I spent the morning of the 3rd in Kumbakonan before leaving for Thanjavur. About 7:30 I walked to the very large Mahamakam Tank, said to have been filled with the contents of the pot shattered by Shiva's arrow. Ornate little structures painted white stand on each of the four sides, five of them to each side. Only a few people were bathing in the tank, but I stayed a while and watched several pujas being conducted at the top of stairs leading to the water. A lot of beggars were hanging around.
I walked next to the Nageshwara Swami Temple to see it again and to surreptitiously take photos of the magnificent Chola statues on the outside walls of the inner sanctum. I'm not quite sure why you're not allowed to take photos of these statues, but the place was uncrowded and I had no trouble. I headed next to the Sarangapani Temple again and spent some more time looking around there.
After lunch I took a bus southwest about 25 miles to Thanjavur, arriving about 2:30 after a trip of an hour and a quarter that passed through many little towns and not much rural area until the last part of the journey. Thanjavur, formerly known as Tanjore, is now a city of over 200,000 people, but a thousand years ago it was the capital of the Chola Empire The great Chola Emperor Rajaraja I, who ruled from 985 to 1014, conquered the Cheras in what is now Kerala, and spread his empire even further, up to the Tungabhadra River in what is now Karnataka and even to the Maldives and northern Sri Lanka, commenced building in 1003 in Thanjavur the first monumentally sized temple in south India, much larger than the stone temples pioneered by the Pallavas. In fact, the road signs directing you to it call it the "Big Temple," though officially it is the Brihadishwara Temple. I got there soon after it opened for the afternoon at 4.
The temple, with its 200 foot high vimana, sits inside two sets of high walls, the outer massive fort walls built by the Nayaks six hundred years later Two gopuras, decorated with figures but unpainted and relatively low, lead into the central walled enclosure, with two massive monolithic sculptured guardian figures standing on either side of the final gopura gateway. I've read that in later centuries the height of temple gopuras increased and the height of vimanas decreased to protect the sanctuaries topped by vimana, surrounded by high walls, from the polluting views of outsiders. In fact, until the past century untouchables, now called dalits, were not even allowed into Hindu temples. In the big temple at Thanjavur is a signboard with a 1939 quote from Gandhi thanking the Raja of Tanjore, then custodian of the temple and several others in the area, for opening up the temples to untouchables.
The inner enclosure is huge, about 800 feet long and 400 wide. The monumental temple in the center is almost entirely Chola, though the Nayaks or the later Marathas added a portico in front. The temple has recently been cleaned of centuries of grime and the courtyard is part paved and part glass, and surprisingly clean and pleasant. The place was crowded that afternoon. I slowly walked along the wide courtyard around the central temple. In front is a massive monolithic black basalt Nandi, 20 feet long and perhaps 12 feet high, on a plinth under a veranda with a painted ceiling. It is also much later, dating from the Nayak era. In fact, there are about five other small temples surrounding the main one, only one of which was built by the Cholas. Some of them, too, are superbly decorated with sculpture. The main temple has statues of gods in niches all along its outer walls.
Atop the 200 foot high vimana sits what looks like a single huge domed capstone. Actually, it is said to be constructed of eight large stones weighing a combined 80 tons. The speculation is that during construction an earthen ramp four miles long was built to reach the top and that elephants dragged the stones up to the pinnacle. Along the inner wall of the courtyard run very long and attractive columned arcades. The courtyard and the temples really make an attractive scene, especially nice in the late afternoon as the setting sun brought out the red tones in the stone.
Inscriptions in Tamil, and some in Marathi, cover much of the walls, both on the outside of the temple and on the walls of the huge courtyard. Rajaraja was quite a detailed record keeper. The inscriptions include a detailed list of the income provided for the temple and the hundreds of people working there, most famously the 400 devadasis, or temple dancers. The inscriptions include the addresses of the houses provided for each one of them outside the temple. "Devadasis" means "married to the gods," but from reports from later eras these devadasis, while maybe married to the gods, were available for rent by night to soldiers and others.
I eventually made my way through the two pillared halls from the eastern entrance of the temple towards the sanctuary. These two dark halls are relatively undecorated except for another pair of massive door keeper figures. You can peer into the inner sanctum where, directly under the apex of the vimana, sits a 12 foot high lingam, decorated with three horizontal bands of silver and several garlands of colorful flowers. Brahmin priests stood in front of the massive lingam conducting fire aartis for any worshipers who made their way to the sanctuary.
There are two levels of corridors that run along three sides of the inner sanctuary. The lower one is covered with Chola frescoes, similar to those at Ajanta. The upper one has stone bas reliefs showing 81 of the 108 classic dance positions, with 27 unfinished plaques. The temple is said to have been completed in 1010, after only seven years of construction, but I guess some of the details weren't finished by then, and were left incomplete after the king's death in 1014. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed into these two corridors.
Eventually, I found a place to sit at the southwest corner of the arcade along the courtyard walls and watched the vimana grow redder and redder with the setting sun. Once the sun set, I walked around both outside and inside again until after it got dark. As I walked by a puja being conducted outside at a little shrine near the south wall, a woman gave me a handful of delicious pomegranate seeds, a prasad from the puja. Lights came on illuminating the temple, with a crescent moon descending behind it. Quite a nice place. I left about 7:30.
I returned to the temple the next morning about 7:30. It was cool and uncrowded and I wandered around until almost noon. (It closes at 12:30 for the afternoon.) Until 9 I just wandered around outside, then went inside to watch the 9 o'clock aarti when the priests open the curtain exposing the lingam. Afterwards I spent quite a bit of time watching some pujas being conducted in the arcade along the south wall of the courtyard. The brahmin priests seemed particularly mellow at this temple. At one puja was a plate filled with two bananas, rice, a mango, an apple, and a pomegranate, plus flowers.
The place was getting crowded by about 10 and I spent some time in the very informative interpretation center housed in a portion of the southern arcade. It had photos of the big temple in Thanjavur taken in the 1955 and in 2005, and similar photos of the big temple in Gangaikondacholapuram built by Rajaraja's son and successor Rajendra, so you could see how much reconstruction had occurred. Not much, it seems, in Thanjavur; more, especially along the courtyard walls and the entry gate, at Gangaikondacholapuram. Rajendra, by the way, building on his father's conquest, expanded the Chola Empire not only to the Ganges but also to Sumatra, Java and other Indonesian islands. You can certainly see the influence of Chola dance on Balinese dance.
I had brought a package of cookies with me and they served as my breakfast as I wandered around and sat here and there. I watched the pujas some more at the southern wall, where worshipers were making and lighting lamps made of the halves of fruit and cocoanuts filled with ghee and cotton wicks. I watched a closing ceremony at the little outdoor shrine next to the southern wall, at the end of which the priests drew a curtain in front of the idol.
I had been tired all morning, but still enjoyed wandering all around the temple. I had a "meal," what south Indians call a thali, for lunch, served on a banana leaf, but not a very good one. I am getting a little tired of the way Indians cook rice and their gloppy vegetables, though I suppose nobody cooks tastier gloppy vegetables than Indians.
About 2 I walked to the dilapidated royal palace built by the Nayaks and later renovated by the Marathas. Thanjavur went into a period of decline when Rajendra moved the capital to Gangakondacholapuram and subsequent Chola kings settled in other towns. It revived under the Nayaks, first the governors under the Vijayanagar Empire in the early 16th century and then in power in their own right for about a century until 1685, when the Marathas invaded and took over. They remained as kings until 1855, when an heirless king died and the British took formal control. The British had already been the paramount power in the area for more than a half century.
The fort contains a colorfully painted, but dilapidated durbar hall, dating from the Maratha era, with painted statues of Hindu gods on the pillars and European looking angels on the walls. A portrait of a Maratha raja is painted on the wall. The highlights, though, are a library showroom displaying part of the massive collection of an early 19th century raja, including Johnson's Dictionary and an early 1800's book illustrating Chinese tortures, and a gallery full of Chola bronzes, some quite spectacular. I've read that most of the bronzes came from a trove dug up in the 1950's. They had apparently been buried to prevent them from being plundered by Muslim invaders. Elsewhere is a 92 foot long skeleton of a whale that was washed up at Tranquebar in 1955. It was absolutely covered in pigeon poop. Probably hadn't been cleaned since 1955. I began sneezing, with a runny nose, that afternoon, and still felt tired. I was afraid a cold was coming on.
I went to bed early and felt better the next morning I had an idli breakfast and then walked to the big temple about 9, staying until 11:30. It was much less crowded than the day before. No pujas were going on in the arcade of the southern wall. I enjoyed wandering around and sitting here and there, though again with the sniffles and a little tired.
For lunch I went to a fancy restaurant at a fancy hotel and had roast chicken in a mushroom sauce, with butter sauteed vegetables and french fries. It was delicious, perfectly cooked and cost about $4. Quite a surprise and a treat.
About 2 I boarded a bus heading west to Tiruchirappali, a trip of less than an hour and a half, mostly on a four lane highway. We passed a small fort on a low rocky hill on the way. Tiruchirappali (or Trichy, as everyone seems to call it) stands at the head of the Cauvery (or Kaveri) Delta. The low rocky hills nearby stood out after days of the relentless flatness of the delta. The city has close to a million people and on the way into town I caught sight of the Nayak era fort on a 250 foot high rock hill just south of the Cauvery.
I got a large comfortable room for 550 rupees, or about $9, a night in an old, ramshackle hotel with a nice courtyard. It is said to be almost a century old. Soon after 4 I took a city bus through the crowded streets of the city about two miles to near the base of the rock fort I had seen on the way into town. It took a while to make my way through the crowded streets to the beginning of the steps leading up to the top. The stairway is mostly enclosed, with at least a couple of gates as you enter the fort walls. There is a big temple about halfway up, and a smaller modern one at the very summit of the almost pointed rock. From the top you can see the bed of the Cauvery to the north. The river did not seem to be flowing at all: just large ponds of stagnant water. The water must diverted by dams and canals further upstream. The now mostly dry river bed is quite wide. Beyond the river you can see the gopuras of two large temples maybe two miles away. To the west and not far from the rock fort stands a large church modeled after the church at Lourdes. I watched the sun set (into haze, about 6:15) and then walked down and took a bus back to my hotel.
About 3:30 the next morning, after my third hot and restless night in a row, I finally had the sense to dig out my thermometer from my backpack and take my temperature, which was 101.4. I wonder if I had had a fever for the past two days. I had been hot and tired, but thought it was just because my room the first two nights in Thanjavur was stuffy and because India, with its constant filth, constant noise, and constant crowds, is always tiring. Plus temperatures had been warming up lately, with highs now in the low 90's and lows in the low 70's. I took some Tylenol and spent the day in my room, mostly in bed. I was tired, with body aches, sniffles, and a cough, but no stomach troubles. About 6:30 in the evening I did go out to get bottled water and a few bananas to eat.
The next day I was better, with my temperature never rising above 99.3, but I spent another day in my room, much of it again in bed. I still was quite tired. I felt well enough to have a plate of chicken fried rice for dinner and slept well that night.
My temperature was back to normal all the next day, and I felt much better, though still a little tired. I ate a wonderful cheese omelet, butter toast, and tea breakfast in the courtyard of my hotel. I spent the day reading and at an internet cafe less than five minutes from my hotel.
After a three day hiatus I was back to sightseeing the next day. About 9 I took a city bus north past the rock fort and over the mostly dry bed of the Cauvery River to Srigangam just north of the river, a trip through city streets of almost an hour. I got out at the southern entrance of the massive Sri Ranganathaswami temple, honoring Vishnu and unusual in that it faces south. It is composed of seven walled rectangular courtyards, 150 acres in all. The highest of its 21 gopuras reaches 240 feet, and I think is the southern entrance one, built only in the 1980's. The first three courtyards seem like city streets, with vehicles and lots of shops. I had to leave my shoes at the fourth gopura and wall. Just inside I could climb to the top of the wall for a look around. The fifth courtyard just north is as far as non-Hindus can go, but I could see the sixth and seventh gopuras and the golden dome over the sanctuary, and I could look back south towards the four gopuras I had already passed under. Beyond the golden dome I could see another line of gopuras to the north. A high one rose to the east.
Back down in the fourth and fifth courtyards, full of pillared halls and lots of pilgrims, I looked all around. Most of this temple dates from the late 14th century, after a disastrous sacking in 1313. On the east side of the fourth courtyard is a hall with pillars of beautifully carved horses and riders. Just north is another Thousand Pillared Hall, this one in fact with almost a thousand pillars, 904, dating from the late Chola period, but closed to visitors. (Usually, a thousand pillared hall just means it has a lot of pillars.) The pillars in the hall are round and unadorned, really quite simple compared to all the others.
In the fifth courtyard there is a large pillared hall right in front of the entrance into the sixth courtyard. Lots of family groups were sitting on the floor, many with little girls with shaved heads with some sort of yellowish white paste spread over their shaved heads. I was wondering why and finally found out. One of the little girls, maybe two or three years old, was held by her father and several other relatives while a man used a needle to pierce her ears and then install gold earrings. She didn't cry during the piercing, but cried just a bit when the first earring was installed. Her mother quickly fed her a banana and she calmed down.
The shrines closed about 1, but you could stay inside the temple, and many people did, sitting on the floor and eating or sleeping. Many brought food, but you could also buy food, and I bought two helpings of sweet pongal, hot rice cooked with sugar. It was interesting watching all the people, and the carved pillars and other statuary were very interesting.
I stayed until about 3 and then took an auto rickshaw a mile or so east to the Sri Jambukeshwara Temple, a Shiva temple. This is another large temple compound, though much smaller than the one I had come from. It was much quieter. It also is filled with beautifully sculpted pillars, with interesting and unusual figures. There are five sets of walls, but non-Hindus aren't allowed into the innermost ones and the sanctuary. This temple honors the element of water, with a lingam partially submerged in water. I looked all around and enjoyed the place, staying about an hour and a half, and then took the bus back to my hotel.
The next morning a little before 10 I boarded a bus for a day trip south of Trichy. I took the bus to Pudukkottai, about 30 miles to the south, a trip of about an hour and fifteen minutes. This area is know as Chettinad, after the Chettiars, a caste that grew very wealthy during the Raj serving as colonial bankers. They are a merchant caste and initially grew wealthy in the 17th century handling trade between the coast and Madurai. When the British came to dominate southern India, they spread their trading links in the 19th century to British colonies in Singapore and Burma, and soon throughout southeast Asia and even South Africa. I'm not sure why they in particular became so prominent in banking, especially as they come from such an out of the way area, but they plowed much of their wealth into fantastically decorated homes in their homeland. The boom ended with World War II and independence, and many of the mansions are now derelict and semi-abandoned.
In Pudukkottai I headed to a museum in an old palace, but neither the museum contents nor the building were particularly interesting. From Pudukkottai I retraced my route in part, taking a bus back north about ten miles to a series of rocky hills. Getting off the bus, I started walking on a quiet country road to a temple on one of the hills, when a friendly young guy on a motorcycle stopped and offered to take me. He didn't know where it was, but we asked several people and eventually he dropped me off at the base of the granite outcrop, just outside the little village of Natharmalai. The low part of the outcrop was covered with a dozen or more very high haystacks, or rather stacks of rice stalks. A woman was winnowing rice from chaff and rice still in the husk lay all over, in several places covering large areas on the rock.
To the west I could see the tower of the temple poking over the crest of the granite hill. I walked through the stacks of rice stalks and up the solid rock slope, not a long nor steep climb, a climb of maybe 150 feet. The views on the way were wonderful, of the harvested rice fields below and the rock hills in the distance. I reached the temple, said to date from the 10th century, and it was deserted. It stands on a granite shelf below a steep escarpment. I sat in the shade of the escarpment with two temple chambers cut into the escarpment and a mango tree growing nearby. I ate some cookies and drank some water and eventually four Indian tourists showed up, followed by the doorkeeper who let us into the central temple, where there were traces of frescoes on the walls, and into the chambers cut into the escarpment, the larger one with twelve Shiva figures carved onto the rock. I looked around and then walked a little farther with two young guys to a dargah, a Muslim grave in a cave now remodeled. I wandered around a bit on the rocky hills. The views were wonderful and the area almost deserted. I walked back to the temple, looked around a again, and then sometime after 3 walked back the way I had come, stopping to watch the men and women working around the stacks of rice stalks. A woman was still winnowing grain, while another one was sweeping the rice grains into piles. People were very friendly, except for the doorkeeper who kept pestering me, but not the Indians, for a tip.
Eventually, I made my way to the road and watched an old woman herding cows. It took me about 40 minutes to walk back to the highway, with lots of stops to watch things and take photos. One guy walked by under a massive pile of rice stalks perched atop his head. I got a bus back to Trichy about 4:30, an hour trip.
The next morning I finally left Trichy, after a final cheese omelet, buttered toast, and tea breakfast in the courtyard of my hotel. It is cool there in the morning, with birds chirping, quite nice compared to the chaotic, noisy streets outside. I jumped on a bus shortly before 10 and headed south about 55 miles to Karaikkudi, passing Pudukkottai again on the way. As we left Pudukkottai we passed a big old palace that would have been much more interesting to visit than the museum. About seven miles before Karaikkudi we passed through the narrow lanes of the little village of Kanadukathan, seemingly lined with a dozen or more derelict Chettinad palaces.
It took almost three hours to reach Karaikkudi and once there I had to take another bus from the new bus stand to the old one to get to a hotel recommended by the hotel folks in Trichy. My guidebooks didn't have much information on Karaikkkudi. The hotel proved to be a very nice one. I rested a bit and then walked to lunch, finding a small hole in the wall biryani place that may have the best biryani I've had in India, with very hot (not spicy), moist rice with a piece of chicken and a hard boiled egg served on a banana leaf for all of 50 rupees, about 80 cents. After lunch I went searching for an old Chettinad building called the Thousand Window Home, and found it, but it was closed and I was told it never opens. I walked past other derelict old Chettinad mansions. A caretaker at one told me it was built in 1942, but is in bad shape, the owners in America. Another one now serves as a marriage hall, and a crowd of people were inside attending a wedding. About 3:30 I walked back to my hotel, passing a textile shop featuring a signboard with not one, but two photos of Bill Gates, as if he had branched out from software to textiles. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in my comfortable hotel room reading the newspaper.
The next morning I took a bus back north about seven miles to the little village of Kanadukathan, full of Chettinad houses. There are dozens of them lining the narrow streets, almost all in great disrepair. A wedding ceremony, with guests from Chennai, was going on in one. As I walked down a lane looking at the derelict houses, a brisk woman of about 35 invited me into one that was not so derelict, charging me 50 rupees to look around and another 50 for taking photos. She told me it was 250 years old and that she lived in Chennai but came to Kanadukathan several times every year. The ceiling above the long entry hall, she told me, is carved rosewood from Burma. At either end of this long hall are wooden shutters that open up exposing Belgian mirrors, two at each end, decorated with silver, the mirrors making the hall seem so much longer. The hall's black pillars are of Italian marble and the white walls covered with a smooth, cool glaze made of lime, egg whites, powdered shells, and a fruit.
She led me into an inner court with teak pillars and rosewood furniture, including two roll top desks. Over the doors are carved wooden representations of the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, being showered by two elephants. In fact, almost all the houses had Lakshmi prominently on their facades. A couple of houses had figures, both men and women, in European dress on their facades. One man had a bowler hat, a cane, and a dog beside him.
A group of French tourists came into the house I had entered and were showed around. During the past month or so of travel in this part of India, I have seen very few young backpackers; in fact, almost none. However, I have seen lots of older tourists, usually older than I, and mostly French.
I wandered around the village some more, looking at the old mansions. It was hot in the midday sun. Temperatures have been reaching about 95 degrees. The biggest and seemingly best preserved building, the Raja's Palace, was closed. I was told it has been closed for four years. I did go into a nice old building now a hotel, with a big entry hall with overstuffed chairs in one half and dining tables in the other half. At either end of the hall are portraits of the founder of the clan and of his second son, who built the mansion. I looked around, finding three courtyards. Above every room was a woodcut of Lakshmi and her two elephants.
I sat in an overstuffed chair in the entry hall for a while reading a book on the Chettiars and then made my way back to the bus stop, getting back to Karaikkudi sometime after 2 for a late biryani lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon in my comfortable hotel room, reading the newspaper and War and Peace.
I walked next to the Nageshwara Swami Temple to see it again and to surreptitiously take photos of the magnificent Chola statues on the outside walls of the inner sanctum. I'm not quite sure why you're not allowed to take photos of these statues, but the place was uncrowded and I had no trouble. I headed next to the Sarangapani Temple again and spent some more time looking around there.
After lunch I took a bus southwest about 25 miles to Thanjavur, arriving about 2:30 after a trip of an hour and a quarter that passed through many little towns and not much rural area until the last part of the journey. Thanjavur, formerly known as Tanjore, is now a city of over 200,000 people, but a thousand years ago it was the capital of the Chola Empire The great Chola Emperor Rajaraja I, who ruled from 985 to 1014, conquered the Cheras in what is now Kerala, and spread his empire even further, up to the Tungabhadra River in what is now Karnataka and even to the Maldives and northern Sri Lanka, commenced building in 1003 in Thanjavur the first monumentally sized temple in south India, much larger than the stone temples pioneered by the Pallavas. In fact, the road signs directing you to it call it the "Big Temple," though officially it is the Brihadishwara Temple. I got there soon after it opened for the afternoon at 4.
The temple, with its 200 foot high vimana, sits inside two sets of high walls, the outer massive fort walls built by the Nayaks six hundred years later Two gopuras, decorated with figures but unpainted and relatively low, lead into the central walled enclosure, with two massive monolithic sculptured guardian figures standing on either side of the final gopura gateway. I've read that in later centuries the height of temple gopuras increased and the height of vimanas decreased to protect the sanctuaries topped by vimana, surrounded by high walls, from the polluting views of outsiders. In fact, until the past century untouchables, now called dalits, were not even allowed into Hindu temples. In the big temple at Thanjavur is a signboard with a 1939 quote from Gandhi thanking the Raja of Tanjore, then custodian of the temple and several others in the area, for opening up the temples to untouchables.
The inner enclosure is huge, about 800 feet long and 400 wide. The monumental temple in the center is almost entirely Chola, though the Nayaks or the later Marathas added a portico in front. The temple has recently been cleaned of centuries of grime and the courtyard is part paved and part glass, and surprisingly clean and pleasant. The place was crowded that afternoon. I slowly walked along the wide courtyard around the central temple. In front is a massive monolithic black basalt Nandi, 20 feet long and perhaps 12 feet high, on a plinth under a veranda with a painted ceiling. It is also much later, dating from the Nayak era. In fact, there are about five other small temples surrounding the main one, only one of which was built by the Cholas. Some of them, too, are superbly decorated with sculpture. The main temple has statues of gods in niches all along its outer walls.
Atop the 200 foot high vimana sits what looks like a single huge domed capstone. Actually, it is said to be constructed of eight large stones weighing a combined 80 tons. The speculation is that during construction an earthen ramp four miles long was built to reach the top and that elephants dragged the stones up to the pinnacle. Along the inner wall of the courtyard run very long and attractive columned arcades. The courtyard and the temples really make an attractive scene, especially nice in the late afternoon as the setting sun brought out the red tones in the stone.
Inscriptions in Tamil, and some in Marathi, cover much of the walls, both on the outside of the temple and on the walls of the huge courtyard. Rajaraja was quite a detailed record keeper. The inscriptions include a detailed list of the income provided for the temple and the hundreds of people working there, most famously the 400 devadasis, or temple dancers. The inscriptions include the addresses of the houses provided for each one of them outside the temple. "Devadasis" means "married to the gods," but from reports from later eras these devadasis, while maybe married to the gods, were available for rent by night to soldiers and others.
I eventually made my way through the two pillared halls from the eastern entrance of the temple towards the sanctuary. These two dark halls are relatively undecorated except for another pair of massive door keeper figures. You can peer into the inner sanctum where, directly under the apex of the vimana, sits a 12 foot high lingam, decorated with three horizontal bands of silver and several garlands of colorful flowers. Brahmin priests stood in front of the massive lingam conducting fire aartis for any worshipers who made their way to the sanctuary.
There are two levels of corridors that run along three sides of the inner sanctuary. The lower one is covered with Chola frescoes, similar to those at Ajanta. The upper one has stone bas reliefs showing 81 of the 108 classic dance positions, with 27 unfinished plaques. The temple is said to have been completed in 1010, after only seven years of construction, but I guess some of the details weren't finished by then, and were left incomplete after the king's death in 1014. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed into these two corridors.
Eventually, I found a place to sit at the southwest corner of the arcade along the courtyard walls and watched the vimana grow redder and redder with the setting sun. Once the sun set, I walked around both outside and inside again until after it got dark. As I walked by a puja being conducted outside at a little shrine near the south wall, a woman gave me a handful of delicious pomegranate seeds, a prasad from the puja. Lights came on illuminating the temple, with a crescent moon descending behind it. Quite a nice place. I left about 7:30.
I returned to the temple the next morning about 7:30. It was cool and uncrowded and I wandered around until almost noon. (It closes at 12:30 for the afternoon.) Until 9 I just wandered around outside, then went inside to watch the 9 o'clock aarti when the priests open the curtain exposing the lingam. Afterwards I spent quite a bit of time watching some pujas being conducted in the arcade along the south wall of the courtyard. The brahmin priests seemed particularly mellow at this temple. At one puja was a plate filled with two bananas, rice, a mango, an apple, and a pomegranate, plus flowers.
The place was getting crowded by about 10 and I spent some time in the very informative interpretation center housed in a portion of the southern arcade. It had photos of the big temple in Thanjavur taken in the 1955 and in 2005, and similar photos of the big temple in Gangaikondacholapuram built by Rajaraja's son and successor Rajendra, so you could see how much reconstruction had occurred. Not much, it seems, in Thanjavur; more, especially along the courtyard walls and the entry gate, at Gangaikondacholapuram. Rajendra, by the way, building on his father's conquest, expanded the Chola Empire not only to the Ganges but also to Sumatra, Java and other Indonesian islands. You can certainly see the influence of Chola dance on Balinese dance.
I had brought a package of cookies with me and they served as my breakfast as I wandered around and sat here and there. I watched the pujas some more at the southern wall, where worshipers were making and lighting lamps made of the halves of fruit and cocoanuts filled with ghee and cotton wicks. I watched a closing ceremony at the little outdoor shrine next to the southern wall, at the end of which the priests drew a curtain in front of the idol.
I had been tired all morning, but still enjoyed wandering all around the temple. I had a "meal," what south Indians call a thali, for lunch, served on a banana leaf, but not a very good one. I am getting a little tired of the way Indians cook rice and their gloppy vegetables, though I suppose nobody cooks tastier gloppy vegetables than Indians.
About 2 I walked to the dilapidated royal palace built by the Nayaks and later renovated by the Marathas. Thanjavur went into a period of decline when Rajendra moved the capital to Gangakondacholapuram and subsequent Chola kings settled in other towns. It revived under the Nayaks, first the governors under the Vijayanagar Empire in the early 16th century and then in power in their own right for about a century until 1685, when the Marathas invaded and took over. They remained as kings until 1855, when an heirless king died and the British took formal control. The British had already been the paramount power in the area for more than a half century.
The fort contains a colorfully painted, but dilapidated durbar hall, dating from the Maratha era, with painted statues of Hindu gods on the pillars and European looking angels on the walls. A portrait of a Maratha raja is painted on the wall. The highlights, though, are a library showroom displaying part of the massive collection of an early 19th century raja, including Johnson's Dictionary and an early 1800's book illustrating Chinese tortures, and a gallery full of Chola bronzes, some quite spectacular. I've read that most of the bronzes came from a trove dug up in the 1950's. They had apparently been buried to prevent them from being plundered by Muslim invaders. Elsewhere is a 92 foot long skeleton of a whale that was washed up at Tranquebar in 1955. It was absolutely covered in pigeon poop. Probably hadn't been cleaned since 1955. I began sneezing, with a runny nose, that afternoon, and still felt tired. I was afraid a cold was coming on.
I went to bed early and felt better the next morning I had an idli breakfast and then walked to the big temple about 9, staying until 11:30. It was much less crowded than the day before. No pujas were going on in the arcade of the southern wall. I enjoyed wandering around and sitting here and there, though again with the sniffles and a little tired.
For lunch I went to a fancy restaurant at a fancy hotel and had roast chicken in a mushroom sauce, with butter sauteed vegetables and french fries. It was delicious, perfectly cooked and cost about $4. Quite a surprise and a treat.
About 2 I boarded a bus heading west to Tiruchirappali, a trip of less than an hour and a half, mostly on a four lane highway. We passed a small fort on a low rocky hill on the way. Tiruchirappali (or Trichy, as everyone seems to call it) stands at the head of the Cauvery (or Kaveri) Delta. The low rocky hills nearby stood out after days of the relentless flatness of the delta. The city has close to a million people and on the way into town I caught sight of the Nayak era fort on a 250 foot high rock hill just south of the Cauvery.
I got a large comfortable room for 550 rupees, or about $9, a night in an old, ramshackle hotel with a nice courtyard. It is said to be almost a century old. Soon after 4 I took a city bus through the crowded streets of the city about two miles to near the base of the rock fort I had seen on the way into town. It took a while to make my way through the crowded streets to the beginning of the steps leading up to the top. The stairway is mostly enclosed, with at least a couple of gates as you enter the fort walls. There is a big temple about halfway up, and a smaller modern one at the very summit of the almost pointed rock. From the top you can see the bed of the Cauvery to the north. The river did not seem to be flowing at all: just large ponds of stagnant water. The water must diverted by dams and canals further upstream. The now mostly dry river bed is quite wide. Beyond the river you can see the gopuras of two large temples maybe two miles away. To the west and not far from the rock fort stands a large church modeled after the church at Lourdes. I watched the sun set (into haze, about 6:15) and then walked down and took a bus back to my hotel.
About 3:30 the next morning, after my third hot and restless night in a row, I finally had the sense to dig out my thermometer from my backpack and take my temperature, which was 101.4. I wonder if I had had a fever for the past two days. I had been hot and tired, but thought it was just because my room the first two nights in Thanjavur was stuffy and because India, with its constant filth, constant noise, and constant crowds, is always tiring. Plus temperatures had been warming up lately, with highs now in the low 90's and lows in the low 70's. I took some Tylenol and spent the day in my room, mostly in bed. I was tired, with body aches, sniffles, and a cough, but no stomach troubles. About 6:30 in the evening I did go out to get bottled water and a few bananas to eat.
The next day I was better, with my temperature never rising above 99.3, but I spent another day in my room, much of it again in bed. I still was quite tired. I felt well enough to have a plate of chicken fried rice for dinner and slept well that night.
My temperature was back to normal all the next day, and I felt much better, though still a little tired. I ate a wonderful cheese omelet, butter toast, and tea breakfast in the courtyard of my hotel. I spent the day reading and at an internet cafe less than five minutes from my hotel.
After a three day hiatus I was back to sightseeing the next day. About 9 I took a city bus north past the rock fort and over the mostly dry bed of the Cauvery River to Srigangam just north of the river, a trip through city streets of almost an hour. I got out at the southern entrance of the massive Sri Ranganathaswami temple, honoring Vishnu and unusual in that it faces south. It is composed of seven walled rectangular courtyards, 150 acres in all. The highest of its 21 gopuras reaches 240 feet, and I think is the southern entrance one, built only in the 1980's. The first three courtyards seem like city streets, with vehicles and lots of shops. I had to leave my shoes at the fourth gopura and wall. Just inside I could climb to the top of the wall for a look around. The fifth courtyard just north is as far as non-Hindus can go, but I could see the sixth and seventh gopuras and the golden dome over the sanctuary, and I could look back south towards the four gopuras I had already passed under. Beyond the golden dome I could see another line of gopuras to the north. A high one rose to the east.
Back down in the fourth and fifth courtyards, full of pillared halls and lots of pilgrims, I looked all around. Most of this temple dates from the late 14th century, after a disastrous sacking in 1313. On the east side of the fourth courtyard is a hall with pillars of beautifully carved horses and riders. Just north is another Thousand Pillared Hall, this one in fact with almost a thousand pillars, 904, dating from the late Chola period, but closed to visitors. (Usually, a thousand pillared hall just means it has a lot of pillars.) The pillars in the hall are round and unadorned, really quite simple compared to all the others.
In the fifth courtyard there is a large pillared hall right in front of the entrance into the sixth courtyard. Lots of family groups were sitting on the floor, many with little girls with shaved heads with some sort of yellowish white paste spread over their shaved heads. I was wondering why and finally found out. One of the little girls, maybe two or three years old, was held by her father and several other relatives while a man used a needle to pierce her ears and then install gold earrings. She didn't cry during the piercing, but cried just a bit when the first earring was installed. Her mother quickly fed her a banana and she calmed down.
The shrines closed about 1, but you could stay inside the temple, and many people did, sitting on the floor and eating or sleeping. Many brought food, but you could also buy food, and I bought two helpings of sweet pongal, hot rice cooked with sugar. It was interesting watching all the people, and the carved pillars and other statuary were very interesting.
I stayed until about 3 and then took an auto rickshaw a mile or so east to the Sri Jambukeshwara Temple, a Shiva temple. This is another large temple compound, though much smaller than the one I had come from. It was much quieter. It also is filled with beautifully sculpted pillars, with interesting and unusual figures. There are five sets of walls, but non-Hindus aren't allowed into the innermost ones and the sanctuary. This temple honors the element of water, with a lingam partially submerged in water. I looked all around and enjoyed the place, staying about an hour and a half, and then took the bus back to my hotel.
The next morning a little before 10 I boarded a bus for a day trip south of Trichy. I took the bus to Pudukkottai, about 30 miles to the south, a trip of about an hour and fifteen minutes. This area is know as Chettinad, after the Chettiars, a caste that grew very wealthy during the Raj serving as colonial bankers. They are a merchant caste and initially grew wealthy in the 17th century handling trade between the coast and Madurai. When the British came to dominate southern India, they spread their trading links in the 19th century to British colonies in Singapore and Burma, and soon throughout southeast Asia and even South Africa. I'm not sure why they in particular became so prominent in banking, especially as they come from such an out of the way area, but they plowed much of their wealth into fantastically decorated homes in their homeland. The boom ended with World War II and independence, and many of the mansions are now derelict and semi-abandoned.
In Pudukkottai I headed to a museum in an old palace, but neither the museum contents nor the building were particularly interesting. From Pudukkottai I retraced my route in part, taking a bus back north about ten miles to a series of rocky hills. Getting off the bus, I started walking on a quiet country road to a temple on one of the hills, when a friendly young guy on a motorcycle stopped and offered to take me. He didn't know where it was, but we asked several people and eventually he dropped me off at the base of the granite outcrop, just outside the little village of Natharmalai. The low part of the outcrop was covered with a dozen or more very high haystacks, or rather stacks of rice stalks. A woman was winnowing rice from chaff and rice still in the husk lay all over, in several places covering large areas on the rock.
To the west I could see the tower of the temple poking over the crest of the granite hill. I walked through the stacks of rice stalks and up the solid rock slope, not a long nor steep climb, a climb of maybe 150 feet. The views on the way were wonderful, of the harvested rice fields below and the rock hills in the distance. I reached the temple, said to date from the 10th century, and it was deserted. It stands on a granite shelf below a steep escarpment. I sat in the shade of the escarpment with two temple chambers cut into the escarpment and a mango tree growing nearby. I ate some cookies and drank some water and eventually four Indian tourists showed up, followed by the doorkeeper who let us into the central temple, where there were traces of frescoes on the walls, and into the chambers cut into the escarpment, the larger one with twelve Shiva figures carved onto the rock. I looked around and then walked a little farther with two young guys to a dargah, a Muslim grave in a cave now remodeled. I wandered around a bit on the rocky hills. The views were wonderful and the area almost deserted. I walked back to the temple, looked around a again, and then sometime after 3 walked back the way I had come, stopping to watch the men and women working around the stacks of rice stalks. A woman was still winnowing grain, while another one was sweeping the rice grains into piles. People were very friendly, except for the doorkeeper who kept pestering me, but not the Indians, for a tip.
Eventually, I made my way to the road and watched an old woman herding cows. It took me about 40 minutes to walk back to the highway, with lots of stops to watch things and take photos. One guy walked by under a massive pile of rice stalks perched atop his head. I got a bus back to Trichy about 4:30, an hour trip.
The next morning I finally left Trichy, after a final cheese omelet, buttered toast, and tea breakfast in the courtyard of my hotel. It is cool there in the morning, with birds chirping, quite nice compared to the chaotic, noisy streets outside. I jumped on a bus shortly before 10 and headed south about 55 miles to Karaikkudi, passing Pudukkottai again on the way. As we left Pudukkottai we passed a big old palace that would have been much more interesting to visit than the museum. About seven miles before Karaikkudi we passed through the narrow lanes of the little village of Kanadukathan, seemingly lined with a dozen or more derelict Chettinad palaces.
It took almost three hours to reach Karaikkudi and once there I had to take another bus from the new bus stand to the old one to get to a hotel recommended by the hotel folks in Trichy. My guidebooks didn't have much information on Karaikkkudi. The hotel proved to be a very nice one. I rested a bit and then walked to lunch, finding a small hole in the wall biryani place that may have the best biryani I've had in India, with very hot (not spicy), moist rice with a piece of chicken and a hard boiled egg served on a banana leaf for all of 50 rupees, about 80 cents. After lunch I went searching for an old Chettinad building called the Thousand Window Home, and found it, but it was closed and I was told it never opens. I walked past other derelict old Chettinad mansions. A caretaker at one told me it was built in 1942, but is in bad shape, the owners in America. Another one now serves as a marriage hall, and a crowd of people were inside attending a wedding. About 3:30 I walked back to my hotel, passing a textile shop featuring a signboard with not one, but two photos of Bill Gates, as if he had branched out from software to textiles. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in my comfortable hotel room reading the newspaper.
The next morning I took a bus back north about seven miles to the little village of Kanadukathan, full of Chettinad houses. There are dozens of them lining the narrow streets, almost all in great disrepair. A wedding ceremony, with guests from Chennai, was going on in one. As I walked down a lane looking at the derelict houses, a brisk woman of about 35 invited me into one that was not so derelict, charging me 50 rupees to look around and another 50 for taking photos. She told me it was 250 years old and that she lived in Chennai but came to Kanadukathan several times every year. The ceiling above the long entry hall, she told me, is carved rosewood from Burma. At either end of this long hall are wooden shutters that open up exposing Belgian mirrors, two at each end, decorated with silver, the mirrors making the hall seem so much longer. The hall's black pillars are of Italian marble and the white walls covered with a smooth, cool glaze made of lime, egg whites, powdered shells, and a fruit.
She led me into an inner court with teak pillars and rosewood furniture, including two roll top desks. Over the doors are carved wooden representations of the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, being showered by two elephants. In fact, almost all the houses had Lakshmi prominently on their facades. A couple of houses had figures, both men and women, in European dress on their facades. One man had a bowler hat, a cane, and a dog beside him.
A group of French tourists came into the house I had entered and were showed around. During the past month or so of travel in this part of India, I have seen very few young backpackers; in fact, almost none. However, I have seen lots of older tourists, usually older than I, and mostly French.
I wandered around the village some more, looking at the old mansions. It was hot in the midday sun. Temperatures have been reaching about 95 degrees. The biggest and seemingly best preserved building, the Raja's Palace, was closed. I was told it has been closed for four years. I did go into a nice old building now a hotel, with a big entry hall with overstuffed chairs in one half and dining tables in the other half. At either end of the hall are portraits of the founder of the clan and of his second son, who built the mansion. I looked around, finding three courtyards. Above every room was a woodcut of Lakshmi and her two elephants.
I sat in an overstuffed chair in the entry hall for a while reading a book on the Chettiars and then made my way back to the bus stop, getting back to Karaikkudi sometime after 2 for a late biryani lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon in my comfortable hotel room, reading the newspaper and War and Peace.
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