Rameswaram

Next on the temple tour was Rameswaram, a small island off the southern tip of India. Part of the rock formations that form a trail of islands and reefs leading to Sri Lanka, a long bridge connects the island to the mainland. Rameswaram contains the Ramanathswamy temple, which is a one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites. The small town is entirely centered around this temple and the nearby beach area.

I took a room on the beach-side Hotel Tamil Nadu, which had the feeling of an out-of-season resort. I felt like the only person there other than a very large Indian family. There was a central dining hall that served decent Indian food, but it had this abandoned, David Lynchy feel to it. I walked in to the empty hall, silent save the loud whirring of ceiling fans overhead, and this bent over old Indian man moving in slow motion, straight out of Twin Peaks, greeted me and told me the restaurant didn't open until 7:30. "But it's 7:45" I protested. He didn't seem phased by this and waved for me to sit down "if I liked." He expressed similar disdain when I wanted to see a menu. The meal itself was fine, and no dancing midgets were in sight (though I swear there is a man who looks exactly like "Bob" here in Tiruvannamalai where I am now).




Ramanathswamy temple is quite large, and famous for its bathing tanks and extremely long columned hallways (one of which is the largest columned hallway in the world). Bathing is a major spiritual activity here. Pilgrims start with a dip in the ocean at a beachside ghat, and then in each of the more than 20 tanks inside the temple itself (there are a lot of dripping wet pilgrims wandering around). I was lucky to find a temple guide who allowed me to enter even the Hindu-only parts of the temple, so I felt like I really was able to experience it in its entirety. The temple is also famous for two lingams, icons containing both male and female symbols joined together, which I was able to see. These particular lingams are said to be from the Indian epic, The Ramayana. The story goes that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana and a worshipper of Shiva, was told by seers to install a Shivalingam at this site. He sent his trusted follower, Hanuman, to get the lingam from the Himalayas. Hanuman evidently took forever to come back, so Rama's wife Sita made a second lingham out of sand. Hanuman finally returned with his lingam, and to ensure that he did not feel bad, Rama insisted that Hanuman's be worshipped first.

Because of his importance to the area, there are also a number of Hanuman temples, which I was able to visit on my way out of town. Hanuman is one of my favorite Hindu gods, representing the overwhelming power of love and devotion.

Tamil Nadu Monster Temple Tour, 2008: Madurai

I finally bid goodbye to Kerela after almost a month there. Much as I liked it, I was ready for some new scenary and eager to check out neighboring Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is the other state at the south tip of India, on the east side. A much more traditional Indian state, it is full of many deeply important temples and pilgrimage sites for Hindus. The signature sight in Tamil Nadu are the enormous, brightly painted temple towers, or gopurams, which mark the walls of the equally huge temple complexes. I visited three cities with major Hindu temples, Madurai, Rameswaram, and Srirangam (Trichy).

Madurai was a shock after Kochi - a typically noisy, busy Indian city. Very crowded and full of pigrims en route to the Meenakshi Amman Temple in the center of the city. I "splurged" and got a rooftop hotel room with a view of the temple complex, in place recommended by the Rough Guide. I don't think they'd been there in a few years, because it was pretty dilapidated and gross (they described is as perfect place for a romantic getaway - yuck). It looked like a wild animal had tried to escape my bathroom - the door was all shredded up. I stayed a couple of nights out of laziness and due to the convenience of being right next to the temple. But when I developed a stomach issue, the bathroom scene did not cut it and I really splurged, moving to a nicer "business class" hotel for $20. Wow - I was in heaven! Super clean sheets, a nice bathroom, good looking wood furniture, and cable tv including HBO. I spent a fairly blissful sick day napping and watching the Da Vinci Code (hey I was happy for any English language tv but, really, I wish Ron Howard had stuck to acting!).





The temple itself is a bit of a sad sight from the outside right now. The huge gopurams are all covered with bamboo as they are being re-painted in preparation for a big festival in January. Now they look like that mountain from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - vaguely Aztec or something. Inside the temple, however, it's business as usual and the place buzzes like a small city. I was amazed at how much is going on at any one time and how many beautiful, ancient shrines it contains. The central temple area is off-limits to non-Hindus, so I wasn't able to view it. I was able to see quite a bit outside of that area, including being blessed by the temple elephant (you stick a rupee in its nostril and then it touches your forehead). The hallways are truly huge, and there is a large water tank that people hang out around. And the variety of shrines and statues to worship is beyond anything I've seen.



Other than the temple, I took an afternoon and had a rickshaw drive me around to some other sights in town. Saw the Gandhi Museum, with a good history of his works and a gruesome finale of the blood-stained clothes he was shot in. A large flower market serves the temples in town, a huge operation to keep up with the needs for ceremonial flowers. I also visited a 17th century palace of the king of Madurai, Thirumalai Naik.

Kochi

After an ashram and a week in quiet mountain villages, I was ready to face a city again. I took the bus to Kottayam with Luka, and then he headed south to Varkala Beach while I took a train north to Kochi.

Kochi is Kerela's main tourist destination, a cute and photogenic port town with a huge amount of Portuguese and Dutch influence. There are a few different districts, separated by water, and the ferry system is cheap and efficient. It also has one of the best stocks of colonial architecture in India, as well as many important early Christian churches (Kerela has many more Christians relative to other parts of India).



The historic part of town is called Fort Cochin, and you can while away a few days here wandering down narrow European-feeling streets going from coffee house to art galley. It's another one of those places that is a relaxing break from the hectic streets of other Indian cities. I met my friend Matthew, who I got to know in Varkala, for breakfast one morning in a lovely cafe/gallery run by an American expat. This is one of those towns foreigners fall in love with and move to.




I only stayed a couple of days as I was eager to start exploring the nearby state of Tamil Nadu. In that time I went and saw many of the churches and temples in the area. The Dutch Palace Museum was also very good, primarily because of a room full of fantastic fresco murals. But the primary attraction is the places of worship. In addition to some great Indianized Christian churches (including one where Vasco fr Gamma was originally buried), there are some important Hindu and Jain temples.




The Jain temple was my favorite, with its beautiful marblework and an obsession with pigeons from its patrons (Jains are famous for celebrating every living being and not wanting to kill a single one, the most devout even carrying brooms to sweep any organisms from in front of them when they walk).



Other than that, I took an excellent Kerelan cooking class from the jolly woman named Leelu at her guest house. Everything was delicious (fish and various veg curries, chappatti) and it turned into a romantic candlelight dinner as the power goes out everywhere in Kerela for a half hour every day at 8pm.



On the way out of town, in the hectic, modern district called Ernakulam, a short ferry ride across the harbor, I also caught a performance of Kathakali. Kathakali is Kerela's ritualized dance theater. The dancer is dressed up in an elaborate costume and has his face painted with bright coconut oils. The actual performance is a religious ceremony where the dancer goes into a kind of trance and acts out traditional Hindu stories.

Periyar Tiger Reserve

Staying in the mountain region of Kerela, Luca and I traveled by bus to Kumily, which is just outside of Periyar Tiger Reserve. I had been continuing my meditation practice (twice a day for an hour) and on the 5-hour bus ride had the feeling of most intense happiness and calm (very nice!). Sitting for an hour at a time is getting much easier as well. We were greeted by a super nice Muslim guy named Abbas, who our hotel in Munnar had called ahead about us. Abbas drove his own autorickshaw and was everywhere in town. We'd turn around and he'd be there - it was eery. He drove us to his new homestay, which was rustic, friendly, and at the edge of the jungle. The hot water heater was broken though, so you had to heat water up on the stove to take a hot bucket shower.

Periyar comprises an enormous protected area dedicated to stabilizing the remaining tiger population in the area. At the center a large dam creates a man-made lake, tendrils of which snake throughout the reserve. The latest census puts the number of tigers at 50, so the odds of seeing one is very small. Nevertheless there are tons of other animals in the Reserve to see, so Luca and I booked a 2 day, overnight camping trek.



It was out-and-out pouring when we booked the tickets, and I was a little skeptical. I had a light rainjacket, but that was it. It looked like I should be wearing a dry-suit or something. Luckily the next day, we had only moderate rain, with the more heavy showers happening at night when we were safe in our tents. As we started the trek, they gave us each knee socks, which I had never seen before but they go over your normal socks, inside your shoe and then up your calf. "Great!" I thought, "they are thinking of my dryness." But then they started pouring brown powder on them and it turns out their purpose is to protect us from the numerous leeches that infest parts of the forest floor. Leeches! They make all of the giant spiders, cockroaches, man-eating mosquitoes, snakes and rats seem tame and cute in comparison. Looking like ravenous little worms, they were soon crawling all over my poor Echo walking shoes, which had no idea what they were in for on this trip.



The Periyar program employs local village people who used to earn money poaching tigers or stripping bark from rare trees. Now they lead ecotourism expeditions into the same forest, and they are bad-ass! We had 5 people with us during our trek, complete with one expert tracker who was constantly looking at broken branches and sniffing droppings, and a bear of a man with a rifle who was our "elephant enforcer".

I seem to be toughening up as a result of this trip. There I was, in the rain, with a case of food poisoning from something I ate the night before, throwing up on the trail, and still enjoying myself quite a bit. We saw a ton of wildlife, including wild boar (every time our guide would yell that out all I could think of was that Duran Duran song "Wild Boys"), bison, black monkeys, Sambar deer, fruit bats, giant squirrels (my favorite), kingfisher, cranes, and something called a hawk eagle, which looks like a smaller bald eagle (or a white dove body with huge brown wings).



The highlight, though, was finding some wild elephants the morning we were returning from camp. Our tracker heard some elephant trumpeting in the distance and led us out through the brush on an exciting hour and a half hunt before breakfast. Alas, we never caught up with the beasts, though we did find fresh elephant and tiger tracks (!). He was visibly upset when we came back to camp only to find out that a group of elephants had just walked by on an opposite bank! Luckily he redeemed himself on the way back and we found them, about 7 animals in all, including a little baby elephant and a huge bull. Our gunman made us keep our distance, and we were told stories of other guides getting kicked to death by elephants as tourists got too close. Everybody went bonkers with their cameras, of course. This Polish girl had a Nikon digital SLR, which was the envy of everyone on the trip (you really notice the limits of the point and shoot cameras when you try to zoom in and catch wildlife). It always cracked me up when she would get really worked up about a shot because she would go into continuous shooting mode (kshhhttk kshhhttk kshhhttk), which sounded so serious and was an audible cue to her level of excitement (reminded me of that Duran Duran video, "Girls on Film"). There was a lot of kshhhttk kshhhttk kshhhttk with the elephants.



Luca and I returned to town, completely soaked, tired, and satisfied. Being a little cold and wet, we kinda snuck out of Abbas' place while Abbas was not around (paid up of course), and sought out another guest house that had warm water. Tourism is down right now due to the continued bombings (and I'm sure will fall off a cliff after Mumbai), so we were able to negotiate down these very nice rooms for almost 1/2 off. For the rest of our time in Kumily, whenever I heard an autorickshaw behind us, I expected to turn around see Abbas bearing down on us, but somehow, he disappeared. The next morning, Luca and I took a bus to Kottayam, where we went our separate ways, he going to Varkala and myself to Kochi.

Thinking of all those who lost loved ones in Mumbai...what a tragedy.