Trichy and Tanjore, quick temples, Tamil Nadu

We went from Madurai to a nearby town called Trichy which has got a pretty cool temple. It's a bit like a modern Hampi, with the temple towers rising amidst the hustle and bustle of Indian life, and pilgrims all entering to get blessed. Kieran was happy as he got a blessing from the temple elephant and it was interesting to see people using the temple rather than it just being an artefact.

The towers are intricately carved with reliefs of animals and Gods and painted in bright colours (although they seem predominantly blue) and are a beautiful oasis in the city. In Trichy they also give you your own chai to make cooler so we practiced being chai wallahs there...



The rest of Trichy was a bit too much for us though so we hot-footed it to Pondicherry the next day on a grand bus mission including 6 different buses! We went via a place called Tanjore where there is a World Heritage site temple. If we thought Trichy was nice we were blown away by Tranjore. Even more like Hampi in that it had a large wall encompassing a beautiful and old building, that although was touristy was also in use as a temple and (sorry Soph) we even got roped into donating pooja (offerings) and getting our first real Bindis (and some half-naked dude in a white sarong said we'd have a long life!).



It was well worth the hassle of the bus and we got the obligatory elephant blessing, much to Kieran's delight. Only an hour there though before getting back on that bus and driving to Pondy with Bollywood DVDs blaring in our ears, competing quite well with the honking horns.