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Hello from Madurai
We arrived at 1 in the morning thanks to the nuns who said if we caught the bus we did catch we'd arrive at 6 in the morning. But it was all well and found a hotel to stay in relatively easily. The only thing exciting about the bus journey was at the very start when Kate went to buy some drinks and took bloody ages so Laura had to hold the bus up and beg the conductor dude not to leave her friend behind.
Today we've seen lots and lots of things including:
The train station, while we went round and round the houses trying to get through all India's stupid beaurocracy, and complicated train time-tabling.
Went to a look at a temple and went through a shop up to its roof to admire the view, but on the way back down we got sucked into the shop and Laura bought lots of stuff at really extortionate prices.
Then we went to Thirumalai Nayak Palace which was lovely, it had lots of massive massive pillars and painted floral ceilings, to which Laura said "it's nice innit?". It was good to escape the midday heat sitting in its shade.
Then we went to The Government run Ghandi Memorial Museum and read a lot about the British oppression of  India and also saw looks of personal artefacts of Ghandi including his glasses, letters he'd written to people like Hitler, and even in its own seperate room painted black, the dhoti (man skirt) he was wearing when he got shot. It even had the blood stains still on it, very eery.
After that we went and visited the Sri Meenakshi-Sundareshwara temple which is one of the largest temple complexes in India, and it was huge. It was interesting to see all the art work and sculptures apparantley there are 33 million of them, most of them on 4 massive towers which you can apparently see for miles. It was also interesting seeing all the Hindus doing all the different rituals to all the different shrines. Unfortunatley the actual temples are shut off from the non hindus. But we did get to see one of the temples elephants out and about in its chains, tapping people on the head whenever they gave it some rupees.
We are catching a night train to Kanniyakumari (the southern most tip of India) tonight so we should arrive at about 8 in the morning, but we don't have seats/beds so its going to be an uncomfortable night.
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