Temple Overkill
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2006
1
19
42
Trip End
Aug 29, 2006
Tiruchirappalli,
India
Sunday, August 13, 2006
In my dream I constantly get lost, or get followed by beggars, guides, priests...the dreams are very real. I even lost Claudia once in the labyrinth of secret passages, dark corridors and inner sanctums.
And today we visited the biggest temple complex of them all, the largest in India. I guess it will make sleeping tonight even more troublesome.
Tiruchirappalli (universally known as Trichy) was our next destination and we didn't make the same mistake as yesterday : we got on the bus at the hotel and didn't get off before reaching Trichy station
Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple_1
. We sat 3 hours long on the backseat of the bus, occassionaly being thrown in the air a couple of centimeters.We wanted to stay in Hotel Femina but when we arrived there other guests told us that they had their money stolen, so we were quite happy when the hotel turned out to be fully booked. Not that we would leave money in our rooms, but it's never nice finding other people touching your stuff.
So we crossed the road, checked into Hotel Ramyas (not so nice because it was being renovated), ate a light snack of "Indian Sandwich" (a sandwich with green and orange stuffing...we still don't know what it was) and went on a discovery tour of Trichy.
Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple is the biggest temple complex in all of India, more than 60 hectars, 7 concentric walled sections and 21 gopurams. We took our time to visit everything, went even up a little tower for some superb views of all the different towers and statues. Unfortunately non-hindus can only visit 4 of the 7 walled sections, but it was still impressive.
Tamil Nadu was filled with temples, and we still had one very spectacular temple to see the next day
