Madurai - Chidambaram
For over two thousand years, is organized in Madurai, an annual festival in honor of the fertility goddess Sri Meenakshi. Many details of the temple festivals are still the same as during the Greek ambassador Menasthenes, of lying on the spice route Madurai in the 3rd Century BC visited. For hundreds of generations, the Indians have taken a number of days each year to march in to their villages to Madurai to walk and pray to the goddess for children. And until that day, the effigies of the goddess and her husband, Lord Sundareshvara every night brought in her bedroom, so they are there can love (even the nose ring of the Goddess in the evening away, so it will not hurt her husband!) - this act shall be regenerated and apparently the universe.
We had missed this year's festival by a week, but looked forward to visiting the temple. Madurai's chaotic city center is dominated by the 12 Gopurams of the temple. Each Gopuram is up to 50m high and covered with human-size statues of Hindu gods and gurus. From a distance, see the Gopurams only like colored towers, but up close are the details of the figures impressive.
After we made our shoes, we entered into the temple - a dark hall with many columns and a decorated ceiling detail. We were looking forward to seeing the statue of Meenakshi, but unfortunately were not non-Hindus to enter the innermost region. However, we visited the temple elephant and the white temple buffalo. The head of the elephant was white and orange makeup, and his job was with the trunk coins of the visitors to accept and to bless it, as he dabbed his trunk slightly on the head of the donor. This led to many donations, and we could not resist and donated the elephant some coins. The poor buffaloes was not as popular because he had learned no such clever tricks, but there were many buffalo statues in the Temple, which were strewn with flowers of pilgrims, grass and lime powder.
in the heart of the temple, dozens of small stalls selling tacky souvenirs. The only place of rest, the steps which the empty temple pond leading down. Otherwise, the temple was full of activity. The pilgrims had only seconds to their prayers before the accretion of to say Goddess, before being pushed further by the next in line. Although we find the Hindu religion fascinating, the whole excitement and the many gods and goddesses sometimes a little too much. There is a strong contrast to the quiet, meditative mosques of the Middle East.
rest anyway can be hard to find in India. In the cities there are rarely parks or quiet areas, and if they still even exist, they are full of people. Madurai is a good example - we locked ourselves even for a while in our room, only to have a little rest, and even then we heard the noise of the city through our window. Exactly like the temple ceremony has changed over thousands of years are not much, and the unpaved streets of the city has not adapted to the current traffic. On our bikes we move with the market, but to walk is really hard, because there are no sidewalks in Indian cities. You share the road clogged with all the other cars and motorcycles to cows and bullock carts.
After a few days we had enough and took us back on track. Shortly after we left the city, we rolled on a small street, which was accompanied on one side by a river, and on the other side by bright green rice fields. The villagers smile and wave, we felt quite calm and relaxed, we were far away from the tourist areas and out of reach of our travel guide. The street was very quiet, somewhat hilly and well paved. Surprisingly, we also had no head wind. Since there are so many Indian cities and villages, there are also many side roads, often paved well and make it easy to avoid the main roads. With the bike ride through India's villages is a real pleasure.
As we passed through a small village, we talked with an older man on the rack of the bicycle's Son were riding. He invited us for a cup of tea at a village shops. He had never seen foreigners in his village - but we're pretty sure that one or the other cyclists must be passed by unnoticed.
On this day we came through no major cities and therefore had to penetrate with the snacks, which we found in village shops. After we had driven 100 km, we reached the town, wanted to stay in the us. However, when we asked some people for a hotel, we harvested only shake his head and eyebrows until they were finally convinced to show us the only accommodation in town. It was a small guest house with only 4 rooms and our was dark, hot and stuffy. The current was only between 18 und 6 clock clock in the morning made so that we could not use at other times the fan and the light, and there were many open slots were the mosquitoes. To add insult to injury, we found no dinner - the only restaurant serving only snacks.
were hungry after a night of self-pity, we back on the ground of reality back the next morning when we stopped at a small cafe where we ordered tea and omelette. We talked with a truck driver who told us that he dreamed of riding a bicycle to Kashmir. However, he had his bike ride to some Days to give up, because its budget was only 250 rupees a day (we give each of about 750 ...) so that he could barely afford enough food, and - plagued by mosquitoes - had to sleep outside on the ground. Surely he would have been grateful than we are, if he had slept in the hotel where we stayed last night.
noon we arrived in the city of Trichy. We had problems finding a hotel - most were booked by wedding guests, because we happen to arrive at one of the best wedding day of the year, and Trichy is a popular place to get married. In the end we came to a somewhat dilapidated hotel in the colonial past that had space for us. The hotel was a relic of British colonial days when families spent their weekends. There was a small courtyard and had a nice atmosphere, but unfortunately, the charm had checked out of our room long ago.
We were sure that had slept for 80 years before a British general in our bed. The mattress was so incredibly soft and enhanced with a suspension, so we were immediately bent into a U shape, if we are lying down and our feet almost touched his head. To make it worse, there was a sort of anti-fan in our room, which pushes the warm air towards the bed and kept the cool air. The hotel manager told us proud that the fan is already "over 80 years old" and would "still working"! After we had almost suffered a heat stroke, we moved the next day in a more modern room that was not as pretty, but had a non-colonial and very efficient fan.
Trichy is famous for its Rock Fort temple, which sits on a 83m high cliff in the city center. The climb on the rocks with many Indian pilgrims was fun and the view from the top was nice, but the temple itself was nothing special. We also visited the larger Sri Rangan temple, which was interesting because we had to go through several Gopurams and several walls, to penetrate into the interior of the temple (unfortunately we could but once again the "space gods" do not enter).
Trichy When we left, we found a quiet street between two rivers, the part of the huge Cauvery river delta were. As we passed through an agricultural area, we were surprised to see modern harvesters and tractors. Obviously, they also exist in India, but so far we had seen such commercial machines still not here, because usually everything is done by hand. In this area most of the villagers live in simple huts made of clay, Cement or palm fronds, with a sort of thatch of dried palm leaves. It was wonderfully cool and cloudy, and to our great surprise, we even had some rain! The last time we had seen rain was over four months in the north of Iran. It was very refreshing to be once again drenched by the rain cooled (usually we have 35-38 ° C and sun).
noon we came to a small town, but found no restaurant. As we asked a man, he took us to a hidden restaurant, in which we had previously driven past without seeing it. We tried to invite him something to eat or a cup of tea, but he refused all our offers, sat down at a another table and watched us. At first we felt a little uncomfortable, as we ate our lunch under observation, but then we realized that he just wanted to make sure that we are content with your restaurant recommendations were. He repeatedly asked the waiter to bring us more food and drink, and he gave Fred even roll up the good advice, their sleeves, so they would not get dirty!
the afternoon, we suddenly felt as if we had taken place in the Middle Ages. India's reality shocked us again when we saw several people within the hour with a fairly horrible disfigurement. First we saw a Sadhu limp through a village - one of his legs had swollen to size of elephants, and covered his giant foot ulcers, such as a cauliflower. Then we passed a man who had hung a huge cyst like an eggplant on his head. Shortly after we shen a woman with severe acid burns, which disfigured her bald head and face. We had expected to see something more in India, but luckily it was in Mumbai quite often the case. We had feelings of guilt, because we knew that our travel insurance would pay for a good hospital immediately, while these people probably got no medical help.
As "icing on the cake" could We pass then to a naked man lying in a coma on a half-bridge (drugs? alcohol?), as we in Kumbakonam, our destination, arrived. We found a nice hotel with an annoying hotel employees. Since Madurai always expect more people tips from us - the rest of India, people were often surprised when they are with the luggage helped and we gave them a tip, but here, everyone expected a tip: hotel employees, security guards, waiters, cleaners ...
The hotel staff helped us half-heartedly with our luggage and we gave him a tip, where we already doubled what we would normally give, giving us the bikes had helped. Obviously he was not so happy because he demanded that 50% more! Our understanding of the nature of a tip that it is voluntary and that we decide for themselves how much we want to give. In the end we gave grudgingly to his demands, but it was not enough. The next morning he gave us back our deposit, but held back some money and said it would be a "tax". Since we had already paid the tax for the room that was obviously just a tourist trap. Guy, who was woken up anyway even with a louse on the liver was, then going on a tirade to the employee at the hotel we were astonished to "control" quickly returned.
We then drove to a little more traveled road to Chidambaram, that is famous for its Shiva temple. The Tamil Nadu region is famous for its many temples, and each town seems to have a remarkable temple. We do not have much stamina when it comes to temple visits and felt a little ausgetempelt. Nevertheless, we decided to look at the Shiva temple and were briefly surprised, because it is relatively quiet but was quite impressive.
had, after more than two months in India and 2,300 kilometers left, we now only two days cycling . Since we still had some time before our flight from Chennai to Bangkok We were planning on the east coast in Pondicherry first take a little break.
0 comments:
Post a Comment