibiotic. Sue rallied later in the afternoon and we went off to find the Rock Fort Temple to Ganesh, unfortunately just the sight of the stairs ascending out of sight made Sue dizzy and we satisfied
Palace pillars
Madurai palace ourselves with external photos.
The original plan was to stay one night and move on but we stayed the following night allowing a bit more rest and avoiding trying to travel on a Sunday. Sue and I jumped on a local bus out to Sri Ranganathaswami Temple a huge temple complex about 10km outside of Trichy, the site occupies a large area consisting of concentric squares with the holiest temple in the middle
. It is a small town in itself and the stonework and statuary are incredibly intricate and colourful. We had chosen the right time of day with the sun going down and cool breezes blowing through and crowds dissipating allowing us to savour the spiritual atmosphere of this important Hindu temple. We even managed to catch the local bus home the entire trip costing 16 rupees between us about 11p. Trichy turned out to be good in terms of food too and we had some really nice meals in restaurants near the hotel and never paid as much as £5 for the 3 of us.
I had been told that the bus to Pondicherry left at 10.30 so the girls looked disheartened when we got there
at 10.00 to find the bus didn't leave till 11.30. However a senior bus man led us out to where the bus was parked with the conductor asleep and got us and our bags settled in to wait for departure time. The bus trip turned out to be uneventful and for long stretches quite smooth on newly constructed roads.
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