David and the Temples of Umm...

3rd and final India weekend report. Can't believe I only have 4 nights left in Vellore, the time has flown in.

First things first:
Friday
Instead of travelling by train this weekend's journey was taxi-powered. My travelling companions were three German medical students, Christian, Vicky and my room mate, Christian. The first destination was Thanjavur, a mere 400km from Vellore. 8 hours later we arrived (averaging 30 miles an hour, Indian traffic is pretty bad). The journey itself wasn't entirely a waste though, got to see a lot more of the country. Some notes I made at the time:

Many of the roads are half-constructed or crumbling, but others have good road markings and surfaces.
The vehicles are many and various ranging from bicycles to rickshaws to cow-pulled carts to speeding buses heading towards you and literally swerving 20m from the front of the car
You have to be insane to drive a car in India; the drivers cannot judge distances or point blankly refuse to believe that you can't overtake with only 2 car lengths room. I have never had so many near death experiences. I felt like kissing the ground like the Pope. Our driver seemed reasonable enough for Indian standards. The best moment was when there was a car over taking another car overtaking a truck all heading towards us at high speed.
I found out today that Vellore hasn't had a proper rain and harvest in 4 years and this was evidenced all around Tamil Nadu by the massive bridges spanning dusty canyons where once life-giving water flowed.

One plus of this journey was the amazing hotel that we had, it was very new and shiny; great food at the restaurant too, I've been really getting into vegetarian stuff since I've been out here - perhaps that's because of the quality or lack thereof of the meat involved.

Saturday
Saturday began with my first visit to a Hindu temple. We set off early to see the temple whilst it was still fairly quiet. The main temple in Thanjavur is reknowned for the size of it's Nandi (the Bull statue that sits in the courtyard of the temple); it stands at an impressive height, having been carved and polished from a single piece of stone (local legend says that it is still growing).

After the temple to the Palace, which was slightly disappointing (similar to Tipu Sultan's palace in Bangalore but not as impressive) but had an amusing climb to the top of a tower from which the whole town could be seen.

Next stop Trichy, home of a temple on a tall rocky outcrop (the Rock Fort) in the centre of the town and large temple on the outskirts. The rock fort allegedly had 440 steps or so but didn't seem too arduous even in the heat and whilst barefoot. Some really great views from the top and a refreshing cool breeze. Stood for a few minutes just feeling the sun on my face and the wind in my hair before clambering back down to the taxi to take us to the next stop (via the coffee shop and another chat with some of the friendly locals), the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple (here is a link to someone else's report of the area with some reasonable pictures). An impressive construction with a huge 73 metre tower at one side and several smaller towers dotted throughout the site. We had a friendly guide whose English was pretty good and managed to get a first idea of what the Hindus believe and what the different symbols mean to them.

Then another 3 hour car journey to the furthest south I will be in India this journey, to Madurai. Booked into another reasonable hotel and had dinner at the rooftop restaurant before heading off to bed.

Sunday
Another day, another temple. This time an equally impresssive building and a better guide, heard and forgot some more about Hinduism but was still interesting to see how the people lived their lives and for me to try and understand what seems like something very different to our Western Christian way of thinking. Reminded me a lot of the descriptions of Jewish temples, with stalls selling things for sacrifice and the different rituals that went on and with a very holy place at the centre. Interesting. After this temple a visit to the Palace (a rather bland building, probably not worth visiting after all the other more ornate places we had been to that weekend), before lunch and the start of our eight and half hour marathon car journey back to Vellore. Fortunately the roads were good for a lot of the journey and we made good time (original estimate was 10 hours). I was glad to be stopped and still in one piece.

This was a fairly brief account of the weekend. It was much more touristy than anything I had done before but definitely worth seeing to help me understand Indian culture and especially Hinduism better. Also managed to cope with all the German spoken and learn a bit of my own (hergenhantascha man's hand bag, brotbixa, lunch box and klostein...um, 'loo stone' apparently (those disinfecting cubes)). Useful.

Sorry no pictures as yet. Working on it.