touched down yesterday at 8pm at madurai airport. after a rickety 30 min ride in a cab (at Rs.300 in an Indica), we settled for the night at the Madurai Residency hotel, ordered room service.
here is my route map.
View Central Tamil Nadu Temple Trip in a larger map
Early at 8 am, had the complimentary south indian buffet breakfast, and set out towards thanjavur. on the way, coutesy driver, we stopped at pillayarpatti, which has a very nice temple with the vinayaka statue carved into a stone outcrop. its supposed to be only one of the two such statues which shows only two hands – other being in afghanistan!
along the way to thanjavur from there, you pass through magnificent temples and tanks that are totally abandoned. this land has a rich heritage of religious past, and sadly, all that’s left are the random shrubs growing on abandoned gopurams. and profoundly, we also pass through a mosque that is built with traditional kalasam on top of it.
then over to thanjavur (tanjore for firangs), we check into hotel gnanam. very very nice hotel, probably the best we’ve stayed in south india so far in under Rs.5000 per night. we checked out a handicraft place where they showed us how they make bronze statues. it was exactly the way we were taught in our foundry class in IIT Madras first semester.
then we travelled over to kumbakonam. this town has tons of temples, we checked out two of them – the kumbeswara temple, which is under total renovation and pretty much everything is falling apart. we summoned enough courage to take some pictures (on the sly of course). the other temle was sarangapani temple – and this one has some scandalous images on the gopuram. if you thought south indian temples are all about pious devotion, that myth was busted today.
everything that we saw was about a 1,000 years old built in Raja Raja Chola time. makes you a bit more proud that these architectural accomplishments were only matched a few centuries later elsewhere in the world.
will post pictures once i get back home.
pillayarpatti : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpaka_Vinayakar_Temple
kumbakonam : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbakonam