What started as a simple trip to Karur to attend a colleague’s marriage ended up being a round trip across central Tamilnadu. The bad thing was it wasn’t planned. If it had been planned beforehand we would have had even better experience.
We left Kochi on Saturday night by the Tea-Garden express (haven’t figured out why it is called so). The journey was uneventful in which surprisingly I slept well. We reached Karur – my place of birth – the next morning. I expected some strange feelings while stepping on to the platform, but it never happened atleast the there weren’t any strange feelings. I felt happy being there after 10 years. Not much had changed but I never visited the places I knew before to be sure. I remember very little about karu…. my grandpa’s house, the street , krishna theatre, sundaravilas hotel, ajantha theatre, thaandoni malai, a few names mostly my grandpa’s friends – jayarama konaar and some other konaar.
So once the marriage got over, we moved on. After asking directions for the bus stop where the bus to Madurai stops, we reached there in a jiffy with vinay helping himself some ‘Nannari sarbat’. The bus ride was a three boring hours ordeal with ‘Mudhalvan’ movie not helping much. After enjoying mile after mile of acacia trees and some other thorny plants(the one definite way you can say you are traveling in Tamilnadu) we reached Madurai’s periyar bus stand. We had our lunch at a road side hotel. We never expected such great food at such a small place. Having been to decent looking hotels in Kochi which serve food which you would dare eating only if you were stuck like us, in kerala, the lunch in Madurai was brilliant. We then took a local bus to reach the ‘Meenakshi Amman’ Temple. Since it was near closing time, we couldn’t explore much. We went to the thousand pillar mandapam inside the temple, which is now a museum. After nearly an hour we came out of the temple- actually we were almost pushed out by the temple guards.
Visitors to Madurai must definitely have ‘Jigar thanda’ or Jigari thanda. It is strange looking and strange tasting drink famous in Madurai. But we liked it very much, so we had two servings of it.
Taking an auto we reached the bus stand and boarded the trichy bound bus. Another three hours later we reached trichy. Since we had one and half hours until our train. We visited the ‘rock fort’ temple in trichy. It provided a much needed exercise for lazy souls like us. After a real tiring expedition we reached the station in time for our return journey again by the ‘Tea- Garden express’.
