Sunday Morning Sightseeing Trip

Two Immodium Instants consumed and we were off.

Our first stop was the flower market . Our flower markets would be full of flowers on stalks , but not here. There are sacks and sacks of heads only.

These piles of what look like rice are actually Jasmine flowers and will be sold to be strung into garlands for the ladies hair. I see them being sold on every street corner.

Absolutely beautiful but painfully time consuming. We watched him wind these heads on a small stalk round the raffia 

Then there were these bales of I am not quite sure what , but they smelt beautifully aromatic.

On our way back to the car we passed this man looking as of he was wading through sand scattered over a huge . Our driver told us that it was rice drying in the sun and it was dark because the husks were still on.

It really surprised me that there weren't people siphoning bags of it off .

Our next stop was Vandiyur Mariamman temppakulam...another temple to you and me !

We passed this which was quite impressive. 

And this is the temple , a smaller version of the Meenakshi temple in. Madurai.

This Sunday is a wedding day ( there are set days for weddings ) and we were lucky enough to be allowed  to watch part of the ceremony.

I think somewhere along the line the official photographer got a snap of us and the wedding party didn't seem to mind the gatecrashers.Its all a very open and inclusive procedure.

While all this was going on in corners of the covered area were poor wee babies getting their ears pierced. 

Tears after the earrings were put in.

We then crossed to another hall , the " hair cutting hall " yes more hair cutting but it's a very important part of the religion.

This is the entrance to the temple ,which was quite impressive and with a heck of a Long queue !

 but there was no queuing for us , we were ushered through separate gates and got to see what there was to see pretty quickly. We was didn't feel too guilty though as non Hindus there were parts of the temple were closed to us .

The temple.

He has some beard ! And also I fancied a corn on the cob.

Couldn't resist this picture , they reminded me of the three wise men.

Taken  as we returned to the car to drive  a hill to yes ..another temple and a fresh water spring.

There were plenty of these guys as we drove up , hardly surprising though as  the driver stopped and bought some food for them ! Something you would never do in Africa. We left the feeding of them to Alan as Lorraine and I can't bare them .

Decided not to stop at the mini temple because it was covered in scaffolding and instead parked a bit further on at a car ark for the " spring water " building. There were lots of steps up to the building and even more people than before queuing . 

As we reached to the top we began to wonder what we were going to see, people looked soaked as they came out . Once again at the top we were ushered through and into what I can only describe as a dungeon like set of chambers.

Here as you can see people were being doused with the holy water from a hose pipe , and many came away wtih plastic bottles full of it for healing purposes.

First impressions were that it looked like something the Nazis used. This was taken looking down on the proceedings.

After having been soaked you then filed past the priests who were taking the offerings from the people to give to the god, banana and coconut to be exact. I only realised afterwards that I shouldn't have taken this picture, but there were no signs saying no .

And at the bottom of the hill we found a tree hanging with bats , colourful ones at that although you can't see the bright yellow band on the underside .

Here is another interesting character.

So it was back to thecar past this very very old temple.

And that was that , until we passed this ,

Now from a distance they looked like something you would buy at the shows like the ducks you have to hook out of the water.

These wee chicks are spray painted and sold to children mostly, infact, I was a small boy handing over his rupees so that he could choose the best colours for him. Animal rights / cruelty people would have a field day here, as the poor wee things were quite unceremoniously dumped into a small carrier bag for taking home .

So there you have it, another interesting trip.

I am off  to Podcherry ( the French speaking part of India )this weekend  ). We have booked the train which I am hugely looking forward to as there was no way I was going to spend 8-9 hrs. on a bus. !!!!