The rock fort temple
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2007
1
112
153
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
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Tiruchirappalli,
India
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
After the necessary room hunting and few hours sleep after the horrible bus ride, my and Joesph's agenda for the day was to walk to the Rock fort and to the Srirangam temple just out of town. For those interested this is quite a lot of walking, so take plenty of water.
Both me and Joseph were feeling a little templed out at this point, so to be honest neither of these impressed us that much. The rock fort however does command a rather superb location at the top of a hill overlooking the town. I think that the views are what more tourists would come up here to see, rather than the temple itself. The town itself is much like your average big city, though today we found our encounters with 'locals' to be a lot more friendly than some previous ones, and there are seemingly less beggars too. A jack-fruit salesman on the street really made my day! The temple at Srirangam is much more impressive though, its colourful gopurams (tower like gateways) can be seen from a large distance, yet me and Joseph still felt we had seen this all before.
Disappointment when arriving in side the temple, for once again we both felt the atmosphere was more like that of a business than a religious place. Observing the 'priests' (is that what you should call them? I don't know) who are doing the puja with people, they clearly couldn't care less about the religious aspect of the ceremony, paying little attention to what they were doing with the person and even talking amongst themselves as they did the ceremony. Now i don't speak the language so i don't know, but from their manner and attitude they might as well have been in the pub, chatting about the football. Also, as soon as we arrived in the temple, the westerner (i.e money) alarm must have gone off, as we were shortly hassled by people for money and 'donations'. The same people then very quickly lost interest once this debate was over. To me, and to Joseph, we thought that temples are supposed to be a religious place, so it saddened us to see people so money driven working there. Maybe this is the legacy that us tourists have left behind in India, i don't know.
After talking to a few people, we did get some facts about religion though, like the markings on the peoples heads represent the Gods to which they worship/prey. We were told vertical marking indicate worship of Vishnu, horizontal or Shiva. There you go people, some education for you (ten rupees please).
After the long walk back, i was pretty shattered, so showered before getting bitten to death by the hordes of mosquitoes as i tried to sleep. Thanjavur was next on the itinerary.
