TN Trip - Day 2 & 3

Day two started early with us getting up early and heading to Poompuhar to catch sunrise. It is a historic port town which figures prominently in Silapadhikaram - a ancient tamil epic. River Cauvery also flows into the sea at this place. In reality, Poompuhar was a disappointment. The beach was dirty. There was not enough water in Cauvery to flow into the sea. It was just stagnant like a lake. Only saving grace was catching the sunrise. We came back to hotel, got ready and had breakfast and headed to Tarangambadi a.k.a Tranquebar. Now this is another place with a History. Most of us know French (Pondy) and Portugese (Goa) held parts of India in addition to the British. In addition to them, even the Danes had a small strip of India during the 1700s before they sold it to British for 10000 pounds as they could no longer maintain it. As they could not pronounce Tarangambadi, it became Tranquebar. They had built a nice small fort along the beach. Right opposite to that was the Danish governer's bungalow, which is now a hotel called Bungalow on the Beach. We didn't go inside, but it looked very nice. Reading from the happenings during that time, it is clear that corruption was rampant even even during that time. Next we headed towards Kumbakonam, a famous temple town which also happens to be the hometown of my Parents. There were a lot of temples in the town, but we visited swamimalai and dharasuram. The dharasuram temple was grand and impressive. It was like a fort. This temple also didn't have much crowd and I seem to like those temples. After that we had our lunch and headed towards Tanjore. Upon reaching, we checked into the hotel and after refreshing ourselves went to the Big Temple. It was really Big, Grand and Magnificient. No wonder people are still wondering and speculating how it was built and specifically how the huge boulder was taken to the top.
Day three - We had breakfast and started to Trichy. Our agenda was to see Rockfort and Srirangam and head back to Chennai. First we went to a place that looked like Rockfort, but it was not. We then went to the actual Rockfort, walked up the steps to the temple at the top. Then we had lunch and after a brief shopping stopover, we headed to Srirangam. The main temple areas was closed at that time, but we were still able to go in and walk around and see the sculptures and architecture. It was time to start back to Chennai. We took the National Highway to Chennai and with thye roads being good and car maintaining steady 3 digit speeds we reached Chennai late in the evening. Overall it was a very good trip. Was able to see many peoples otherwise I may have never seen.

TN Trip - Day 1

I and 3 of my colleagues went for 3 day trek starting from Chennai and heading all the way to Trichy via Pondy, Chidambaram, Tanjore route and returning back. Two of the group were colleagues from US & UK and who were visiting Chennai on Business. It was sort of like a road trip!! We had hired an Toyota Innova van and were basically on the road except when seeing the places and stopping over for the night. The genesis for the trip for me was that I was very keen to visit the Tanjore Big Temple after reading that this year is the 1000th anniversary of the temple. Rajesh, my friend and Chennai colleague discussed about doing this trip coinciding with the visit by US/UK colleagues since we knew they would be interested in such a trip. We had decided to take the Pondy route to Tanjore and visit all the places on the way. Most of the places were first time for me though i am from Tamilnadu and parents were from Kumbakonam, a famous temple town (I am not known for frequenting temples :-) )

Coming to the trip, we started early on a Saturday morning from Chennai and headed towards Pondy with a breakfast stop at Mahabs. We went straight to Auroville and spent a little time there. Except me, the other three did not seem interested in seeing the main Mandir, so we decided to give it a skip. Next we went to Aurobindo Ashram and after that spent some time on the Beach and had Juice and snacks at Le Cafe, one of my favorite place in Pondy. Next we headed to Pichavaram, which is a combination of backwaters and mangrove forest. We took a boat ride that lasted nearly an hour. It was good but not exceptional. Next we went to Chidambaram, had lunch and visited the famous Nataraja temple. The interesting thing I noted was that there was a lot of crowd waiting for darshan of Vishnu in a Sivan temple!! (No intention of creating discord between the Gods!). Next we went to Sirgazhi and had a brief visit to Rajesh's ancestral house where his Grandmother lives and then to the Sirgazhi Sivan temple. This was again a big temple but less crowded. We then headed to Vaitheeswaran Koil town for our stop for the day. There was a famous temple in that town. Another specialty of the town is the supposed knowing your past, present & future from reading of old texts, manuscripts by the astrologers. We did not visit either the temple or the astrologers :-)

A eventful 2 months

I think it has been exactly 2 months since my last post. It had been very busy time with work, which is the case most of the time and it became a bit more tight due to performance appraisal that I had to do for my team., but I had managed to make it to a 2-day trek and 3-day TN trip covering places of historical, archeological and natural interest besides a couple of movies and also did my first 5km run as a preparation for the Sikkim trek in May. So that makes it a busy and eventful couple of months right :-) I will do seperate posts for the trek and the TN trip