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Published: January 20th 2011
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Road trip to the southern temple towns in Tamil Nadu took us to Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Trichy, Karaikudi and Pondy. Not sure how many of these qualify to be strictly temple towns but hell, in Tamil Nadu, every street qualifies with its small auto stand temple!
I took a great deal planning this trip but more importantly figuring out how to blend into the rural towns. I was rudely informed that with my current hairstyle there is no hope in hell of blending. That being said, I took what I considered my most modest t shirts and trousers and headed south from Chennai.
Kanchipuram provided the best in temples, I loved the architecture and variety it provided. As we visited the temples, I desperately reached into the recesses of my mind for all religious upbringing to ensure proper compliance to temple decorum. Afcourse its quite amusing (irritating initially but hey even the auto guy in Chennai insists on conversing in English or Hindi to me, why blame a country priest!) when the priests assume that you can't be Hindu woman from Tamil Nadu when dressed in trousers, tshirt, no bindi or jewellery and go about telling you the what to
do when the rituals take place. And afcourse whereever possible, they do like to try their english on me! It doesn't help my cause when every NRI that turns up for their annual pilgrimage decides to adorn a salwar (styled 10 years ago) or a dhoti and bring out their poonals and shining new gold jewellery that hasn't seen the outside of a locker!! Temples visited includes Kailasanathar (my favourite), Varadaraja perumal, Kamakshi amman, a murugan temple, Vaikunta perumal (another favourite) and one more that I can't recall.
Tiruvannamalai with its crowds and cramped roads was enjoyable. Overnight at a local hotel - surprisingly for a temple town thats ranked in the top 10 possibly, they hardly have a selection of places to stay. We decided to test our stamina and do the walk around Mt Giri aka the Girivalam. Afcourse after much debate on walking with or without shoes, we decided to walk with shoes much to the discomfort of many people. The weather was brilliant, it was raining and that also meant the town stretch was all slush and yuck, but the overall walk was on a well laid out road with little tea and omelette shops
on the way - and yes we patronized it!!! We successfully and proudly ended the 14km walk with beer in our room....god bless permit rooms at small hotels. Visted the Arunachaleshwara temple the next morning and drove on south to Trichy.
We stayed at a little lodge (supposedly to get the local flavour, dont ask me why!) in the heart of town and spent a couple of days visiting the Srirangam and the Malaikottai pillayar temple. Afcourse given the crowds at the malaikottai pillayar temple, we viewed it as a challenge to scale the hill and we did it, which is why I am mentioning it!! When you don't look like a local, its easy to get conned and when you don't look like a Tamilian in rural Tamil Nadu, it makes the con mans job easier. The Srirangam temple had its share of touts and I still can't believe Raghu actually got conned by a bozo into prostrating before some random door that supposedly led to the sanctum sanctorum. But it's a story well worth sharing over a drink. My little Trichy note will not be complete if I don't mention some of the exciting new theories I was privy to from a respected member of a religiously leaning organization - including cancer cures from cow urine being researched and readied near Trichy and muslim fundamentalists getting Hindu girls pregnant. It piqued my curiosity enough to google it and i did find links and articles on it...Try it.
Karaikudi was pleasant and relaxing, all about good chettiar vegetarian food, couple of temples - One powerful temple at that - the pillayarpatti one!, fabulous chettiar homes and beautiful athangudi tiles.
Kumbakonam was our next stop - though we stayed near Kumbakonam, we didn't really make it to any temple there but instead went to see the Brihadeeswara temple at Thanjavur and 2 related ones - at Gangaikondacholapuram and Darasuram.
Headed to Pondy (not strictly Tamil Nadu) to wash off the brownies gained, over a few beers. Stayed at delightful place called Maison Perumal and enjoyed a day of respite from marvellous architecture and pot bellied priests.
I think I have accumulated enough punyam to last me some time (well after a 9 year hiatus anything is good).
P.S - Finally publishing this months after putting it together!!!
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