Leaving Kerala and the Western Ghats for Madurai.

Photos (best seen on a PC to see the annotations):https://photos.app.goo.gl/uZ8AS1Gy5x9teVF17

Goodbye to Kerala, hello Tamil Nadu. Keralans speak Malayalam, Tamils speak Tamil. They communicate in Hindi or English. There are 22 official languages. Krishna pointed out many billboards on the way to Madurai, which advertised the weddings of couples. It is apparently something that is done here – it shows off the family status, wealth, and connections, with pictures of family, including academic qualifications. He said: ‘We don’t do this in Kerala’.

The plains are much hotter than Munnar – went from 19 C to 33 C.

Staying at The Heritage Madurai, which used to be the old Madurai Club, on 17 acres. I have a nearly 300 year old Banyan tree outside my room. It’s my spirit tree – it’s girth rapidly increases as it ages.

Colloquialism for the day: “He will be blinking” - the expected reaction when an Indian is surprised by, or finds odd, or doesn’t understand something you do or say. I said to Krishna “I will go ask xxx for yyy”.
He responded “He will be blinking”, indicating my request was not something I should pursue.
The standard Indian facial expression is very flat and neutral. If you smile and wave at anyone, you invariably get a smile and wave back – I have been smiling and waving at everyone.
Regular question is “Where are you from?”, and “Australia” gets a bigger smile, and immediate mention of cricket, which I know nothing about (I will be blinking…).

The Meenakshi Temple is probably the most magnificent building I have ever seen (truly). Originating around 1100. I went inside to view the daily evening ceremony, where an image of Lord Shiva is carried out from his shrine by temple priests, in procession in a chariot, to his wife Meenakshi’s shrine where he’ll spend the night.

This ceremony dates back millennia. It is accompanied by a drum, and a large wind instrument. Ancient and very traditional, except I noticed the wind player (who was quite virtuosic) had a backing drone (Tanpura) produced by an app on an iPhone (again, I was blinking).Sadly, no photographs were possible due to terrorist threats in 2008 resulting in strict security and the banning of mobiles in some temples (except for holy musicians). It was an unforgettable experience, but without photos, I will probably forget.

I wandered the town, looking at markets, and learned about the practice of inscribing Kolams on the ground outside houses. The kolam is drawn by women every morning in chalk or rice flour to welcome Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity, into the home, and drives away the evil spirits.

I arrived in Madurai on a major religious holiday, which was good and bad. Many temples were closed, but I was able to see close up what happens during a ritual. It was the Full Moon Float Festival (or Teppam), where Shiva & Parvati were taken from the Meenakshi temple onto a float on Teppakulam Lake. It was an insane crush of people that my guide led me into (I thought ‘We are going into that? I am blinking.’).

We got near the front through his experienced crowd navigation tactics (persistent, forward only Brownian motion). 

After being packed to a density that I thought would result in a gravitational collapse into a black hole, a policewoman gestured me to come through the fence and come up close to the float.

After finding out I wasn’t being arrested, I felt rather privileged, to put it mildly – there were tens of thousands of locals pressing to get a view, and I was one of the few allowed close, with a police escort, and I’m not even Hindu!

Did my guide bribe someone? He said they had a policy of being nice to tourists.

A frame from ‘Life of Pi’ featured this festival.It was a fascinating experience, happy to do once only.