A Trip down South - Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, I undertook a small albeit interesting journey to a few places down in the Southern most part of India (South Tamil Nadu). I spent about 4 days going around various temple towns. 4 to be precise. I'll write more about the place and not so much about the gods and deities there. I'll write about things that I agree with and those I don't. I might also make a few generalizing comments that some people might find hurtful. If you're one of those people, you should not go any further!

We started off on a Tuesday afternoon in a train that made the phrase moving in single digits equivalent New Horizons. It took about 20 hours to travel 800k to reach Rameshwaram. It is located on an island called Pamban (if my memory serves me right) and is connected to the mainland through a bridge called Pamban bridge which was about 2ks long on the sea. The prospect of traveling on which got me excited. Well, I wasn't disappointed.

At the start of the bridge near Mandapam
(mainland) 

View from the train at the middle of the bridge

This made my day. The seemingly endless body of water and a man made structure on it, it couldn't have been any more magnificent. It seemed like vast amount fishing was being done very near to the coast. (Captain Obvious to the rescue!?)

You can see the land far in the background

Pillars of some old bridge?

The temple located in Rameswaram is called the Ramanathaswamy, the principal deity in which was supposedly built by Rama and Sita to absolve their sins after the battle with Ravana. We  stayed in the vicinity of the temple. The temple's main entrance faces the sea. We stayed in a small place on that road.

A view of the main Gopuram from the road to the shore

One of the corridors in the temple

There are 22 wells in the temple and the water from those have different tastes. Some custom dictates that anybody who visits that temple should also bathe in water from those wells. There were some temple appointed people who had to help you in that bath ing by drawing water from the wells. The ticket for that has been fixed at Rs 25. Now the interesting part starts. There are additional brokers who charge about 100Rs who supposedly gave you more amount of water to bathe (I didn't get the point too). I wasn't surprised when people who only had taken the 25 ticket were just sprinkled upon a handful of water. This seemed like an indirect way to bolster the entire enterprise of brokerage they had going on.   Inside the temple were some of the most beautiful corridors with exquisitely made sculptures. The whole outer corridor was being repaired and repainted was looking very majestic. I think, post-completion, the whole area would be a feast to the eyes.

Apparently, the temple that we see now was constructed in different eras by different kings. The main shrine was built in some millennia BC and progressively, additions were made to it, with the final corridors being built in 18th century AD. The outermost corridor, I think, is one of the longest in the world with dimensions given in the picture next to this paragraph i.e., the four walls are 690ft, 435ft, 649ft and 395ft long. Along one of the inner walls, were a large number of Shiva lingas of various shapes and sizes.

One of the corridors being painted

I took a bath in the sea too. It was definitely one of the most calmest seas I've ever been to.  There must have been at the least a couple of hundred people there at the shore in the morning.

From Rameswaram, we went to Madurai. In the next post, I'll try to talk about the next couple of days of this trip that included Madurai, Thiruparankundram and Palani.

Cheers


Part 2: A trip down South - Part 2