Madurai and Kanniyakumari

Madurai:

The temples in Madurai are the most special I have seen yet. We arrived into Madurai from Ponders at about 6am, and the sun was coming up behind the Meenakshi temple complex from the roof of our hotel balcony. I almost cried when I saw it. 4 large temples with intricate colourful carvings surround smaller temples on the inside. When you go inside the complex has an amazing feel and on one day we came across an elephant, 3 camels and cows inside the temple space. Half an hour later they were parading around the outer wall with colourful garments over their backs and a few floats in tow. Must be a ritualistic thing. We visited the temples twice and each time we saw different things we didnt notice before. There is a sculpture room (a room of a thousand pillars) which is pretty special and up to 10,000 people visit the temples in any day. Pilgrims from around India mainly, and a few foriegn tourists like us, but we are outnumbered by far. Under the temple complex are some markets where Paul, his dad and I got some things made by the local tailors. Not the best quality after all, but its a novelty to have things made especially for you. On the last night we asked the hotel to give us a wake up call, so a little man camped up outside our room on a sheet with incense burning at his head, but alas, he slept right through the wake up call and we found him happily snoring at our door. Very sweet.

Kanniyakumari:

(I'll call it kk from now on), is right at the southern most tip of INdia where the 3 oceans meet. It is a fishermens village mainly with a small beach. Every night everyone comes to the point to see the sun set and the moon rise in succession which is pretty cool. We stood on the ghandi memorial with about a 1000 other people squished on trying to take photos he he. This is also the point where the remainder of ghandis ashes were sprinkled into the ocean after they had travelled around india for the last time. Off the coastline are two islands, one has an impressive temple on it and the other has a massive sculpture of a religious guru dude who has many followers in INdia. I forget his name. You have ato get a little ferry across the rough waters to get there. The fishing village is something special again. From here and for a while up the west coast there are lots of Catholic churches around. The fishing village is littered with them. The tiny boxed houses are a variety of bright colours and everything is fairly tropical and clean. And Hot. This is where things have started to get really hot, despite it being the middle of winter, we had days of 35, which is almost unbearable when its humid too. At night the little street stalls serve up fresh fish and roti which is cheap and totally scrummy. We visited the main temple and the rule is that men had to take their shirts off before entering (fun for the ladies!), so I giggled quietly to myself while paul and his dad showed off their moon tanned white glowing bodies. Especially in contrast to the dark indian men, they stood out like nothing else.