'Are you a Tamil?' Yes, a group of 4 Indian schoolgirls asked me this question at Madurai train station on Saturday as we were catching a train from Tamil
Nadu to Kerala. When I shook my head in bemusement, they then said, so 'why did you come to Tamil Nadu?' No way to answer that one!!! My other favourite interaction of the week was being asked to take a photo on my camera by a father holding his toddler daughter. He told her to smile at Aunty (me). Love it.
We flew to this part of S India a week ago and landed in Chennai, the 4th largest Indian city and a huge urban sprawl. It is a fairly charmless city with few tourist sights and being dug up everywhere for a metro line. Our plan was to head south and visit as much as we could in a week before taking the train from Madurai to Kerala. Kevin is becoming a bit of a whizz with the intricacies
of Indian Rail but we actually had to hire drivers for quite a few journeys. The train from Chennai to Villapuram was 2 hours late and grubby but we survived the 2 hour journey easily. Blondes are rare in S India so l was the centre of lots of attention as we waited on the platform. The roads and driving standards are a nightmare!!! The cities are crammed full of cars, vans, buses, taxis (lookalike Morris Oxfords), auto rickshaws, and every sort of 2 wheeled bike in existence. One strong image is of many colourfully dressed young women clutching babies and toddlers serenely sitting sidesaddle on their husbands' motorbikes in all the noise and chaos. Add in hundreds of people, dogs, and a few cows and you can picture the scene. The roads are often very wide but to reduce speeding, they then narrow them with metal barriers. This just seems to be an invitation to play chicken with the other road users!!! The announcement of a general election in April has added campaigning minivans to the mix. Oh, and all drivers use their horn all the time. No driver has a map or GPS so usually we had to wait while our driver asked a local rickshaw driver for directions. Trying to walk down or cross a major road is challenging. Rural roads are fun with their many bullock carts and vans with huge loads of hay or sugar cane to overtake. Villagers spread out their grain on the roads to be threshed by the traffic. Large herds of cows and goats slowed us down on many occasions. The scenery in Tamil Nadu is pleasant as it has lots of agriculture. It is starting to get very hot so the land looked parched in places. I loved driving through the many villages and seeing all the hawkers and life on the streets. There are endless Hindu temples often with a temple elephant, and lots of Christian churches. We drove around the base of an extinct volcano at Tiruvannamalai which is a sacred mountain for Hindus to climb at full moon and at festivals. There were huge slabs of granite being cut from the rock as we drove to Madurai.
The Tamils are generally friendly and smile. We saw families enjoying themselves at the beach and at temple sites. Fathers were often doting on their children and often invited me to take a photo of their offspring. They are very good looking and the women look stunning in their saris. They wear lovely jewellery including anklets. Yes, l now have an anklet!!! The men are often dressed in white dhoti (sarong) which they fold up past their knees in the heat so that they are wearing puffball mini skirts, a challenge for any age!!! A lot of the poorer people are barefoot and there are lots of beggars.
Accommodation has generally been very good especially in Pondicherry. We stayed in the heritage Anantha Inn which was a boutique hotel, Indian style. We had a lovely colonial room and bathroom with an outside courtyard and breakfasts on the rooftop listening to the chanting from the temple a few doors away. I watched the local ladies draw freehand the intricate rangolis which are pavement designs in rice powder which welcome visitors and protect against the evil eye. We also had a wonderful stay in Chettinadu Mansion, Kanadukathan. This remote village took us over 5 hours to reach by car but was worth the trip. It is fabulous. It is 1 of 75 Chettiar villages in the region. The Chettiers were an interrelated group of super wealthy gem traders and bankers who built mansions in this area full of the finest things money could buy - Burmese teak, Italian marble, granite and tiles, cast iron pillars from Birmingham!!!, chandeliers and mirrors from Belgium .... and wonderful art work and furnishings. The Chettiars started losing their wealth after the 1st World War and as various countries of Asia gained independence from their colonial masters. The mansions were stripped of their contents to pay bills and many have been left to rot. We met the great great grandson of the original owner of the house we stayed in and he said the only hope for the future is using this ghost town as a film set or developing luxury hotels. Unesco want to step in but have apparently been blocked by the Indian government who want to do the conservation themselves! It will be a travesty if this is all just left to fall down. The drawback is the inaccessibility of the villages. Anyway, we took a bullock cart ride around the village stopping to see an even grander mansion which is empty except part of the original family living in the humble back quarters. We had lots of chats with local school children saw local weaving and tile making and then went back to eat wonderful Chettinad cuisine in the open courtyard of our mansion. It was then time to take our huge key and retire to our room with its quirky original decor and old electrics!
The food generally in Tamil Nadu is tasty but not hot. There are lots of vegetable curries and we ate dosai and thali many times. We loved the roof top restaurants in Pondy and Madurai. We had fresh juice from stalls and so far we feel fine. Alcohol is restricted and not served everywhere. In Pondy, we could drink it but they serve it in opaque mugs and keep the bottles hidden.
My favourite place was probably Pondicherry. Besides our lovely hotel, it is lovely to walk around the Old French Quarter. There is a paved promenade walk along the sea front full of people early morning and at night.. I told Kevin it reminded me a bit of Nice and he laughed. Well, ok there are a lot of Indians, hawker stalls, boys with bells walking along carrying sticks of bags of candy floss to sell and statues of Nehru and Gandhi. But there is also a statue of Joan of Arc, an Alliance Francaise, a Lycée Francaise, lots of government offices and police buildings with policemen in immaculate khaki uniforms with pillar box red kepi hats and roads with French names arranged in a grid system behind the promenade. The slightly rundown villas have mustard walls, painted shutters and are surrounded by lovely gardens and there is a very green park in the centre. Pondy was French until 1962!!! They signed an independence treaty in '54 but it took several years for the French to leave. They have their own federal administration to this day. Now there are many expats in the town plus a whole generation of people half Indian and half French, Portuguese, English.... Many of them run the more stylish shops and restaurants. Litter is a terrible problem in India particularly plastic it we saw lots of litter notices and a huge bin in the French Quarter. It is an unneeded message as you move towards the canal which divides the Quarter from the Indian areas and the problem increases as you walk through these streets.
We also visited the beach at Mamallapuram. This was a very crowded place. Everyone was standing around and some people were in the surf fully clothed. There were stalls to buy food, drinks, shells, toys... You could pay to take a horse ride or shoot at balloons with a rifle. All very chaotic and Indian.
I should write about ashrams. We have decided that they are definitely not for us!!!! In Pondicherry, there is the Sri Aurobindo ashram founded by an Indian guru who was joined by a French woman, the Mother, who died in'73 aged 97. Her picture is everywhere in the town. The ashram is right on the seafront with tall grey walls and keep out notices although you can visit at certain times. We spotted European women wearing all white including turbans coming and going.... Outside the city there is a new township called Auroville designed for 50,000 people of all nationalities to live in love and harmony. Current population is 2,000!!!! We won't be joining them. We did walk around the ashram at Tiravannamalai which was set up by a guru who lived nearly 50 years in a state of contemplation. It was fairly relaxed except for the odd Westerners wandering around.
Finally, the temples of Tamil Nadu which are one of the reasons to visit. Our first experience was at Mamallapurum where the Shore Temple is right next to theses. There were 2 shrines to Shiva and lots of rock carvings. We wandered round all the town's temples and marvelled at Krishna's Butter Ball. It is a huge boulder that precariously balances on other boulders and the Indians love to photograph it. None of this prepared us for the massive Arunachaleswar temple complex at Tiruvannamalai spread over 10 hectares. It feels like the Temple of Doom as it's all about golden flames and burning ghee. Here you see the lingam of fire, a phallic symbol of the incarnation of Shiva as the destroyer of the universe (we are still trying to get to grips with Hinduism). We entered through one of the 4 gopurams, the vast ( up to 66 m tall) stone structures carved with gods, goddesses, deities,..... We had to be barefoot, covered up and with no camera (sadly). We passed the temple elephant, stalls selling food and temple offerings and joined the hundreds of people rushing towards the inner sanctum. It's all very dark and confusing. We couldn't find an official guide but we were adopted by a local who showed us the main shrines and pushed us into the Puja ceremony which is very noisy and frenetic. We were in a tiny space with about 30 Hindus watching the 2 temple Brahmins tending a tiny oven spewing fire in front of a lingam. There was lots of chanting, offerings and then blessings and l was relieved to get out of the tiny space in one piece. There was no hostility to us but l felt oppressed. In many temples, non Hindus aren't admitted to the sacred areas and that will probably be our first and only time in the inner temple. There were lots of school parties, families, beggars... We gave some money to our helper and left .
We also visited the Sri Meenakski (she became the consort of Shiva) temple in Madurai. It dominates the city as the last temple did and it is great to view it from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. A lot of the temple is closed to non Hindus ( fine by me!) so we wandered around and people watched but again no camera!!! The temple is surrounded by tailor shops and we walked around the Puthu Mandapam, a covered market with rows of men sitting at Singer sewing machines. A wonderful colourful scene.
So in answer to the schoolgirls' question 'why are you in Tamil Nadu?' The answer must be because it is a fascinating state with so much to see and do. Am starting to get why people love India. Off now to the laid back Kerala so you will hear from me soon .....

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