We're going to rewind to November again so I can tell you about our awesome trip to Trichy and Thanjavur.
Trichy (it's real name is Tiruchirappalli, so you can see why everyone calls it Trichy) is right in the center of our state, Tamil Nadu, and has been around since the Cholas were in charge. (That's around the 3rd century B.C.)
I was a little wary of this trip, because our main purpose was to visit temples, and I wasn't sure how kid-friendly things would be. It turned out to be one of the most interesting trips we've taken.
The plan was to fly in and out of Trichy, but our first flight was canceled two days before the trip. That meant we could either pay through the nose for last-minute tickets on another flight, or we could drive the six hours. We chose the drive, which wouldn't have been bad at all except that our car's radiator kept erupting and spewing coolant all over the place. We made it there, and Ashok made it back to Chennai, and then we discovered we had a cracked head gasket. One of the wonderful things about India is that car repairs are not horribly expensive (if you have an Indian-made car, that is), so we were able to get it fixed without going bankrupt. But that's another story. Back to Trichy.
Our first stop was the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, (and here) henceforth to be known as the Sri Rangan Temple for the sake of sanity. We wanted to see this temple because it's enormous, likely the largest temple in India. You have to go through seven gates (or gopuram) to get to the inner sanctum, and each courtyard seems like its own little town. Here's the first gopuram we passed through.
And here's another. Like just about everywhere in India, there were gobs of people everywhere, and they were all bustling around. There's a lot of hustling and bustling here. Some were doing the work of worship, but many others seemed to be just going about their daily business.
As I said, the temple seems like its own little city. We found these shops inside one of the gates. One sold kitchen items. Those are idly steamers bottom center and dosa pans just to the right.
This shop had all kinds of brass items. Evie and Samuel bought little puja bells to bring home, which were eventually confiscated because they were just too much fun to ring. Johnny saved his money for later.
Puja items for sale, including finger cymbals, lamps, and idols. The circular shaped idol is the famous Dancing Shiva, or Nataraja. The Sri Rangan is actually a Vishnu temple, but maybe the Hindu gods aren't jealous.
After passing through four gates (I think), we got to the part of the temple where people actually perform their pujas. There were small and large shrines to various deities, and a pillared hall that 's probably used for gatherings.This pillar is carved to look like some kind of animal deity.
We usually don't hire guides at the temples, but for this one we did, and I'm glad of it. It would have been easy to get lost in this place, and there's a lot we would have missed if we hadn't had someone showing us around. Our guide was good. He was full of information and very good with the kids. He also put up with our way of exploring, which includes peeking into locked areas, venturing down dark corridors and generally being more curious than is probably good for us. He let us amble around at our own pace. It was nice.
The first place he took us was up to the roof, where we got a pretty good view of the size of the temple complex.
Looking toward the center of the complex ...
Looking back into the third courtyard ...
Here we are with one of the temple's 21 gopuram in the background.
More gopuram ...
We caught the attention of this school group in the fourth courtyard, and there was much waving and yelling.
View back toward the entrance ...
The golden tower in this photo is the vimana, or the dome over the inner sanctum (non-Hindus not allowed), where the main deity is housed. The one here is an image of Vishnu reclining on the king of snakes, or Shesha. This vimana is gold plated and right at the center of the complex.
The kids had fun climbing around on the roof, and I spent most of my time worrying that someone was going to fall off.
No injuries, though. After coming back down, we stopped at this shrine, which is a combination of old and new. The bottom, unpainted parts date to the 15th century.
There are figures of maidens carved around the outside of the shrine.
The figure on the left in this photo is placing the bindi mark in the traditional way. I noticed the same pose in one of the dances we saw at the Mylapore Festival the other night.
Some of the other temples we've visited have wishing trees, where supplicants tie tamarind root or light candles to ask for specific blessings. Here the base of the temple flag pole is used in the same way. The woman in the blue sari had just tied something to the pole when I took this picture. Generally, women tie tamarind root if they're searching for a husband or a wooden cradle if they want to have a child.
I find it interesting that the Hindus dress their idols in cloth, often in a sari or small skirt. We took the kids to a Catholic site yesterday (St. Thomas Cave ... more on that to come), and we noticed that the images of saints were similarly clothed.
The Sri Rangan temple has its own temple elephant. I was sorry to see it chained, but glad to see that it has a bed of sand to stand on rather than just the courtyard stones. I wonder if it got to go to the Tamil Nadu temple elephant rejuvenation camp? The kids were blessed by the elephant, but I couldn't get myself together fast enough to get a good photo.
One of the places we never would have seen without our guide was this inner courtyard used by the Brahmin priests. He marched us right past the signs marked "private" to show us these old granaries ...
... and these ancient wall paintings inside one of the priests' storage rooms. The painting is of Vishnu reclining on Shesha, so naturally there are puja lamps lit before it.
We saw these huge leather shoes hanging just outside the storage room. They're meant to be Vishnu's shoes and are used in one of the temple festivals, when villages take turns accepting the honor of making the shoes. Vishnu's shoes play a part in the epic poem the Ramayana. When Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu) was exiled to the forest, his younger brother sought him out and begged him to come back and take the throne. Rama said he would have to serve out his exile first, so his brother took Rama's golden sandals back to the kingdom as a symbol of his obedience to Rama. The brother then reigned in Rama's place.
Here we are in front of the famous Doors of Paradise, which are only opened during one 10-day festival each year. The temple deity is brought through the doors, and then thousands of pilgrims step through as well, believing that by doing so they'll be taken to heaven after death.
Our guide kept lifting the kids up onto things and saying "Oooooo! Take a picture of them up here!" It was cracking me up! So much for teaching the kids to respect other religions' sacred places. Here they are posing with Hanuman next to the Doors of Paradise.
We picked up all kinds of friends at this temple, and they all wanted their picture taken with the kids.
Here's another example of how our guide kept lifting the kids up onto things and saying "Take a picture!"
The 1,000-pillared hall (13th century) was a great place for a game of tag. Can you spot the players?
These carved pillars are part of the great hall. That's another of the gopuram in the background. The pillars depict horses and riders in battle against what appears to be an army of tigers.
The temple has a little museum with old carvings and other items from throughout its long history. There are tusks from old temple elephants, ivory carvings, coins from around the world, and a cool interactive computer monitor that shows a history of the temple and the area. Samuel did the funniest thing while we were exploring the museum. He had been walking around, looking at all the carvings at his eye level. He stood for a long time in front of one image of a deity with its palms facing out, and then, after checking over his shoulder to be sure no one was looking, he gave it a high five! Hilarious!
So there you have the Sri Rangan Temple. It was huge and fascinating and worth the six-hour drive for sure. But wait! There's more! After lunch we visited the Rock Fort Temple, and that post is coming soon. Meanwhile, here's a parting shot of one of the Sri Rangan's gopuram, taken as we headed out to lunch.
Trichy (it's real name is Tiruchirappalli, so you can see why everyone calls it Trichy) is right in the center of our state, Tamil Nadu, and has been around since the Cholas were in charge. (That's around the 3rd century B.C.)
I was a little wary of this trip, because our main purpose was to visit temples, and I wasn't sure how kid-friendly things would be. It turned out to be one of the most interesting trips we've taken.
The plan was to fly in and out of Trichy, but our first flight was canceled two days before the trip. That meant we could either pay through the nose for last-minute tickets on another flight, or we could drive the six hours. We chose the drive, which wouldn't have been bad at all except that our car's radiator kept erupting and spewing coolant all over the place. We made it there, and Ashok made it back to Chennai, and then we discovered we had a cracked head gasket. One of the wonderful things about India is that car repairs are not horribly expensive (if you have an Indian-made car, that is), so we were able to get it fixed without going bankrupt. But that's another story. Back to Trichy.
Our first stop was the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, (and here) henceforth to be known as the Sri Rangan Temple for the sake of sanity. We wanted to see this temple because it's enormous, likely the largest temple in India. You have to go through seven gates (or gopuram) to get to the inner sanctum, and each courtyard seems like its own little town. Here's the first gopuram we passed through.
(And here's another. Like just about everywhere in India, there were gobs of people everywhere, and they were all bustling around. There's a lot of hustling and bustling here. Some were doing the work of worship, but many others seemed to be just going about their daily business.
As I said, the temple seems like its own little city. We found these shops inside one of the gates. One sold kitchen items. Those are idly steamers bottom center and dosa pans just to the right.
This shop had all kinds of brass items. Evie and Samuel bought little puja bells to bring home, which were eventually confiscated because they were just too much fun to ring. Johnny saved his money for later.
Puja items for sale, including finger cymbals, lamps, and idols. The circular shaped idol is the famous Dancing Shiva, or Nataraja. The Sri Rangan is actually a Vishnu temple, but maybe the Hindu gods aren't jealous.
After passing through four gates (I think), we got to the part of the temple where people actually perform their pujas. There were small and large shrines to various deities, and a pillared hall that 's probably used for gatherings.This pillar is carved to look like some kind of animal deity.
We usually don't hire guides at the temples, but for this one we did, and I'm glad of it. It would have been easy to get lost in this place, and there's a lot we would have missed if we hadn't had someone showing us around. Our guide was good. He was full of information and very good with the kids. He also put up with our way of exploring, which includes peeking into locked areas, venturing down dark corridors and generally being more curious than is probably good for us. He let us amble around at our own pace. It was nice.
The first place he took us was up to the roof, where we got a pretty good view of the size of the temple complex.
Looking toward the center of the complex ...
Looking back into the third courtyard ...
Here we are with one of the temple's 21 gopuram in the background.
More gopuram ...
We caught the attention of this school group in the fourth courtyard, and there was much waving and yelling.
View back toward the entrance ...
The golden tower in this photo is the vimana, or the dome over the inner sanctum (non-Hindus not allowed), where the main deity is housed. The one here is an image of Vishnu reclining on the king of snakes, or Shesha. This vimana is gold plated and right at the center of the complex.
The kids had fun climbing around on the roof, and I spent most of my time worrying that someone was going to fall off.
No injuries, though. After coming back down, we stopped at this shrine, which is a combination of old and new. The bottom, unpainted parts date to the 15th century.
There are figures of maidens carved around the outside of the shrine.
The figure on the left in this photo is placing the bindi mark in the traditional way. I noticed the same pose in one of the dances we saw at the Mylapore Festival the other night.
Some of the other temples we've visited have wishing trees, where supplicants tie tamarind root or light candles to ask for specific blessings. Here the base of the temple flag pole is used in the same way. The woman in the blue sari had just tied something to the pole when I took this picture. Generally, women tie tamarind root if they're searching for a husband or a wooden cradle if they want to have a child.
I find it interesting that the Hindus dress their idols in cloth, often in a sari or small skirt. We took the kids to a Catholic site yesterday (St. Thomas Cave ... more on that to come), and we noticed that the images of saints were similarly clothed.
The Sri Rangan temple has its own temple elephant. I was sorry to see it chained, but glad to see that it has a bed of sand to stand on rather than just the courtyard stones. I wonder if it got to go to the Tamil Nadu temple elephant rejuvenation camp? The kids were blessed by the elephant, but I couldn't get myself together fast enough to get a good photo.
One of the places we never would have seen without our guide was this inner courtyard used by the Brahmin priests. He marched us right past the signs marked "private" to show us these old granaries ...
... and these ancient wall paintings inside one of the priests' storage rooms. The painting is of Vishnu reclining on Shesha, so naturally there are puja lamps lit before it.
We saw these huge leather shoes hanging just outside the storage room. They're meant to be Vishnu's shoes and are used in one of the temple festivals, when villages take turns accepting the honor of making the shoes. Vishnu's shoes play a part in the epic poem the Ramayana. When Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu) was exiled to the forest, his younger brother sought him out and begged him to come back and take the throne. Rama said he would have to serve out his exile first, so his brother took Rama's golden sandals back to the kingdom as a symbol of his obedience to Rama. The brother then reigned in Rama's place.
Here we are in front of the famous Doors of Paradise, which are only opened during one 10-day festival each year. The temple deity is brought through the doors, and then thousands of pilgrims step through as well, believing that by doing so they'll be taken to heaven after death.
Our guide kept lifting the kids up onto things and saying "Oooooo! Take a picture of them up here!" It was cracking me up! So much for teaching the kids to respect other religions' sacred places. Here they are posing with Hanuman next to the Doors of Paradise.
We picked up all kinds of friends at this temple, and they all wanted their picture taken with the kids.
Here's another example of how our guide kept lifting the kids up onto things and saying "Take a picture!"
The 1,000-pillared hall (13th century) was a great place for a game of tag. Can you spot the players?
These carved pillars are part of the great hall. That's another of the gopuram in the background. The pillars depict horses and riders in battle against what appears to be an army of tigers.
This carving in the great hall is an optical illusion. If you cover one part of the carving, the image is of an elephant. If you cover another part, it's a bull.
The temple has a little museum with old carvings and other items from throughout its long history. There are tusks from old temple elephants, ivory carvings, coins from around the world, and a cool interactive computer monitor that shows a history of the temple and the area. Samuel did the funniest thing while we were exploring the museum. He had been walking around, looking at all the carvings at his eye level. He stood for a long time in front of one image of a deity with its palms facing out, and then, after checking over his shoulder to be sure no one was looking, he gave it a high five! Hilarious!
So there you have the Sri Rangan Temple. It was huge and fascinating and worth the six-hour drive for sure. But wait! There's more! After lunch we visited the Rock Fort Temple, and that post is coming soon. Meanwhile, here's a parting shot of one of the Sri Rangan's gopuram, taken as we headed out to lunch.
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