This year, we left the northern India we had visited twice, in 2006
and 2007, and toured Tamil Nadu, the southeastern-most state of India,
from 8 to
28 February. High points of the tour were temples and people.
The
people in Tamil Nadu are extraordinarily happy and friendly. While it
is usually easy to take good pictures of Indians -- It's enough to ask
them first if you may and then they often pose nicely for you. -- in
Tamil
Nadu, people stopped us on the street and asked to be photographed.
You'll see the happy results in these pages.
The temples of
Tamil Nadu constituted the other chief interest of this tour. We saw at
least 16 of them! And
that is a conservative estimate, counting in one
case a group of 5 temples as only one.
Before describing the
tour, we suggest some generalities on Hindu temples, just to get that
information in one place where we won't have to keep
repeating.
So please go on to the discussion of Hindu
temples.
After that, you can visit the pages for the various parts of our tour.
Not only temples, but wonderful people were met in all of them.
Chennai
(or Madras) -- our point of arrival and departure
Dakshina
Chitra -- a collection of houses from southern India
Mamallapuram
-- beach resort and site of rock-carved temples
