Madurai is a city filled with temples. During the 4th century, it was the capital of a kingdom that ruled over much of southern India. Since then, the city has been ruled by many dynasties and today, it is the second largest city in Tamil Nadu. The city is built around the main temple, the Meenakshi Temple.

We arrived in Madurai during the evening and once again, started looking for a guesthouse. We took a rickshaw to the main tourist neighborhood where all the guest houses are located and started walking up and down the street looking for a vacancy. All of the hotels were either full or had only air conditioned rooms available at prices that were way out of our budget. After looking for over an hour, it was already 11 pm and we needed to find a room so we decided to stretch our budget and take the less expensive of the expensive rooms. While on our way, we saw a couple checking into a hotel we had not noticed so we inquired about a room and found the price much better than anywhere else. As usual, before checking in, we asked to see the room and checked the mattress for bugs and looked at the cleanliness of the room. Most rooms in big Indian cities are not very nice and the walls are often dirty, but as long ad there are no bugs, they are livable for a few nights. We figured we would spend a few nights in Madurai since Marco had to find a dentist to fix his tooth. Upon our return to the room from the reception, we turned on the lights and noticed a bug on the bed. Not thinking much if it, we killed it and started settling in for the night. Shortly after, another bug appeared, and then we noticed a few more crawling around. We figured out that they were coming from the pillows we had neglected to look at so we tossed them into a corner of the room right away. After the awful train journey we had experienced, bed bugs were the last thing we needed! Marco set the bed up with one mosquito net under our sleeping bags and he hung the other from the ceiling in an attempt to keep the bugs out. Despite all if this, we did not sleep very well our fist night in Madurai.

We spend our first day looking for a dentist and getting Marcos tooth fixed. Because of the lack of available rooms, we had to spend a second night with the bugs. The next day, we visited the many temples in the city center and purchased some jasmine flower garlands that all the women wear in their hair. That evening, we took an overnight bus heading towards Pondicherry.

I have yet to visit a large city in India where I could spend more than a few nights. The streets are filthy with trash and spit, the noise level is always too high because of the incessant honking and the fumes from the traffic make it difficult to breathe. The air is so polluted that, by the end of the day, my throat is sure to be sore and irritated from breathing the city air. Overall, it is safe to say that I prefer smaller cities to the big ones in India.