TRICHY n TANJORE

13th November 2009, I along with my friends Vijay and Sundar started for a 2 days trip to explore the Central Tamilnadu. Based on our input and interest, Sundar prepared an excellent itinerary for the trip. We board the night train from Chennai egmore and reached Trichy in the early morning of 14th November 2009. Trichy is the hometown of Sundar and hence we had our lodging and breakfast at Sundar’s home (exactly at Lalgudi). Thanks a lot for Sundar’s mom for the great hospitality provided by her. After refreshing ourselves at Sundar’s home, we started for the trip in the Cab.

TRICHY:

We started our trip by making a visit to the Mariyamman Temple at Samayapuram. Though, it isn’t really a big temple, but it’s considered to be a famous pilgrimage center in Tamil Nadu. After Samayapuram, we headed for the Srirangam temple.

At around 8.30AM in the morning, we reached the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple aka Srirangam temple. The whereabouts of the builder of this very old Vishnu temple is not known. I was surprised to know the fact that, Srirangam is the India’s largest temple with such a large landscape. It took somewhere around 45 mins to roughly explore the temple and I had no idea on way in and out, as it was so huge. As I saw in Chidambaram, this temple also has a Hall of 1000 pillars (Aayiram Kaal Mandapam) and a tank. It had around 21 Gopurams in almost all direction. The specialty of this temple is the darshan of the god through the Sorga Vaasal (Heaven door), which gets opened only during the month of December. For a nominal charge of Rs. 10/-, we are allowed to go to the roof of this temple to have an excellent top view of all the Gopurams. We spend around 1.5 hrs in the temple and started for the next item in the itinery. Since, we had already seen the Rock Fort Ganesh Temple, we decided to skip it and move on to the Tanjore.

TANJAVUR/TANJORE:

It took somewhere around 2 hrs from Srirangam to reach the Tanjavur Big Temple. Tanjore Big Temple aka Brihadeeswarar temple was built by the great Rajaraja cholan. This temple has two short wide grant Gopurams and on entering which, you can see the finest Dravidian architecture. The attractive parts of this temple are
1. The rocks used to built this temple gives a tone of reddish color which is very beautiful
2. The Height of the main temple is the tallest that I have ever seen for any temple.
3. The temple is surrounded by fortified walls, beyond which the shadow of the main temple will never cast
4. A big huge Nandi (holy bull) in front of the main temple.

I was so mesmerized with the beauty of this temple, that we spend around 1.5 hrs in this place. I tried my level best to take a good snap of the place, but in vain couldn’t get one. Later, I realized that neither mine nor any other camera is good enough to capture such a beautiful thing and a personal visit is always required to enjoy such a majestic beauty. By the time we took all our photos and tried to go for the darshan, it was 1PM and hence the darshan was closed. It was a lesson to me, that all temples in Tamil Nadu will be closed between 1 and 4 PM and hence plans accordingly. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t have darshan of the Shiva Lingam. At this point of time, I can say for sure that Tanjore Big temple is the Must See and the Best of Tamilnadu. After lunch at the Tanjore( the rice bowl of tamilnadu), we started to Airavateswarar temple at Darasuram.

DARASURAM:

Airavateswarar Temple is located at Darasuram, near Kumbakonam. It was a 1.5 hours of journey to reach this place. This temple is just a miniature version of the Brihadeswarar temple. This is yet another Siva temple built by the Rajaraja chola II. Currently, there are some renovation works going on this temple. This temple is recently added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage site. After Airateswarar temple, we started to Gangaikonda Cholapuram.



GANGAIKONDA CHOLAPURAM:

It took somewhere around 1 hr to reach the GangaiKonda Cholapuram temple. This is yet another replica of the Brihadeswarar temple. No wonder, why this temple has similar architecture style?, as this temple is build by the son of Rajaraja chola “Rajendra chola”. This place was named as GangaiKonda Cholapuram marking his victory over the northern regions. Cholas are great devotees of Shiva and this temple is yet another example for it. This Siva temple has a large Nandi, even bigger than the Brihadeswarar temple Nandi. Though, this temple doesn’t have any gopuram, still it has some wells around it. After some photo shoot, we started back to Trichy for Visiting the Kalannai Dam.
But unfortunately, the rain started coming heavily and hence we planned to skip Kalannai dam. At around 8PM, we return back to Sundar’s home for rejuvenating ourselves. That’s the end of the Day1 of my 2days Central Tamilnadu trip; catch you all with yet another interesting blog on Day2 actions.

Please check out the following links for more photos.
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/parthi007/TrichySrirangam#
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/parthi007/Tanjore#
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/parthi007/GangaikondacholapuramAndDarasuram#

RAMESHWARAM

Its October 29th 2009, I started with my family for a trip to Rameshwaram in the Chennai –Rameshwaram express. Rameshwaram Island is a famous pilgrimage center, geographically situated at the southern tip of tamilnadu between the Ramanathapuram district and SriLanka. But this island is well connected with the Indian peninsula through roadways and railways. Both the Rail Bridge and road bridge which is used to connect the Rameshwaram with the main land of Ramanathapuram are known as Pamban Bridge. Though Rameshwaram can be explored in a day, we still planned for a 2 days trip to Rameshwaram.

Day 1, October 30th 2009: At around 8AM in the morning, the train started moving over the Pamban rail bridge. It is a good experience when the train slowly moves over the Pamban rail bridge. We enjoyed an excellent view of the sea and the Pamban road bridge from the train. After a 13 hrs of journey from Chennai to Rameshwaram, we reached Rameshwaram at 8.30AM as scheduled and checked into the TTDC Hotel. On the way from Rameshwaram Railway station to TTDC Hotel, we saw our ex-president Mr. Abdul Kalam’s house. The TTDC hotel is located just a half a Km from Ramanathaswamy temple.

Though, I was very clear about the list of places to be visited in Rameshwaram, but wasn’t sure about the way of transport, since I haven’t booked a cab. Once I reach the hotel, I got a very clear picture from the reception of how am I going to make a visit to all these places. There are number of internet site, which lists out the places of interest and makes the user very confusing to draft an itinery. I just want to keep this very simple by categorizing the list of places to be visited in Rameshwaram as below.

1. Ramanathaswamy temple

2. Dhanuskodi

3. Local site seeing

4. Pamban bridge

In spite of the fact, that a day is a adequate time to explore Rameshwaram, we still planned for a two days stay. Our plan was to visit the Ramanathaswamy temple and Dhanuskodi on Day1 and plan the rest of the places on Day 2.


Ramanathaswamy temple:
Ramanathaswamy temple is yet another Dravidian style temple build by an Unknown Tamil King. The temple has two gopurams/entrance, one facing the west and the second facing the east. The Devotees enter the temple after taking bath in the seashore of the rameshwaram beach. The Beach here is very calm with virtually no wave action and having a bath here is known as “Agni Theertham”.

The speciality of Rameshwaram is to take bath in the 22 Theerthams found inside the temple. The holy water from the holy wells located around the inner praharam of the temple is known as Theertham. The Temple charges around Rs. 25/- to have bath in these 22 Theertham. Though these wells are located in the close proximity, but the taste of the water from each well differs from the other. After having bath in the 22 holy water, we went into the sannadhi to worship the Ramanathaswamy. As per Ramayana, Lord Rama and Lord Sita worshipped the Siva lingam here and hence the name Ramanathaswamy.

As per Hindu dharma’s, a person who visits Kasi and Rameshwaram loses all his sins and hence reaches heaven directly. This is the reason, why we can see hundreds of devotees from across india visiting this pilgrim center every day.

Dhanuskodi:

The most interesting part of Rameshwaram is Dhanuskodi. Dhanuskodi is geographically located at the southernmost tip of the Rameshwaram.

How to reach there?

A 15 mins drive from the main Ramanathaswamy temple took us to the Dhanuskodi highway road. The road is 13kms long and well laid. At the end of this road, there was an Indian navy outpost. Beyond this point, there are no roads and only beach sands stretching out.  No private vehicles can go beyond this point, as it requires some permit.

There are two options to go beyond this point.

1. There are local tempos available there, which can take you in groups. The Exact rate for per head is not known.

2. This option is what I preferred. There are jeeps available for 950 bugs which can take you from your hotel (TTDC hotel) to Dhanuskodi. The cost is for 6 people.

Note: Even this jeep tour is not conducted by TTDC and they just refer you to a local jeep driver. You can get these local jeeps through any private travels located around the main  ramanathaswamy temple.
Whats there in dhanuskodi?

Beyond the checkpost, it’s a 6 kms drive in the beach sand. The drivers should be highly skilled; else the tyres could get trapped in the sand. This travel is quite exciting and enjoyable, though the route is not very clean. At the end of the 6 kms, we could see the destroyed dhanuskodi. Everything in Dhanuskodi is destroyed during the 1964 cyclone. We can see the remains of few destroyed infrastructures like church, postoffice, temples, schools, houses, railway staff quarters etc. There are few settlements in huts, which are unauthorised, since government has banned any settlements in dhanuskodi after 1964 cyclone. It’s believed that the virtual Ramar palam/bridge was constructed by Lord Rama only from here to lanka. Compared to the beach near the Ramanathaswamy temple, the beach at dhanuskodi is completely vibrant.

This tree located in the Dhaanuskodi clearly depicts the past and future of this place. The greenish part of the tree implies the blossomed time of dhanuskodi before 1964 cyclone, the remaining dry part of the tree represents the present and future of Dhanuskodi.  I can clearly see that Dhanuskodi could have developed into one of the most important part of Tamilnadu, if 1964 tragedy would not have occurred. An exploration of rameshwaram is incomplete without a visit to Dhanuskodi.
On the way back to the hotel, we visited the Kodandaramar temple. Nature welcomed us to this temple with a rainbow. This is the place, where Rama performed coronation to Vibhishana, the younger brother of Ravana. The temple contains idols of Sri Rama with sita and lakshmana.

Day 2, October 31st 2009: At around 5 AM, we went to Ramanathaswamy temple for darshan of spatiga (crystal) lingam pooja. This pooja is very significant as the cow directly sheds the milk directly over the spatiga lingam and hundreds of pilgrims turn out to see this special pooja. This is the one of the reason, why we extended our stay in Rameshwaram for two days. After the darshan, we started for the Local site seeing.

Local Site Seeing:

The local site seeing in Rameshwaram refers to a number of small temples and holy tanks located around the Rameshwaram. These places have a very close relationship with the great epic “Ramayanam” and hence one can easily conclude why this place is named as Rameshwaram. The Best way to go for the local site seeing is to hire an auto, which costs Rs.150. The Auto driver will act as a guide and you need not carry any list of the places to be visited. Let me list out the places in the order I visited them.

Gandamadana Parvatham: Also known as “Ramar Padam”, is the highest altitude of Rameshwaram. This temple contains the imprints of Ramar’s Feet. As per Ramayanam, this is point from where Sri Rama had a view of Srilanka.

Satchi Hanuman Temple: This place is located on the way to Gandamadana Parvatham. It’s a small hanuman temple which is considered to be place where hanuman delivered the good news of finding sita in Srilanka to SriRama.

Sukreevar temple: This is yet another small temple located on the way to Gandamadana parvatham dedicated to Sukreevar.

Sukreevar Theertham: Besides the Sukreevar temple is an holy tank known as Sukreevar Theertham.

Ramar temple & theertham: About 3kms from sukreevar temple, there is a small Rama-sita temple. Apposite to this, there is an holy tank known as the Ramar theertham. An entrance fees of Rs. 2/- is collected to visit this place.

Lakshmana theertham: Within a couple of minutes, you can see a temple for Lakshman and the holy tank known as Lakshmana theertham.

Five faced Hanuman temple or floating Stone Temple: This place is maintained by a private mutt. Here the stones used by LordRama for building the Adams bridge are put for display. The Stones actually floats in the water. A close look at these stone can reveal that the constituent of these stones are different and looks like made up of coral bed.

Sita Theertham : Opposite to the Five faced Hanuman temple, there is an holy tank known as Sita Theertham.

Though there are lot more such places around Rameshwaram, at this point one can realize that they could not have missed something really important.

Pamban Road Bridge:
After local site seeing, we went to Pamban Road Bridge. Pamban Road bridge also known as Annai Indra Gandhi Road Bridge is the longest sea bridge in india stretching for about 2.2 kms. After having an excellent view from the Pamban road bridge, we started back to our hotel.

Its November 1st 2009, we reached home happily with lot of sweet memories.

Arignar Anna Zoological Park

It’s just a 45mins drive from my home (with Jeevi) to Vandalur along the GST road to explore one of the India’s largest zoological parks, the “Arignar Anna Zoological Park”. This zoological park also known as “Vandalur Zoo” is maintained by Tamil Nadu Forest department. The Zoo is opened throughout the week except on Tuesday and the timings are between 8.30AM to 5.30PM. We reached there by 9.45 Am and got the entrance tickets which cost Rs. 20/- per head. Outside Food and snacks are allowed inside the park, but they say big no to any kind of Polythin covers. In case if we happened to carry any kind of food stuffs within the polythin covers, the staffs over there will force us to transfer them to a paper based container offered by them.

The first and foremost thing we did on entering the Zoo was the LION SAFARI. It costs about Rs. 20/- per head and is served on First come First server basis. The Lion Safari starts from 10AM and is scheduled for every half an hour. It was a 5 mins drive from the entrance to the Safari location in a 12 seater Safari van. The driver, who also acted as the guide gave few interesting info. This place is prohibited for the visitors by walk and the Lions which dwells in the forest visits this place for food and water. In morning, it’s for sure that the lions visit this place for food and this is one of the reasons why this place should be visited in the morning. We were luckier to see couple of lions. In case if we cannot find them here, we have to go deep into the forest to find one. After the lion safari, we thought of exploring the zoo.

There are 3 ways to explore the zoo.

1. Using the Battery operated vehicle

2. Using Bicycle

3. By Walk

Exploring the zoo using the Battery operated vehicle is a 1hr drive through the zoo which hardly stops at 3 places. It costs Rs. 20/- per head and is also served on first come first serve basis. I wouldn’t recommend this, unless you are sick and short of time coz you can’t have a feel of having explored the place. The second best option is using the rented bicycle and the availability depends on the crowd. The best option is exploration by walk, which we choose.

The park has wide variety of Birds, Reptiles and mammals. It also has special infrastructure for Snakes, Aquarium and Nocturnal animal (Night time species). In addition to this, the zoo has exclusive children’s park with play stuffs like seesaw, etc. Though this vast place is reasonably well maintained, it still lacks to provide good drinking water and couple of snacks shop for refreshment. There is a restaurant and snacks shop (organized by Tamilnadu tourism department) located only at the entrance of the shop and hence you should be very conscious before entering the zoo to have enough food and water.

At around 1 PM, we were done with exploring the zoo and by this time the park became crowded. This is the second reason, why we should visit it early. It would require around 3 to 4hrs max to explore the complete Zoo and we did really enjoy the eco-friendly atmosphere offered by the Zoo.

Before signing off, let me put few important tips to visit this place:

1. Start Early and explore the park during the morning session between 9 AM to 1 PM

2. The best way to explore the park is by Walk.

3. Do carry plenty of water, snacks and food.

4. Lion Safari is the highlight of the zoo and never miss it.

Dakshinachitra

Dakshinachitra is the cultural heritage center located on the ECR highway. On 28th September, the last day of dussehra as well as the last day of my long weekend, we (myself and Jeevi) planned to visit Dakshinachitra. We started at around 2.10 PM and reached there at around 2.50PM. It was a pleasant 40 minutes drive from my home (thiruvanmiyur) to the Dakshinachitra in the ECR highway. This place is located just a couple of metres next to MGM Dizzy world theme park.

The entrance fee for this place costs Rs. 75/- per head and a small mini map is provided along with the ticket to explore the place. We soon realized that this place is meant to reflect the culture and lifestyle of the south-indians during the ancient period. This Heritage center is broadly divided into four regions Kerala, TamilNadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. There are model houses built in each region in their style. Inside each model house, there are arts, photos, idols, articles, jewels, clothes etc used in ancient period are put on display.

Though Kerala and Tamilnadu regions are very impressive and have a lot of infrastructure, the Karnataka and the Andhra Pradesh regions are still under construction. At each structure, there are some activities performed like grinding rice using ancient grinding equipments, Pottery, Puppet making using paper, glass blower etc. In addition to this, the Heritage center consists of an art gallery, Library, Restaurant and Craft shop. The art gallery and library available are not very impressive; the Library has very few books. The art gallery has photos of our ancient Chennai and rare paintings. Through one of the employee over there, we came to know that there are dance classes and special programs conducted on the Sunday and there are guest house facilities available in this place for a nominal price.

Though I wouldn’t recommend anyone to visit this place with friends, but it’s really a good place to hang around with family. This place could be more informative and fun for a foreigner, who is unaware of Indian culture rather than for a south Indian like me. For some reason or the other, jeevi was really impressed with this Place. After spending around two and half hours at this place, we started back to home at 5.40 PM.

On way back home, we thought to visit the ISKON temple. The ISKON also known as “Hare Rama Hare Krishna” temple is located opposite to VGP Golden Beach at the ECR. This temple is under construction. Since it was too dark, I couldn’t get a better picture of the place. Since the place is located a KM interior to the ECR highway and the way is not safe to be visited during night, we left the place early and reached home safely at around 7 PM.

CHIDAMBARAM

I, along with my 4 school friends (Arun, Selva, Bala and Chandru(NRI)) started for a trip to Chidambaram and Pondicherry on 19th October 2009. Although this trip was planned a month ago, with about 9 members, only 5 of us turned out for the trip. Though, it was planned initially that our friend Selva would drive his Scorpio for the trip, we made a small tweak to the plan at the last minute by getting a paid driver for the trip. We would consider our self lucky, since the driver was from Chidambaram.

After having a look at the Kollu idols at chandru’s home, we started for the trip at around 2 PM. The first agenda in our itinery was the boating at the Mudaliyar kuppam boat house, which is located at about 30 mins ride from mamallapuram. After half-an-hour boating, we started to our next location “The Alambari Fort”.

I have been in Chennai for more than 25 years and have never heard about an existence of any fort in the ECR. It took about an hour drive from Mahabalipuram to reach this fort. The fort did really exist in a village named Kadapakkam, but really in a very bad state. Apart from the damaged partial walls of the fort, there is nothing left. The Fort is located just across the backwaters of the sea. To the eastern side of the fort, it’s just an excellent view of the lagoons. There are local fishermen around the fort, who would entertain shipping around the fort, which doesn’t guarantee any safety at all. There is nothing much left to do or see around this fort. After clicking few snaps, we started to Chidambaram. We reached Chidambaram at around 9 PM and stayed at a hotel.

The next day early morning, we started at around 7 AM to the “Thillai Natarajar Koil”. The first thing that would strike any one, who sees the temple, is the wide grand “Gopuram”. The four grand Gopuram (although not very tall) provides entrance to the temple from all the four direction.

Some of the great significance of this temple are:
1. In Tamilnadu, Shiva is usually worshipped in the form of “Lingam” and it is one of the few temples in the south India which has Shiva in Manly form (Natarajar).
2. It has both Shiva and Vishnu which is yet another rare occurrence in any temple. In ancient temple, there was great debate on existence of both Shiva and Vishnu idol in the sample temple between the Vaishanavas(disciple of Vishnu) and Shivaites(disciple of shiva). The Initial sequence of the Kamal film “Dasavatharam” is picturised only based on this temple.
3. The world fame “Natiyanjali” dance festival is celebrated in this great temple.
4. While it can be seen that this vast and great architectural temple is build completely using rock stone, the interesting fact is that geographically Chidambaram is an plain region and hence it can be sensed that, these massive rocks stones were transported from other regions across several kms distance.
5. This religious as well as architecturally significant temple is build by chola dynasty. The temple has a large tank as well as a “1000 kaal mandapam”.

The temple was maintained neat and it is constructed with such perfection that it doesn’t require much external light source for ventilation. The temple was not crowded and really mesmerized me with this beauty. This temple which was under the control of the Iyers for very long time was very recently taken up the government. Great thanks to the driver anna who shared a lot of information regarding this temple with us. After an hour of visit around the temple, we started to “Pichavaram”

Pichavaram is just a 40 mins drive from Chidambaram temple. Pichavaram is the second largest mangrove forest in the world. Mangrove forest is nothing but forest developed over the saline water. In Pichavaram, the forest is developed over the backwaters of the Bay of Bengal. Tamil Nadu tourism provides boating across the Mangrove forest of Pichavaram. We just took a motor boat ride of 45 mins across the bushes and trees of the Pichavaram forest. This mangrove forest stretches long way till the Bay of Bengal. Interested people can take a ride till this point for an amount of Rs. 2000/-, which would be a 2hrs journey.

After Pichavaram, we started to Pondicherry to visit an island (not exactly an island, a beach sand bed surrounded by the backwaters) in Pondicherry. Since it was more crowded in the island and since boys were done with boating, we decided to skip the island and start for the home. On the way to home, we went to the Aurobindo ashramam at Pondicherry.

Though at some point of time, we missed our friends ( vijay, magi, ravi, sati, hari, veera & prasanna), yet it was more memorable, enjoyable and informative one. With a sense of having spend a weekend very useful, we returned back home exactly at 7PM.

Please check out the following links for more photos on our trip.
http://picasaweb.google.com/parthi007/Chidambaram#
http://picasaweb.google.com/selvakumar84/ChidambaramTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCL-Hp4uFzNyyNw&feat=content_notification#