VI. Here we go again

Captain’s Log: Wednesday, 20 September 2017

Distance: Kumbakonam – Madurai

I have to admit, my short term memory which is supposed to save new impressions is now a bit overloaded after the last couple of days, so I do not remember much of today. That is also a reason why I write everything down by the way.

In the morning we left quite early due the long distance we had to make today. We also had a couple of stops again. Can you guess already what we visited? Right, more temples! Not that I would complain about that, I think they are all fascinating.

The first temple looked a bit like the one from yesterday, but it was still a Living one, so, many people, priests, and so on. I forgot to mention, both temples, this one and the one from yesterday, are UNESCO Weltkulturerbe. 

Someone from the group ran just into the picture, and afterwards all of them walked past me, so, just think away this tablet.

Here we have Nandi, the bull from Shiva, one of the three main gods. Every god has an animal to ride on. The funny thing is, Ganesha, the God with the trunk, this Elephant God, has a mouse as an animal to ride on.

By the way, my frog sits here, when he does not sit somewhere else for a picture.

So he can see the other stuff as well.

You can still see the colours there.

On this picture we can see Sadi. She burned herself alive because she was in love with Shiva and married him, but her father did not want that. And I think, at a party of her father, were Shiva was not invited, but he came anyway, her father threw him out. Out of protest or something like this, Sadi gave herself up to the flames. But she got reborn as Parvadhi, the wife of Shiva, so she had her Happy End. I kinda like these stories.

The rest of the temple looked almost exactly like the one from yesterday. The reason for this is probably because this one was build by someone, and the other one from yesterday was build by his grandchild. Or was it the other way around? I forgot, but, they were grandfather and grandson.

The next stop was at a palace, which became a museum. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but there were many Bronze statues of the Dancing Shiva and Parvadhi and Brahma, the third main god whose name I did not know yesterday, and from Vishnu. Afterwards we visited a workshop of how these Bronze statues were made. It was sort of surreal, because they were sitting on the ground, everything was dirty, and they were working on this ancient technique, and then one of them got called on his Smartphone. Anyway, we learned how this figures were made. First they had to make a wax statue. This can take about two weeks. Then they put clay (Ton) or loam (Lehm) around it and let it dry in the sun for two days. Then they melt the wax and let it rin out through two holes they left in the clay. And then they poured the liquid Bronze into the clay form. And out comes a statue, which gets worked on for another week, until it is ready for sale. I do not know why, but it was very fascinating watching them work.

So, the next stop was at a restaurant, before we had to climb up a hill to another temple.

The view from the top was quite impressive.

But very windy. I was scared that my frog was blown away, so he had to saty in his pocket for the rest of the time.

And they even had a Lonely Mountain.

Up on the top were a Ganesha statue, because it was a Ganesha temple. It is common to get something for the God in the temple, flowers or stuff like this. You know, what we could buy at the bottom to bring up to the temple?

That is right, grass and bananas. Because what do elephants like to eat? Grass and bananas.

Afterwards nothing exiting happened anymore. We drove about 2 hours to the hotel, it was already late afternoon, early evening. But I found out that they have highways here. There were still motorcycles on it, but more cars and especially trucks and busses. And there was a lot of nature around it.

For dinner we had a buffet again, but I was already, or still full from Lunch at this restaurant, so maybe I am able to value it more tomorrow.