This trip was actually not
supposed to happen. Infarct it was only because of mom n dad making persistent
attempts in changing our original Ooty-Mysore plan that I decided to plan
instead for the Tamil Nadu tour.
So while it was at its beginning it
was meant to be just a trip to Bangalore to meet brother, it became full-fledged
holiday for the family. So at the outset let me put the original itinerary that
we had planned:
Bangalore -> Madurai
-> Rameshwaram -> kanyakumari -> kodaikanal -> Bangalore
Considering the fact that the total
distance we had planned to cover in Tamil Nadu was approximately around 1200
kilometers we decided to rent a car that could take us comfortably through the
entire tour.
Bangalore was supposed to the
home for us and thus we completely sidelined visiting any tourist spots in the
city. Although the few cab rides that we took made us feel as though we had
covered the entire city. We took a KSRTC bus to Madurai which reached its
destination well before the scheduled time. Our car came to pick us up on time
and without much ado we were resting inside our hotel room after some very long
journey.
Day 1: Madurai
They call it the Athens of the
East, but I would rather refer to it as the Temple city of TN. If one Google’s
a bit about the city one would find that there are a number of attractions for
tourist in the city. So we went ahead
and covered Azhagar Temple, Pazhamudir Cholai (Hills) Thirupparankundaram,
Thirumalai Naicker Palace, and Gandhi Museum with our cab barring the
Meenaxi temple which was just a few minutes’
walk from our Hotel. The temple experience was very nice and they have it all organized
and systematic for people to visit the deity.
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| Inside Madurai Meenaxi temple |
Who doesn’t know about the place
and its significance! This is basically an island connected to the mainland
with Pambam bridge which is the single largest railway bridge of the country.
Also the bridge opens up for ships to sail through. After a four hour drive
from Madurai we reached Rameshwaram and covered the places. We also went to
Dhanuskodi which is island on the Gulf of Munnar and is a spectacle to the eyes
as we saw water from three sides hitting a stretch of land.
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| Pambam Bridge |
Day 3: Kanyakumari
Now our drive from Rameshwaram to
Kanyakumari was rather a very long one and we also stopped at Thiruchendur to
visit the Murugan temple there. By this time I could understand that the architecture
of the temples in Tamil Nadu was almost identical across the cities with
changes in color.The experience inside Rock temple was very soothing one and the silence makes one introspect within. Although the weather played a spoil sport and we missed the sunset due to clouds, the sunrise was masked by heavy rainfall and thunderclouds.
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| Sunset in Kanyakumari |
We took the NH7 that goes to Dindigul
to reach Kodaikanal and boy what roads have they made! We reached Kodaikanal in
about 8 hours drive without feeling anything about the long journey. After some
nice experience with the sea, now was the time for enjoying the weather of the
hill station. We did enjoy all the tourist spots of the place and the boating experience
was also worth mentioning. Although we could not find water in the rat tail
falls and very less water flow in the silver cascade falls, the feeling of
rainfall was clouds go past your body was amazing.
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| The Kodai Lake view |
We had taken up hotel at every
place and spent a night in each of the places. Finally our trip ended with us
catching up the train to Bangalore from Madurai station. We had a day to relax
in Bangalore before getting back to Kolkata and routine life which we invested
in visiting the Iskon temple. If in Bangalore do visit the place.
