Madurai (3) -- other activities

In the evening, a ceremony takes place in which Shiva is taken from his sanctuary -- i.e., symbolically, in the form of a statue -- to the bedroom of Parvati. There, Parvati cleans his feet -- again, symbolically -- and makes him comfortable to enjoy his night -- and her. Non-Hindus cannot enter either the Shiva or Parvati shrines, but when the doors to the Shiva shrine are closed, you can at least take a picture from them. The whole ceremony takes place in penumbra (hence, the out-of-focus pictures), with lots of incense smoke and music. So it's a real show.


The closed doors to Shiva's shrine	The priests run through the hall with the palanquin

The palanquin arrives before Parvati's door	The silver-covered palanquin with embossed dancing Shiva Nataraja

Note the outlines of tiny Shiva feet on the pedetal	Offerings for Shiva

The whole thing doesn't take more than a few minutes. It moves very fast, with tourists chasing the priests around the hallways of the temple. Actually, we felt a little bad about interfering so much in their ceremonies, but we weren't the worst; one very corpulent gentleman actually stood in their way so he could take a picture. We wonder how long they will continue to allow tourists to watch.

Meanwhile, the next day in the daylight, we drove by the Vandiyur Mariamman Teppakulam Tank and then visited what is left of the Thirumalai Nayak Palace. At least there was water in the tank. It's empty most of the year. The palace must have been quite impressive before 3/4 of it was dismantled and used to build a new palace at Tiruchirapalli.


Thirumalai Nayak Palace
	Vandiyur Mariamman Teppakulam Tank

After that, we visited the beautiful and fascinating flower market, pictures of which you can see in our gallery.

We then visited the Pudumandapa, a lovely pillared hall just across from the east entrance to the Meenakshi Temple. It is full of tailors and sari wallahs, as well as other merchants. Sewing machines hum away as tailors make clothes to your specifications (well, approximately) from material you pick yourself. We found it curious that a building made to be a religious site had become so commercial, but we actually saw something similar in Scotland.


The Pudumandapa	A tailor making John a shirt

Colorful material for sale	Shawls

Friendly hardware wallahs	More hardware


A knife sharpener	A religious procession

We also visited a particularly Tamil type of temple, the Kochadal Aiyannar Temple, dedicated to the god Aiyannar, the heavily-armed chap we had already met as he mounted the guard along the highways.


Our car and our Madurai driver	Is this Aiyannar or just a buddy?

Aiyannar and tourist	A joyously dancing Ganesh

A serpent shrine, common in Tamil Nadu	Big, ain't he?

Madurai was definitely one of the high points of our tour of Tamil Nadu, along with Thanjavur.

From Madurai, we took the plane (late) back to Chennai where we spent one night and rather uneventful day before taking the night flight back to Paris and Lyon. That was awful, because it was delayed and didn't leave until 05:30. Ever spend the night in an airport?

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