Trichy and Tanjuvor

We decided to see the famous South Indian temples in these sites yesterday, so we headed out early (with Indian Promptness, finally leaving the house around 9am). We boarded a rickety buss for the 2.5hr trip to Trichy (short for Tiruchipalli). After arriving, we had a quick veg lunch of dosai and parotta, we circled the base of the rock fort (there's one in our city) to the temple entrance. Were greeted here by the temple elephant, to whom I gave 5 rupees and received a blessing by way of a tap on the top of head with his trunk. He was painted with pink and white chalk all over his face, ears and trunk, and while beautiful, looked a little sad chained inside his grand, pillared post at the temple. From there we ascended about 500 stairs to the temple at the top of the rock formation, and since it was noon, the sun was very hot. But, we did puja (blessings/prayers) at the temple at the top, where the priest hands out roses and marks your forehead with ash. We walked around the temple and took some phenomenal pics looking down over the city amd the nearby river. We had some icecream and jumped back on the bus for 1.5 more hours to Tanjuvor, arriving there by 4pm.
The bus was very crowded and it there was no sitting room (we got seats) so a young couple just handed their 5mo old, 2 and 4 year olds over to us to let sleep in our laps so they didn't have to carry them. I've seen this a lot here- people are very trusting- it's easier to just hold someone's baby than give up your hard-won seat! and everyone is so trusting.

In Tanjuvor, we visited the royal palace of Raja Serjofi, which must have been quite grand when it was built in the 1700s, but is a huge dump now. Literally, the courtyard is full of trash! Which is weird because they charge something like 100 rpes for foreigners to enter, so one would think they wouldn't burn trash inside. Also, you pay extra to enter the museum, in which there are many old plates, photos, furniture, etc, but no one dusts them, so you can hardly see some of it- nothing is preserved- the old fabrics are just rotting in the heat! It was really disappointing because it was beautiful and supposed to be a big tourist attraction, but it was hard to even find the signs for the entrance from the main road.
The Big Temple at Tanjuvor was not disappointing however. It is one of a few temples in India on the Wold Heritage registry- and it is phenomenal. It is famous for its size and also that it doesn't cast a shadow. No one knows exactly how this was done, but it is built with each layer in the pyramid slightly off-set so that nothing lines up...but it is barely visible that it is crooked. It also contains the world's largest lingham in the shrine. For those not acquainted, this is a phalace- about 4meters tall and 7m around...representing the male force of Shiva. It was made of stone and all covered in gold (i won't make any jokes here, but it's hard not to). We stayed there until sunset and watched the towers of sandstone turn colors.
After a dinner of chicken biryani, we started our journy home, arriving back in Namakkal at 2am...so it was hard to get up for work today!