the temple run

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So we're through the temple run east across central Tamil Nadu… towards this dismal coast on the Bay of Bengal … It took us a week …and involved cricket on TV and my first tripup of the stomach... fruit salad buffet in swankiest hotel yet, in chidambaram... which is not bad after two months...
But then, i have lived off my own cooking for 25 years so i do have a rather more iron stomach than most

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Our train was to Trichy so we skipped Madurai, where i've been but P hasn't … for, first, the Rockfort Temple in Trichy… another high rock jutting up from the plain, this time with a temple rather than a fort on it...great for a view down on the low rooftops of the pastel-coloured houses of the city sprawling out towards the surrounding greenery of the flattish plain.... with the holy Cauvery river east west... and Gopurams protruding from the greenery over the water…
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I was here three years ago but only went to this one temple, rather than all three... due to getting in an excessively bad mood while walking too long in the hot sun... and so missed the amazing... Srirangam Temple... on a large eyot in the holy Cauvery river... a knockout temple i can now remember little of… because after that it was... and words are really going to fail me now... the giant Sree Ranathanaswarmy Temple... a small town of a temple.... the biggest in india... also on the island ... seven walled enclosures, each inside the other... with the first enclosure full of tat stalls... and most enclosures and entrances teemingly crowded, bodysqueezingly crowded... and with fervent crowds of the intent, the very intent, the intensely devout even ... and a great sense of a holy city with the acidly-phantasmagoric sculptures on the high Gopurams over the four directional gates … bodies in dhoties and saris spreading out from the knots of the gates into the cold dark spaces with their steps, their gilt alcoves, their statued recesses, their pathways pillared on one side, statuetted on the other… bodies here lying prostrate to the ground to pray, here kneeling, here standing, moving from god-statue to god-statue... a quiet excitement, personal
Where, after the cool and dark and full-of-awe hall of a thousand pillars... a mandapam…where we thankfully did not find the minotaur, which must’ve been gloweringly lurking somewhere... we somehow back-alleyed our way into a No-NonHindu area and got panic-strickenly hurried out by a fearful beard
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And then Tanjore... for the Brahadiswara Temple ... a thousand years old in parts... Rajarajesvaram ...
Tanjore was at one time the capital of the Cholas... whose influence got as far as Indonesia and who are probably the originator of the classic temple style seen at Angkhor Wat, Belur, Halepid, Khajuraho and elsewhere ... now its a messy but likeable city of 200,000 most notable for the gorgeous temple... unpainted sandstone [?]... a large high wall with only one entrance... the Gopuram is unpainted and probably the better for it … with a layout so appealingly natural it is no surprise to learn it was made to a certain mathematical harmony... a place with a great sense of space, to walk around again and again and again…
Who originated the err, casually drop it into every line, Gopuram, i wouldn't like to say... we saw them in Cambodia , Lao [and maybe even Vietnam , though don't quote me]
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From there we rolled into Kumbakonam… see above… a town of eighteen temples giving the whole place a uniqueness … I like to wander each at my own pace, which is fairly quick, and then come back again and again till I leave town … and here there were five very nice temples I found to keep returning to… [see below]
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And from there it was Chindabaram for the knockout Nataraj temple … probably the last, unless we go to… Tiruvanamalai … for the phallus of fire temple… or Kanchipuram…
The Nataraj was another awe-inspiring place … with many temple priests… and probably the place I felt least welcome… where there was more of a frost from the priests than all the previous… but its their temple I suppose, and I guess its their call…
A big temple… with gorgeous high Gopurams at each entrance… leading into a large courtyard around the temple proper… in which there are cool dark pillared walkways inevitably reeking of batshit and with devotional figures along the outside and many smaller shrines… leading you to more pillared spaces and more shrines of garlanded berobed dark stone Gods… and well, describing the inner sancta of temples is very hard… so I think I’ll say that, as we don’t get to go in them, I should leave them alone in words… which gets me off the descriptive hook… but think, colour on black stone… think, gold shimmering in the torch light … think, a sense of gods so old no-one can know how old old might be … think Hindus intense at their everyday devotions… think bells and low rumbles and chanting and singing and figures in dhotis running to ceremony… think cool and empty, think bright and crowdy, think old think beautiful think devotional
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And in a few weeks we’ll have the Ex-Capitals of Lost Empires run north back in Karnataka… Hampi Badami, Bijapur, Bidar … to add to Fatehpur Sikri, Orchha, Golconda, Mysore, Jaipur, Udaipur, Agra, Madurai? Tanjore, Sringapatanam, Gwalior … but that’s probably it for splendiferous temples for a while...

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