We're here to enjoy the cool mountain air, visit a National Wildlife Refuge and tour an organic spice garden. Kerala, as we know from our earlier visit in 2008, is particularly known for its spices. We'll even have a chance later today to mix some for ourselves since we're also scheduled to cook our own lunch meal today (under supervision, of course)! And we have been promised an elephant ride into the bargain...
Friday morning we awoke to learn that our guide's father had died suddenly during the early morning hours and that he would be leaving us in order to take up responsibilities connected with the funeral arrangements. A local guide joined us for our morning activities, then Manika Ashoka flew in from Chennai to assume Srini's leadership role. She had just finished with another OAT group the evening before but didn't hesitate when asked to jump in to help in this emergency situation. We'll all miss Srini's expertise and his meticulous planning but appear to be in equally capable hands under Manika.
Touring South India in many ways lacks the constant “wow factor” present when traveling through the North of India – from Delhi to Jaipur and Khajuraho, then on to Agra and the Taj Mahal. That's a hard act to follow. In our travels through Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, however, we do have the opportunity to experience India at a more personal level. And that seems to be what OAT is aiming for in planning our itinerary.
Yesterday morning's visit in Madurai to Meenakshi, a Hindu temple devoted to Parvati (also called “Meenakshi”), the consort of Shiva (who also merits his own sanctum sanctorum within the temple complex and is escorted each evening to spend the night with Meenakshi), was this tour's exception to that “experience the soul of India” motif.
Meenakshi is one “wow” of a place, believe me!
From the seven huge gopura guarding the various entrances and central worship spaces to the brightly painted ceilings and the corridor after corridor lined with brilliantly executed sculpture, this is one pretty amazing place.
Photos don't do it justice. They isolate items from one another which in reality abut each other and taken together add up to much more than the sum of the individual parts.
Furthermore this is an active temple, one visited by 10,000 Hindu worshipers daily. That means the space is filled with life and sound and rituals and offerings and elephants and shops selling all manner of objects, sacred and profane. It was an experience well worth removing our shoes and socks to undertake; and, in our minds at least, ranks right up there with the best India has to offer.
Usually Lee takes about one hundred digital images on any given day. At Meenakshi he snapped nearly 150 in just that one location!
It's hard after an experience like that not to want to take something of it home with you. The central image in Meenakshi's Hall of A Thousand Pillars is a bronze image of a Dancing Shiva. Lee hoped to find a similar image to add to his “god shelf” at home and managed to locate a small bronze at the National Folk Art store across from the temple itself. It will evoke a very special memory of a very special place forever after.
Following our temple visit and brief shopping excursion, we set out in individual bicycle rickshaws for a drive-by view of the older part of Madurai, a city among the oldest in India – and full of crowded, narrow, bustling streets and alleys impossible to see any other way. On our earlier visits to Old Delhi and Varanasi, this kind of wild ride was one of Lee's favorite experiences – and this one was no exception, helping in this case to boost his photography count well up into the two hundred and fifty range!
On our afternoon bus ride we stopped along the highway and persuaded a local brick maker to demonstrate his manufacturing technique. Actually, as seems true in many of these instances, the brick-making operation is shared among several families, in this case three sisters and their respective spouses and children. Theirs was only one of dozens of similar cottage industry enterprises scattered along the road outside Madurai, all doing well in the building boom atmosphere that dominates the current Indian economy. Everyone's building and they all need bricks!
Once again, as has become the usual case, we had a busy, busy, busy – and extremely exciting and rewarding – day. And along the way, as well, we came to appreciate just a bit more of the true “soul” of India.
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