1 day Kumbakonam Visit

It was my long time wish to visit Kumbakonam(KK) temples. Mainly Darasuram and Gangaikonda Chozha puram (GCP) temples, which are standing as an evident for architectural skills of Chozha dynasty ( Actually GCP is in Ariyalur district, which I knew only after reaching there) After searching something in net I planned for a one day trip to Kumbakonam on 5.12.2010.

I reserved in Nagore express for my upward journey. I don't know anyone in Kumbakonam and I hadn't been there before. I reached KK by 6 am had my coffee in railway station and came out. I didn't know which direction to go and where to go. I took right hand side in a belief that it will be right. After walking for 5 minutes I asked a person how to go to bus stand. He said, it is nearby and showed me the direction. After reaching the bus stand I went through the name board of the buses for 10 mins.

I could see the names of the places with nice names ( I forgot them now) . Then I found one mini bus going to Darasuram market. I boarded the bus and asked the conductor for ticket. To my surprise the price of the ticket was only 2 rs ( in Chennai, for a distance of 1 km in govt. bus i give 5 rs).

After 4 kms i got down at Darasuram market and one guy helped me in showing the direction to the temple. I passed a bridge of Cauvery ( I hope it is Cauvery) and went into a village. After walking for 10 minutes I could see the Gopuram and outer walls of the temple amidst green lawn.

I saw crows and other birds playing in the lawn and people on their morning walking around the temple (Not as a part of worship , they are trying to reduce their weight). I made a round over the temple to see in which way to enter the temple. The temple was surrounded by water upto knee level and I hadn't know which way to enter. I enquired with a person about the Temple and he gave some info about the temple. On talking to him he also said how to reach GCP ( Gangai Konda Chozha Puram) from Kumbakonam. Keeping everything in mind, i entered in to the temple main entrance.

I was the only person inside the temple and still the Nadai ( Door of Main deity - Airatheeswarar) hadn't opened. So i just went around the temple taking some snaps. There was one lady sweeping and I asked about the opening time. She said they will open the Nadai in few minutes and enquired about from where I was coming.

After a round up in Temple I just sat in opposite of the temple Gopuram and started drawing the main Gopuram. I think even god didn't like his temple gopuram to be drawn by a worst painter. In few minutes that old lady came and said that they have opened the Nadai and asked me not to draw, that the authorities will scold if they came to know that some body draws.

Then I worshiped the main deity and went for one more round to see the interesting sculptures that we can see all over the temple. The main Mandapam which is constructed in form of chariot and the pillars in the Mandapam shows how the people are talented 900 years ago.

Then I went to see Amman temple which is situated adjacent to this temple. There still the Nadai was closed and water level was more than Sivan temple. So took a photo from outer and left the temple. Again came to Market bus stand and took a bus and reached Kumbakonam bus stand. The time was 9.15 am and I was not hungry. So planned to have my breakfast after some time.

As instructed by the person I met in Darasuram, I searched for Anaikkarai bus. (To reach GCP the route is Kumbakonam --> Anaikkarai --> cross two bridges by walk or share auto --> take Jayamkondan bus and get down at GCP in Jeyamkondan Cross road ).

I found one bus and fortunately got a seat which is convenient for looking outside. I slept for 10 minutes. When I woke up I saw green paddy fields and realized that we are out of town and reached rural areas. The name of the villages on the way are so nice , Thiruvaipadi, Thirupanandal, Sozhapuram. Then I reached Anaikkarai, which is the last village in Kumbakonam (Thanjavur district), after which Ariyaloor district starts.

Anaikkarai is a small village and it's an island which is surrounded by river Cauvery on all sides. So we need to walk over a bridge to

reach Anaikkari and then we need to cross another bridge to reach the other side of the land from where Ariyaloor district starts. I met a person known as Elango in Anaikkarai who is very friendly person and explained about his village and showed me the direction to get bus to GCP. Then i got the bus to GCP and got down at the temple.

The temple looks similar to Big temple in Tanjavur and I entered after a checking by temple inspectors. It is also a monument approved as a world heritage site by UNESCO and it is under Archeological department control. Here also we can see the green lawn. There are only a few people in the temple.

As usual I roamed inside the temple and took few pictures, and wondered and amazed by the architectures inside the temple. There are lot of architectures in the temple wall and pillars. The best is a huge Dwarabalagar outside the Main sivan sannadhi. Then I asked for the route to Rajendra Chozhan museum. It was only a few meters from the temple. The museum has some old coins, swords and other things excavated from there.

The curator is a very nice person and he explained about the place and also said that there is a 80 feet 16th century elephant statue in a temple nearby village, Azhagar kovil. It is 8 kms away from there and there was no transportation facilities there to reach the place. I came out and waited for return bus.

In the meanwhile I started talking to a person standing nearby. He said there are many buses frequently to Anaikkarai. I inquired him about the Azhagar kovil temple. He also said there is no transportation available but he could take to the place with a vehicle he was having for Rs.100. I accepted and we both started

to the temple.(see the image for the vehicle in which I went to Azhagar Kovil temple) The path was very curvy and it was full of small villages, paddy fields and lotus ponds.

I went to the temple and had seen two gigantic horses and a gigantic elephant (which was under renovation) and took some snaps. One person asked about me and from where I was coming. On my return from temple he called me and gave KumKumam and Vibbothi.

Then we started from there and driver kept on talking about the temple and his village. He was also one of the nice guy I met in Kumbakonam. He dropped me in the bus stop and said that I could stay in the jeep itself still the bus come, as it was drizzling. Then the bus came and said bye to the driver and took the same route to reach Kumbakonam. It was 2.30 pm and started raining there. I was so tired and a small sleep became mandatory for me.

So I went out looking for a stay place till evening and took a room in a tourist home near bus stand for Rs.200.

The room looked good and also had a TV. I slept till evening and got up because of hungry ( I hadn't had my breakfast and lunch). So went out for hotel to eat something. Then I booked a seat in bus in SETC. Then I took a bus to see the Kumbakonam town. I don't know where to go. So got down at Kumbeswarar temple. I made a small visit to this temple and Ramasamy temple nearby. Then I went back to room and started back to Chennai.

The day looked like a long day after visiting many temples and meeting many people. Had a nice experience in Kumbakonam and left at 10 pm bus after saying a good bye to Kumbakonam and its people.

First page of my motor cycle diary

Motorcycle diaries, Into the wild, Anbe Sivam, Dollar series, Alchemist, Ponniyin Selvan..

these are some of the movies and books which inspired me and induced me to travel. I always see travel as a journey which is full of experiencing new things. Visiting new places, interacting with new people, sleeping in one location and getting up in another location, exploring the unexplored and many more. So travel always fascinates me.

As a part of my Explore-TamilNadu project (a self initiated project to escape from Urban and to visit and explore rural TamilNadu in weekends) we (me & Balaji, my PG class mate) planned to visit some unknown, remote and rural place in my motorcycle. One reason to choose bike ride is Freedom. We are free to go anywhere, inside small villages and get much more opportunities to explore remote areas. Second, Balaji is an ardent fan of Che Guevara. In future he wants to travel entire India in motorcycle (he too inspired by Motorcycle diaries), as Che did in his early days before choosing revolutionary path, and so this trip would be like an experiment trip.

So I and Balaji searched for good location in net, Google maps and Wikimapia. First we planned to go towards north somewhere to Andhra side, or to Karnataka. After a long search and discussion we planned to go to some place which is already known to us. As this was our first long bike trip, our plan is to go to a known place initially and after doing this experiment, to go some unknown place.

Finally we chose Balaji’s home in Thiruchengode as our destination. We checked the distance and direction in Google map and it showed the below two routes.

1. 370 km – 5 hours 40 mins – Chennai-->Dindivanam-->Vilupuram -->Kallakurichi-->Attur-->Rasipuram-->Thiruchengode

2. 408 km – 6 hours 10 mins – Chennai-->Vellore-->Krishnagiri-->Dharmapuri-->Salem-->Tiruchengode

We wanted to travel in both the routes and so decided to take the 1^st route for onward journey and 2^nd route for return journey. We still had a thought that it would take only 6 hours from Chennai to reach Tiruchengode blindly without considering the condition of my bike, road condition, time taken in refreshment points and weather condition (actually it took 10 hours for one way journey). I already did a road trip earlier from Coimbatore to Ooty and from Tirunelveli to Madurai. So I thought that we could manage this trip also easily. Though we faced some difficulties due to bad road conditions, severe cold weather, poor bike we managed and completed the whole trip successfully.

We started our prepararation for the trip. I took some print outs of the map, checked air and filled petrol in bike and packed up my backpack with Jerkin, a blanket, diary and camera. As planned I picked up Balaji at Thambaram railway station at 9.30 pm but a little later (so actually it is not as planned, we planned to start by 6 pm) in my Yamaha Crux R 100. We both were sleepy at that time itself but the excitement we had drove us to drive the bike actively.

First we decided this - I should have to drive till Vilupuram and after that Balaji would have to ride the bike. On the way we planned to have our dinner in Chengalpet. But we couldn’t find any good hotel on that way. We drove continuously upto Melmaruvathur and suddenly Balaji shouted to stop the bike. I thought something would had fallen and stopped the bike. He ran away and took a big plastic ball from the side of the road. It looked as a football and it was a new ball which somebody would have missed on their way. He took the ball in plastic

cover and inspected for some time. Then he kept a name, “Raj” to the ball. (As Tom hanks kept the name “Wilson” to a foot ball in the movie “Cast away”). He tied the cover to his bag and it was tied in his bag till we reached his home. On the way we had our dinner in a road side shop where lorry drivers eat and throughout our journey we had tea and relaxed ourselves to avoid our sleep.

The one thing which helped us a lot during our journey is the map we took as a print out from Google maps. We kept on watching that and followed the path. After travelling sometime in the high ways we got bored. For sometimes we kept on reading all the names of the places in the signboard loudly. Some had very different names. We saw one Mettupalayam, two Mamandhur (there is one more Mamandhur in Andhra) and one college name as “ University college of Engineering”. Then we started to sing aloud which made us to drive actively.

Then we took a deviation from NH45 (which is a 4 lane) to NH68 which is one of the worst roads I had ever travelled. Now Balaji started to drive and the roads were very bumpy. We crossed many villages where we saw some very old temples. By this time we got tired and needed some rest and luckily we found a deserted tea shop. The time was 2 am. We ordered 2 teas and kept watching some mokkai comedy in Adithya channel in the tea shop. As we needed to spend and relax some time there we started to drink the tea very slowly and drank for around 15 mins. Then we started towards Salem route.

After sometime the bike got reserve. It runs only for around 50 km in reserve and so we needed to find a petrol bunk soon. I kept on watching for a petrol bunk on the way. As I was already sleepy, I found it very difficult to keep my eyes open. Slowly my eyes got closed. Suddenly I opened my eyes and found that the bike was approaching a large pit nearby a ditch. I shouted “Balaji” for which he replied “Don’t worry” and did some bike stunts. In few seconds we were riding safely in roads. Then only I came to know that he also slept for past few seconds and luckily we both woke before falling into that large pit. This one incident made us to ride till his home without any sleep. We reached a town and found a petrol bunk but there was no one there. After travelling some distance we found another.

There was a guy sleeping and we had no options other than waking him up. He got up but unfortunately at the same time my petrol tank lock got stucked up. I tried to open for 5 minutes but still I couldn’t open it up. Actually the lock got jammed. In the mean time many thoughts came to my mind like what we should do if we couldn’t open the lock or what would happen if the key got broken and now the petrol bunk guy again went to sleep. After 10 minutes of struggle I managed to open the petrol tank. I filled up petrol for Rs.500 and the man helped by putting some oil in the tank lock and made it right. We said a thanks to that guy and started our journey again.

The most spoken dialogue by us during the journey was “are you awake or you sleeping? “. We kept asking this question to each other when other one was driving.

But we both slept sometimes while we were driving and luckily we escaped from any accidents and odd incidents.

We reached Athoor and then we took a diversion to Rasipuram, at this time it sun light breaks up in horizon. We enjoyed the ride in picturesque roads along the hills and paddy fields. Atlast at 7.30 am we both reached Balaji’s home.

We both were very tired and a good sleep became mandatory immediately. Balaji said that we will get good sleep if we eat more idlies and if we had a good bath. Only because of this, I took bath and ate many Idies and we got ready for our sleep. He took me to his grandmother home which is amidst farms surrounded by trees. He placed two cots under a tamarind tree and we started to sleep.

The sound of the birds, winds from the trees, mild sun – add flavour to the location and we had a 6 hours uninterrupted sleep. It was one of a great sleep like I had after finishing a 22 hour journey from Tirupathi to Nagercoil and a 20 hour journey from Bangalore to Nagarcoil. (Both in Dappa govt. Bus)

We got up at 3.30 pm and we got up only because of hungry. We had our non veg lunch in his home and started from there.

It was 4.30 pm and we planned to visit Ardhanareeswarar temple which is situated in a hillock nearby his house. We went upto the Ardhanareeswarar temple in bike which was reached in 15 minutes drive from foot hills (the ride was only like in a ghat road). After reaching the temple Balaji showed me a small temple known as Uchi Pillayar temple in another peak which has a route from this temple but only way to reach there was to trek there. (In spite of the name we saw only a Siva lingam in that “Uchi Pillayar temple)

We wanted to see the temple and we decided to trek there. The way is on from this hill to the peak and there were no proper way. It was the riskiest path I have ever gone and the path is very steep. We literally crawled and climbed up using our two legs and two hands in few steps available. At last we reached there and enjoyed the beautiful landscape from the top of the peak.

We spend some time there, chatting and we started and took our Salem route.

It was very

cold when we reached Vellore. But we managed to drive and the only motivation factor that drove us is our sleep, i.e., we can sleep only when we reach home safely. It was a complete highway journey and the road was in good condition.

After a 10 hour journey we reached Chennai by 5.30 am. I reached home and slept with a satisfaction that I had written the first page in my motorcycle diaries.

So totally in 33 hours we traveled 800 km (active travelling time – 22 hours)

Expecting my next journey to be more adventurous and hope it will be a lengthy one.