Kula deivam et. al.

The previous post in this series is here..

We had yet another day where sleep was limited to 6 hours. The hotel in Trichy was not as good as the one in Madurai, but given we were going to just sleep, get up, shower and start it was good enough. 

The new driver showed up on time but the car had no working AC. So it was going to be an issue on a hot day. We could not wait. So we asked him to start towards Ranganathar and figure it out from there. 

Just like the previous day we went into the temple at 6AM and were out in a little over an hour. We made our way then to Thiruvanaikovil. We managed to do a super quick darshan.

By then we got a car with working AC. There was an appointment at our Kula deivam temple, Gunaseelam with the priest. We made it in time for me to take a dip in the river behind the temple and go see perumal. 

This was the third highlight of the whole trip after meeting my dad on his 85th birthday and taking bath in the wells of Rameshwaram.

They were nice enough to take care of the annadhaanam on our behalf as we had to leave right away. The pongal prasadam was great on an empty stomach. 

We were to be dropped off at Tanjore Railway station that evening in same car after a visit to the Big Temple in Tanjore. Given we had time, we visited three more temples.

We saw the Thirupanjali temple (which has a special shrine for Yama, the god of death), Thiruvellarai (a very old temple) and Uttamar Kovil (also known as bikshaandaar kovil). 

We finished all these temple visits and had lunch at Ashwins a local favorite.

We also bought some snacks for the road/Train ride later that night at Ashwins. If you are in the Trichy area, don't miss Ashwins food and snacks!

A short video clip ..

Then we made our way to Tanjore. The ladies dozed off. FIL was working in the car. I was busy finishing off some of the snacks.  The three hours in Tanjore did not disappoint.

That on another post..

Rameshwaram to Madurai

The last post in this travel series is here .. and is three months old! 

My iPhone storage is full after more trips and if I don't microblog this now, it will be gone from memory!

On that quickfire trip to India, after we spent the day in Rameshwaram, we had to drive to Madurai to reach our hotel that night.

We left Danushkodi at almost 5 PM. We had two planned stops before reaching Madurai city. 

The first was Thiruppulaani. A beautiful place with an amazing temple tank full of fishes that gave us a free feet cleaning. The temple dates back to the year 1300 and is one of the 108 divya desams. The idol was just beautiful to look at. Sculptors had the golden touch then. Today's temple idols simply don't come close.

Then we stopped at Uttarakosamanagai temple. This is another famous temple in the area. It is a Shiva temple famous for the 6 feet Nataraja idol made of emerald. They cover it with sandalwood paste throughout the year and the emerald is seen only once a year and close to a hundred thousand folks come to visit it on that day!

We got to see the sandalwood version at least. The temple was going through some renovation and we navigated our way through the massive temple complex in the dark. 

Then we stopped to have an early dinner and it was off to Madurai..

A very very short video clip to remember.. we got to watch the sunset on our drive..

We got a glimpse of another beautiful temple tank after entering Madurai.  We reached a fantastic hotel that my FIL had booked. He told us it was one of the best in Madurai. He was right!

 

We had a good nights sleep and were up early to visit the temples in Madurai the following day. 

Think you will see a theme on our trips. India or Europe, we stay in each place for a day and keep moving cities every evening!

Madurai in another post!