Madurai

Date arrived: 17th January  2024

Date Departed: 18th January 2024 

Favourite sight: Ghandi Museum

Average Cost: £40.50 PPPD

Madurai is the spiritual heart of Tamil Nadu, and the incredible Meenakshi Amman temple defines the southern style of religious buildings, with many imitators - but nothing that quite compares. Another town that we just got a brief glimpse at, but it was fascinating to see even that small glimpse.

17th January 2024

We arrived into Madurai railway station at lunch time after an early start from Nagarcoil that morning. Jumping straight into a tuk-tuk from the station to our hotel, we had our first real experience of the tuk-tuk driver not seeming to know where he was going! Anyway, with a bit of help and Google map-work we managed to get there, although I think we may have gone the wrong way down one or two roads in the process. We checked into our nicer-than-expected hotel and immediately set out to maximise the 20 hours-or-so we had Madurai.

After some painful lessons with "Tatkal" ticket quotas and advanced ticket booking on the train that morning, we were basically down £35 for a mis-purchased and non-refundable train ticket (It's  had to get your head around trains starting off more than 24 hours before you want to board them) and had to book an expensive taxi for the 320KM journey to Puducherry the next day. Consequently we didnt want to think too much about money or logistics anymore!

We wanted to check out the Ghandi exhibition here in Madurai, and also to visit the famous Meenakshi Amman temple that I mention above, so we worked out a plan to walk to the Ghandi museum, grab some lunch while we waited for it to open, then grab a tuk-tuk into the centre before visiting the temple. This plan started well, and we found a fantastic little tea shop half a kilometre away from the Ghandi space, where we were served nice and carefully put together dishes in a fantastic surrounding. Talking to the owner he had worked on Royal Caribbean cruises for a time - which made sense!

The Ghandi exhibition was really good. As well as re-iterating some things about his life that we'd picked up in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, this exhibition focussed on the full history of India's independance struggle, starting from the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1499, the exhibit talked a lot about who had ruled where and when, and who had opposed them at all of the different stages. 

As well as covering the deeper history and the various significant rebellions against the British, it filled in a couple of gaps such as why the East India Company was dissolved, and direct government rule  via the British Raj brought in, following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. It also, significantly, explained the background to the Muslim desire for a separate state of Pakistan, which led to the Partition of India as part of Indian independence in 1947

From the museum we set off in a Tuk-tuk to the city centre to visit the massive Meenakshi Amman temple. This is a very important Hindu religious site, and said to be as important to southern religious architecture as a the Taj Mahal is to northern. It receives a massive amount of visitors and pilgrims, most of whom seemed to be there today!

We didn't get to go inside it, because there were literally hundreds of people queueing at each of the four entrances, and the rules on entry are very strict (no bags, no mobiles, as well as the usual cover legs, shoulders etc). We did manage to get a good look at each of the four external entrance gates and the magnificent carved towers that make them up though. Apparently the 55M tall south tower has 1,511 gods, goddesses and heroes carved into its surface, and the other three are not far behind. Have a look at the pictures of the west tower below to see what I mean.

As well as seeing the complex from the street, we also managed to get a sneaky look from the rooftop of a nearby building, which didn't show us a lot more, but did give us a feel for the scale of the complex. We learned that the relatively faded look of the figures was due to the 12-year cycle of painting, which was just about to re-start in March or April this year.

Having purchsed some souvenirs from the roof-owning shopkeeper, we set out to get a tuk-tuk back to our hotel, to get out of the sun for a bit ahead of going out for dinner. This was where we had our second experience of a tuk-tuk driver not knowing where they were going! This one was much stranger though, as the guy would not look at our map, or listen to our suggestions, but insisted on driving around various stores - generally in the wrong direction - asking people if they knew where our hotel was! After about ten minutes of this we just left him to it and got out of the vehicle. He insisted there was "no problem;" we, however, disagreed.

We did find another tuk-tuk who was able to drive straight back to our hotel. Well, almost...

After a brief pause and confirmation of our arrangement for the morning, we set out towards an "Italian American Diner" that we'd spotted on our travels, where we had a genuinely excellent dinner - lamb lasagne in my case - before turning in for the evening.

18th January

We enjoyed a nice breakfast in our hotel, before meeting the taxi we had booked for our 6 hour drive to Puducherry. This all went pretty well, with the driver stopping at a nice enough restaurant for lunch, and delivering us to Pondy in good time.