Day 28 - Madurai - Sunday 13th November 2011

We pulled into Madurai station at about 7am - on time! Bhanu's husband was picking her up and so she offered to take us to a hotel in their car. With heavy bags and without a hotel booked, we jumped at the offer. We said our goodbyes to Swami and Salam and were greeted by Bhanu's husband …. He kindly took us to a hotel, sorted our rooms, booked us in and then helped us to the room. We fell straight to sleep as we didn't get much on the train. Once up, we headed straight out to the Sri Meemakshi Temple. Now, we have seen quite a lot of temples, and forts for that matter, but this was by far the best! It was so colourful and so tall; each individual sculpture is painted in different bright colours. It's also an active temple, so whilst we were there we saw 4 wedding parties all donned with flowers along with their bridesmaids and ushers!! Soph took about a million photos whilst I played games with the local kids. It was all free as well! Then we headed back to our hotel to wash and shower ready for lunch with our new Indian friends. We paid 300rs for our rickshaw there and that included him waiting for us whilst we had lunch, and also taking us back to our hotel. Bhanu and her husband had a lovely house and we learnt much more about the culture, politics and life of Indians. The food was amazing and we had some of their special dessert, which Bhanu also gave us some in a tub to take home. She also gave us some holy Ganges water and sweets to have! After a lovely lunch and fantastic homemade Indian food we sadly had to leave - It was a great experience and one we will never forget! When we arrived back at the hotel we went to the train station to get a ticket to Trivandrum (this is near Kovalam beach) but this was much harder than we thought. All the trains were fully book as were the buses, taxis and probably the local donkeys!! So we stayed the night with our fingers crossed for some transport the next day…