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 :-)