Temple overflow?!
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2009
1
127
138
Trip End
Mar 01, 2010
Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India
Monday, February 15, 2010
There is a great deal of ambivalence about the Indial folks. Let's take the riksha drivers. From one hand they are really annoying and want you to pay too much for too little. From the other hand, when refused they don't keep bad feelings at all, help you to find the right bus - which I find pretty remarkable.
First I go to see that Rock Temple. It's not bad - I mean the rock is pretty impressive - stands in teh middle of a totallly flat town. There is a fee for taking photos there. No, actually there is a fee for bringing a camera inside - I don't find this a good idea, why should I pay if there is nothing to take pictures of? And I usually don't pay - the doorman are much more attracted by a GPS hanging from my pocket (it looks like a mobile) and don't care much about an SLR on my shoulder (which I don't try to show them).
The next stop is Sri Thayumanaswamy Temple - it's one of the biggest in India (LP says) and it looks like a small town. One need to cross 7 concentric walls to reach the center - which is restricted to Hindu :). Impressive, that's right, but I think I start to get an idea about Indian temples. Probably I should change my plan and continue to Ooty (a hill station), instead of Kanyakumari (southernmost tip of the continent).
I have a lunch at a busy restaurant next to the bus station. The least busy part of it is an AC hall - locals don't like cold air or something? For Rs 70 I get a Full Meal that proves to keep me fed till the next morning. I spend there an hour planning with the LP. I try to stich together Tamil Nadu + Karnataka + Kerala - it is possible, but eventually I decide to stick with the original plan and take a bus to Thanjavur. There is another temple there, but let's hope it's not yet another one (After all it's on the World Heritage listing). The idea is to get there before the sunset - to get some nice lighting, and then to see the same site in the sunrise - for the opposite angle.
The bus arrives to Thanjur just in time for me to catch the sun coming down (after a check in to a hotel of course). And yes, the view is absolutely sensational. I'm really glad I got here despite that too-much-temples feeling. A few more shots and... bloody hell - the camera has a problem with the memory card - NOOOOOOO! I'm shocked and don't really know what to do. Totally devastated I come to the hotel. And another surprise expects me there - I can't find the charger for my AAs (for the GPS, etc.)... This one probably not that painful - I can buy a new AA-charger, but still it feels sucky. I'll try to get me a card reader tomorrow - probably it's possible toget my photos back. As a matter of fact we are talking about the pictures of the last two days. On February 14th I had a run, and the only pictures I took were at Auroville - it's a pity. And today I had these photos of Rock Temple in the morning, and then these from the evening - but I'll be able to take these tomorrow morning. So the damage is not as bad as it could have been (or I just try to convince myself that this is the case:).
