It was still dark outside when the night train from Varkala pulled into Madurai Junction.
I had one order of business in Madurai: visit the Sri Meenakshi Temple and get out. After reading posts online about how other travelers spent “three days in Madurai, and that was two too many” I was ready to use the two-day showerless train in/train out method to quickly tick the Madurai box.
I dropped my backpack at the left-luggage room in Madurai Junction (10 Rupees) and set off to the east of the station. The temple isn’t far, and the route quite walkable, especially before the town wakes up.
Breakfast was vada and chai at a typical south Indian restaurant positioned across from the temple and open early enough to accommodate. The man that delivered the food looked eerily like my maternal grandfather, had my maternal grandfather been a (probably) Tamil-speaking man that worked at a moderately-priced vegetarian restaurant in Tamil Nadu.
Across the street I went to Sri Meenakshi – a large, still functioning Hindu temple with tall, multi-pastel-colored gopurams, or tower gateways, that I had seen photographed countless times.
gopuram, Sri Meenakshi Temple.
The guidebook had warned that shoulders and legs must be covered to enter, but I just couldn’t convince myself to wear the only long pair of pants I had (jeans) in the tropical heat to cover my knobby, apparently unsightly-by-Hindu-temple-standards knees. A man outside the temple rented me a dhoti (a sheet, basically) to cover up. 20 Rupees later, I was rocking a new piece of clothing that I found it impossible to stop adjusting. A group of young women in the temple were clearly getting a kick of how additionally disheveled I now looked. Thanks for making a fella feel right at home, everybody!
Saree party at Meenakshi Temple.
Temple entry costs were 50 Rupees for my body, 50 Rupees for my camera. The ticket price couldn’t get me into the bowels of the place, though. HINDUS ONLY, the signs read at the choke points to the inner workings. I didn’t see the postings at first and wandered towards the center, to be boxed out by guards before they had even asked me if I was Hindu or not. Shunned!
This type of temple exclusivity has become more and more of a common observance in important Hindu temples, and it strikes me as a bit odd. Most faiths seek converts and want to share their relics, texts, sacred sites with all accordingly. What’s the difference here?
gopuram detail.
Inner sanctum inaccessible, there were still a few things to see in the surrounding rings of Sri Meenakshi. Just outside the Shiva temple, devotees were smearing butter on pillar carvings of Hindu gods. The monkey god Hanuman was particularly popular the day I was there and was being buttered accordingly.
A woman prays to Hanuman, the monkey god.
Hanuman, partial butter bath.
Two-or-so hours killed at the temple, I blew four more hours eating a second breakfast of idly, drinking a chai here, a fresh grape juice there (ok, two grape juices), and trying to find a new book as I’ve finally finished one after five weeks of travel/intermittent reading. It’s hard to read in the back of dark, bouncy Rajasthan night buses. I dare you to try it!
One book down. Thanks to Nic for handing this one off to me for my trip!
My time in Madurai was over, and the next train in my double-travel-day was the 11:10 AM to Chennai. I was again in non-air-conditioned sleeper class – my preferred method of rail carriage – this time for a 10-hour daytime ride.
A view of a non-AC sleeper class train car from IndiaMike.com. Click the picture for more detailed info on sleeper class trains in India.
My sleeper car was a talky one. As the sole foreigner in my car, I had uninhibited access to friendly conversation with several married couples that treated me really well and showed interest. They bought me jackfruit from a station vendor and refused remuneration, offered (rather, near forced upon me) rice & veg from their personal meals, made sure I found my stop and that I was looked after for the long ride. How can I articulate how heartwarming this type of hospitality was without using the term “heartwarming”? Oh no, I said it twice already!
Ten hours was enough time to get past the “sir, which country” and “what is your good name” and on to a bit more information exchange. I learned:
- Five basic phrases in Tamil
- People in India with orange-dyed hair are priests of some sort
- Jasmine flowers in a woman’s hair means that she’s married
- A small Indian wedding has at least 500 attendees / 3000 is nothing to raise an eyebrow about
- That at least some Indians (the ones I was talking to, anyway) think Americans drink booze like Indians drink water, that basic morality is not effectively communicated to our youth, and that burgers & fries are our food of choice.
rest of world take note: NO.
I arrived in Chennai at 9:30 PM, exchanged farewells with my train car-mates and tried to figure out the Chennai city train system (in order to avoid paying for a rickshaw, which I heard were often expensive in this city). The platforms weren’t marked in ways that would’ve helped my tired brain, and uniformed rail employees were in short order – in other words, I spent an hour or so screwing things up, winding up at the wrong place and generally wondering if I stood a chance of sleeping before midnight. By the time I figured it things out and got to the front of the queue to buy a new rail ticket, it was too late.
“Last train has left, take bus,” said the harried ticket office clerk.
Great news, thanks. Because the bus system is SO much easier to figure out in a crowded, dark, unfamiliar Indian city! Game over – I headed for the rickshaws and dropped an inflated night-fare 150 Rupees on the driver, who found my guesthouse posthaste. They had rooms available (yes!) for 300 Rupees (sold!) and the bed was fairly comfortable and the ensuite bathroom clean. All my clothes were nasty-dirty by this point (covered both in transit dust and salt-spray from the ocean) – I summoned the strength to wash them in the provided bucket and cold water before passing out with the lights on.
your new best friend.
I didn’t really want to spend a full day in Chennai. Friends who had been there recently warned me of what it was – the dreaded BIG, DIRTY INDIAN CITY, with nothing for the traveler to see. It seems like there are a lot of these places in India – gotta account for those billion-plus inhabitants somehow!
But a little time in Chennai was necessary, as it’s one of few places from which one can fly to my next destination – the Andaman Islands. So I sucked it up and put in 36 hours in the place (at least 12 of these were spent asleep, which can be counted as some of my favorite hours in Chennai.).
I woke up late on March 1st – rest was necessary after the time put in on the train from Varkala/Madurai – and went out for some breakfast and internet café time. Stepping out on the street meant the beginning of the usual big-Indian-city choreography – dodging motorbikes, rickshaws, bicycles, buses and cars that all take priority over pedestrians. Beep beep beep.
EDITORIAL (as if this whole thing wasn’t an editorial): Is India onto something with this pedestrians-last mindset? Would the Indian economy/society come to a screeching halt if those on foot took precedence over things with wheels? How did this truck-eat-car-eat-rickshaw-eat-motorbike-eat-bicyclerickshaw-eat-bicycle-eat-ped pecking order come to be, anyway?
EDITORIAL TWO: Is there no possible way to keep the sidewalks (when they exist) in passable shape and clear of clutter? If the walkways were walkable and weren’t covered in vendors’ wares and equipment, motorbike parking, trash, dirt and urine, then pedestrians wouldn’t have to walk in the street, and then motorized traffic could flow without issue. Am I crazy? Do ideas like these make me look as though I lack an understanding of this country, or are these just reasonable thoughts?
EDITORIAL THREE-FER: There are cows wandering/sauntering down the street in gridlocked traffic in nearly every busy Indian city. It’s oddly charming, but does it really work for Chennai, a city of over six million people? Holy or not, cows on busy streets does not make sense for man nor bovine (and I really thought I was over this after over a month in India, but I’m not).
Breakfast was a near-family-sized chicken biryani and a fresh grape juice (hadn’t had enough in Madurai) for 90 rupees. My server was so attentive that you’d think I’d told him I was doing restaurant reviews for the next edition of Lonely Planet. I tipped him ten Rupees for the effort, and he smiled ear to ear. I like stuff like this.
ON TIPPING IN INDIA: An old man in Jaipur guided me to tip five to ten percent on sit-down food service, and I’ve done my best to follow said guidelines. No server is going to scream if you don’t leave gratuity, but they’ll be thrilled if you hit them off with a little cash. All it takes is 10-30 Rupees to make someone’s day. At stand-up roadside eateries, tipping isn’t necessary. If you give ten extra Rupees to a street vendor, they’ll probably give you a perplexed look (but they might take it anyway, thinking you’re a dummy that can’t add).
A few hours of Internet cafe time was next. I booked my flight to the Andaman Islands (6600 Rupees one way from Chennai to Port Blair), payed some bills, and returned some e-mails. Gotta get current at some point, right? It was mid-afternoon by the time I was out in the congested, sweaty streets again with no destination in mind.
The touristic sites of Chennai listed in the Lonely Planet weren’t all that appealing and were quite a ways from where I was. With no travel buddy to split rickshaw costs, I hopped onto a city train crammed with sweaty bodies and wandered aimlessly instead. My findings:
- There is a lot of traffic in Chennai
- The weather at this time of year is not my favorite in Chennai
- Fare-beating on the city train may be completely acceptable (no one checked my ticket at any city train station, which is good because half the time I couldn’t find a ticket office, or was at the wrong station on account of being somewhat confused by the train system, which I had been told was easy to navigate)
- Good news for juice-lovers (me): fresh fruit juice stands are everywhere
- I would like to again mention the traffic for emphasis
Did I see anything worth photographing in Chennai? Not really. Or maybe I was just woke up without an itchy trigger (shutter) finger today. There are still all kinds of crazy things going on in this town, but I had seen similar things (at least to my eye) in other BIG, DIRTY INDIAN CITIES. I don’t dislike Chennai, but I’m definitely ready to move on.
one of the three pictures I took in Chennai.
And moving on is coming up fast: I leave on the 5:50 AM flight to the Andaman Islands tomorrow (March 2) for an anticipated two-week stay. I wonder how much of that time I can spend underwater?
