Only three days in and already I’ve skipped a day in this blog, so I think I will follow Jon’s advice and write this journal about places as well as dates, because some days you just don’t do anything very interesting. Yesterday however, was an incredibly interesting day – so interesting that I didn’t get time to write and was too exhausted by the time I got to consider it.Madurai is the heart of Tamil culture and language and is one of South India’s great temple towns. Situated on the banks of the Vaigai river, Madurai was around in Roman times at around 550 AD and is about 2500 years old. It is home to one of India’s most celebrated temples: the Meenakshi temple.
Getting to the temple is an incredible experience. I guess we exacerbated our culture shock experience by coming straight to a busy temple town in Tamil Nadu, instead of perhaps an easier introduction to India at some place like Goa or whatever. The streets of Madurai are congested as hell; it’s really the archetypal Indian town scene, with cows everywhere, dusty roads, dirt, open sewers and amongst it all, this incredible temple. We started our first day in Madurai paying homage to Gandhi, at the Gandhi museum here. It’s a sobering experience. Like the museums to the ‘American war’ in Vietnam, the Gandhi museum does not mince words about the evils committed upon the Indian people by the British colonists. The museum is, somewhat paradoxically, housed in a beautiful white colonial era building, Like any museum, parts of it were boring and – in this case - all of it was dusty and in need of some serious conservation work. Most moving was the small room, painted entirely black, that houses the blood stained dhoti that the great man wore on the day he was assassinated. After viewing the exhibition we bought a couple of 2011 diaries with a daily quote from Gandhi as gifts for friends and then plummeted back into the traffic of Madurai.
Next stop was the Meenakshi Amman temple, dedicated to Shiva and his wife Parvati, in the form of Meenakshi. This place just about defies words. It’s huge, carved throughout, the gigantic gopurum’s at the four entrances are very impressive, the tallest being 170 feet high. All are entirely covered by intricate carvings, all symbolic in nature and freshly painted when we were there so the colours were riotous. Once we were blessed by the elephant at the entrance to the temple, we entered the thousand pillar hall and preceded to walk around the entire structure in a clockwise direction. As foreigners, we were not allowed into the inner sanctum, and fair enough too I think as a holy site should not be a tourist attraction. However many Indian people were queued up to enter the sanctum and pay darshan to the Gods. And did they queue? Forever! The line snaked around and around inside the temple. At this stage there was a lot of pushing and body odour and it was hot and stuffy, with overwhelming fragrances of vibuthi, sambrani and ghee in the background. A great many man dressed only in black dhoti’s and a mala were there, we presumed on pilgrimage. Everyone was friendly and lots of people waved to us and wanted their photos taken with us. We were just wandering around without a guide or anything, and I must say we didn’t get hassled by anyone to guide us and saw no beggars or anything unpleasant as people warn. The place was also secure and we went through a scanner and frisk prior to entering.
Next stop was the Meenakshi Amman temple, dedicated to Shiva and his wife Parvati, in the form of Meenakshi. This place just about defies words. It’s huge, carved throughout, the gigantic gopurum’s at the four entrances are very impressive, the tallest being 170 feet high. All are entirely covered by intricate carvings, all symbolic in nature and freshly painted when we were there so the colours were riotous. Once we were blessed by the elephant at the entrance to the temple, we entered the thousand pillar hall and preceded to walk around the entire structure in a clockwise direction. As foreigners, we were not allowed into the inner sanctum, and fair enough too I think as a holy site should not be a tourist attraction. However many Indian people were queued up to enter the sanctum and pay darshan to the Gods. And did they queue? Forever! The line snaked around and around inside the temple. At this stage there was a lot of pushing and body odour and it was hot and stuffy, with overwhelming fragrances of vibuthi, sambrani and ghee in the background. A great many man dressed only in black dhoti’s and a mala were there, we presumed on pilgrimage. Everyone was friendly and lots of people waved to us and wanted their photos taken with us. We were just wandering around without a guide or anything, and I must say we didn’t get hassled by anyone to guide us and saw no beggars or anything unpleasant as people warn. The place was also secure and we went through a scanner and frisk prior to entering. 
Feeling very tired after our few hours investigating the temple, we staggered out the north gate – although we had done nothing at all compared with the people who were still in there queued up – and likely to be so for many hours yet. We got back into our hire car only to get stuck for quite a long time behind a bus that should never have gone down such a narrow lane and had consequently become stuck. About a million people had their hands on their car horn, and unfortunately our car got stuck over an open sewer which we realised when our driver got out to go and see what was going on. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.
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