Madurai: Day 2

January 19, 2010

Madurai was the site of one of the most impressive temple complexes of the trip. I mean, they were impressive enough for us to fly down to madurai just to see them basically! How ridiculous was this complex? Well this was what the gate looked like:

That's right: the GATE looked like this! I mean, that's more impressive than most sights by themselves. The color just jumps off the building too!

An elephant statue by the front.

There were four entrances to the complex-north, south, etc. Here are two of them.

If you thought previous sites were impressive in the level of detail that they had...well we did too. Until Madurai of course!

I mean, just LOOK at this! The figures and colors and everything...just completely amazing.

Another of the water shrines in the middle of the temple-this one was HUGE though.

The roofs inside were painted riotously.

And the floors got their fair treatment too!

This is Ganesh. Although it wasn't a temple dedicated solely to him, there were still worshipers who honored him there.

Shiva-the big kahuna. This statue was very imposing in person-I still kinda stop whenever I look at this picture...

again, the COLORS! legen-wait for it-DARY.

One of the cool things about this temple was we all got blessed by this elephant! What that entails is you walking up to the elephant, handing it a rupee (their trunks are prehensile so they just grab it from you), and then the elephant resting its trunk on your head. I took a video of the elephant blessing Adam-it seemed to like him lol

So sweet.

They had a museum that, overall, was pretty disappointing. It had some cool statues though.

This was my favorite.

I just couldn't get over this gate! lol

This is the view as you walk up or leave the temple-just kinda rises up from the street.

The guy at the restaurant we ate at wanted a picture with our professors haha

Our next stop was a Mughal palace that was designed with the help of a European architect. It was cool seeing a fusion of the two types of architecture.

Switching to Tokien/Peter Jackson references now: "Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day, at dawn look to the east" was what this set of windows reminded me of (especially the visual as Aragorn is remembering Gandalf say it).

Pretty.

These archways (as columns and hallways were prone to do) caught my eye.

I don't know if there was stained glass in these windows or what, but it was beautiful.

We went back to the hotel for dinner and I finally had something that i'd seen on the menu for basically the whole trip but never tried: Chicken Lollipop

Which is just what it sounds like-chicken pieces that are made to look like little lollipops with a sweet dipping sauce. It was actually quite good :)

This was the view from the restaurant (which was on the roof of our hotel). The lit up buildings in the distance are the temples from the earlier pictures.

In my quiet time during the evening I read about half of Revelation. I'd been going through it a chapter a day but something just came over me and I just kept reading till the end haha.

With our time in Madurai done, it was back to Chennai. Tomorrow: Chennai! we pick Grayson back up! Madras Christian College!