President Hotel Tamil Nadu

... of a novelty, but not half as much of a novelty as the fortune telling ‘robots’, which bleep and whirr enticingly attracting adults to very seriously listen to their fate with ridiculous headphones covered in LEDs. An old man collapses in front of me, and some younger guys carry him to where Dan and I have stopped for ice-cream. They lay him on the ground on a rag he carries and we all try to help but he’s a ******ety old ...

... but nothing much to see. (Oh i am prould to say that from Tasmania to India, 6 flights cost me under $900 Aus...see im not rich) This Vietnamese guy that i met at the airport started to follow me (which hasn't stopped yet) like a lost puppy which was great at first as it give me more security and that little comfort, just having another lost soul, to deal with India for the first time. I found us a rickshaw ...

... in the main figure, but also in the surrounding scenes. The whole area is smoothed over a rocky outcrop of solid, hillside, with intermittent (often huge) boulders scattered around. Craftsmen have cut & carved a total of 13 caves out of rock here, but the greatest prize of all is Anjuna’s Penance.

The world’s largest bas relief measures 30 x 12 metres and is carved onto the rock face of a huge whale-back shaped rock, on the lower level of the ...

... impressive. I returned part of the way down, to peer thro’ some other locked gates, at rooms with pillars not unlike Madurai’s temple museum, altho’ these didn’t seem so well looked after. This, I believe, was the Sri Thayumanaswamy Temple.

I was invited to take a free lunch in the kitchen dining area, but I wasn’t at all hungry, so declined but offered to help to pick up used tumblers left by earlier diners. I returned to the ground floor, where ...

... a lor of interesting thungs to say abour what is good and bad about the system they use. I am nor going to try to explain everything here, you can read up if your interested. I will just say that it is nor a tourist destination but an experiment in eqtallity and sociallism. It proves to be not better or worse than any other social system but diferent. I was hanging around with the same guys I had been to the ghandi ...

... best parotas, omelets and masala sauces, YUM! There was also a really good Tibetan restaurant and our favorite coffee stall that served me delicious coffee every day - I don't even drink coffee so that tells you how good the coffee was. Oh yeah, and there was also a yummy ice cream shop too. Hehe In the end it was hard for us to leave Kodia. Things we checked out in Kodia: Pillar Rocks: This was a great hike through nearby villages that ...

... a good view of Trichy. Ganesha is a god in a form of a elephant, and in this spirit they have an elephant trained up to accept rupees or food in exchange for a blessing where the elephant basically placed its trunk over the head of the person. While it all looks cute, I see a elephant trained up to do a boring monotonous task with little exercise ...

... we made our way into the park. The first thing we wanted to was to climb King's Fort, the daunting castle-like structure that was two miles high upon a rock. The guide said that he advised we didn't go. We asked why, and he said it was too "risky." We got upset, and said, we don't understand. We 're completely capable of hiking to the top. After a little prodding, we realized he wasn't talking about the difficulty of the trail, but another ...

... Sharana serves 1,200 children, and there are over 3,000 on the waiting list. I will try to post the link to the website that supports Sharana if anyone is interested in donating.  Today I went shopping in Auroville, which is an organized community I wrote about in my last blog. Feel free to google this town, it's worth reading about.  I'm going to make this blog short. I have yoga lessons tomorrow morning at 6am! I am so excited. Goodnight!Love, Monica 

... it would have been in days gone by. I do not know what drew us here. Having read about the big Nataraja, we just had to see it, and we did. This Nataraja bronze is bigger than the more famous one at Chidambaram.



It was time to return to Kumbakonam and the brassware stores opposite the Kumbeswarar temple. A satisfying purchase followed, of a beautiful Kumbakonam Paavai Vilakku lamp http://www.saigan.com/heritage ...