Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Thursday, August 14, 2014
We took a mini trip around the city in a tuk tuk to see some local sights but i have to say they didn't compare to the temple.
What was really interesting though was the Gandhi Museum.
As we are in India for their Independence day it was quite appropriate to be there too.
Just reading about him is an inspiration and it makes you realise just what a special man he was. They had a really gory item which we felt was a bit morbid - Gandhi's clothes he was wearing when he was shot. We didn't like that.
Outside was his house which they had transported from where it originally sat and peering through the windows you could see how simple it was inside
another day another tuk tuk
From there our tuk tuk also took us to a big ex-palace thingy. We can't actually remember who used to live there and it is only home to pigeons now.
The Rock Temple was next. It was about 7km out of the city and was very similar looking to the temple in Madurai as are most Hindu Temples.
The area outside was very smelly much worse than Madurai so we got in fast.
A man inside told us there were seven tiers to the temple and the inner most (and most holy) was carved out of solid rock. We walked up through the dark tiers of the temple to the centre. It was a bit underwhelming to say the least so we wound our way back out again.
The streets through Madurai were really interesting. As with many Indian cities, they have streets dedicated to a product eg string. There will be dozens of shops and stalls in in the same street selling string. Every type of string you could possibly imagine all together in one street. One of our favourite streets was onion street. How do you chose which onions to buy when you have 50 people all selling onions??
We did warm to Madurai a little bit but our favourite part will always be the Meenakshi Armman Temple with the elephant and it markets.
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