Karaikudi – Tanjore

https://photos.app.goo.gl/pXMfMjJ4hxtxVd78A

One gets the impression mosquitoes are a problem in an area when hotel bathroom kits include industrial grade organophosphates to douse ones-self with (neuronal damage and cancer is a lesser evil than the local bugs?). This has been the case in the last three towns. The fate of Vasco da Gama occupies my mind.

I visited some ‘antique’ shops in Karaikudi (it’s famous for them – they were initially filled with the treasures of abandoned Chettiar mansions, but I suspect these contents were all sold decades ago). While some items were genuinely old, a large number are replica/fake. I saw an identical item in multiple stores. It was fun browsing.  I was tempted to say, “I don’t want any antiques, please show me the cheaper replicas – it’s all I can afford” and see what happens, but I didn’t.

As I was casually Googling things in the area to see, I came across an interesting temple, which featured thousands of painted terracotta horses. Link here: The Terracotta Horse Temple - The Ayyanar Temple of Chettinad - Thrilling TravelAt least look at the pictures, if you can’t be bothered reading the details. I thought it would be interesting to visit. I asked Krishna if he knew about ‘The Horse Temple’.

He said, “Absolutely, it’s on the way to Tanjore, we will go there”.

We stopped at a place, and he said go down that path, there are lots of horses. 

Indeed there were an astonishing number of small terracotta horses arrayed on both sides of the path, which led to a small shrine, but it didn’t look anything at all like the pictures in the previous link. 

Here’s where incomplete research, assumptions, and lack of precision in communication lead to a divergence between expectation and reality.

He had taken me to ‘A’ horse temple, not ‘THE’ horse temple in my mind. I didn’t know that horse temples were in the plural around here.

The temple I intended was the ‘Sri Solai Andavar Temple’.

Where I ended up was the ‘Shri Elangudi Ayyanar Temple’, which is a much less grand scale – a village shrine, really, not a temple. An easy mistake…..The terracotta horses looked very small, old, weathered and many were broken. Not bright, shiny, freshly painted as expected.
My mind was: “So this is where Indian Piñatas go to die….”

It was actually a very interesting and oddly spiritual place to visit, and I felt a strong sense of the faith and customs of the villagers, as the horses stared at me (you can move and their eyes follow you…).

I think I got more out of it than if I’d gone to the other place. A fortuitous mistake, and a valuable lesson about research and communication. 

I didn’t tell Krishna about the error, though – he would have been gutted, even if I said I preferred where we ended up.

So I saw the Shrine of a Thousand Horses - appropriate as I came there from the Room of a Thousand Mosquitos. At least I’m staying in classy places, and I don’t have to retire in the Bed of a Thousand Bugs (my student days are fortunately long gone).

The very swish Svatma hotel has the usual offerings of overpriced spa/massage/aromatherapy/ayurvedic treatments with every conceivable oil and herb. I wondered if the coconut oil, tamarind and ginger scrub included being covered in lettuce and balsamic, with a squirt of lemon juice? 

A novel treatment I haven’t seen anywhere is featured here – a ‘Sound Spa’ where a massage table has 50 strings under it that are plucked to produce resonant sounds that synchronise your brain waves, balance chakras, etc, etc (see the photos for full details). Half hour $50. I declined, fearing it might resonate with the tinnitus and explode my brain. I wonder what qualification the operators have or need?

The rooms here have a ‘feature’ where the TV turns on when you enter, and plays a calming, soothing loop of nice things. After looping a few dozen times I was no longer soothed. 

I’m not technologically incompetent, but I couldn’t turn it off.Defeated, I dialled reception, who advised a specific sequence of buttons on the remote, which silenced the thing. I had to repeat this sequence every time I entered the room.

Why couldn’t they document this in the info sheets, or make the default ‘off’?

In Tanjore, I saw the Palace Museum & Library, and the incredible Brihadishvara Temple, one of the biggest in India.The museum has a spectacular collection of old bronzes of Hindu deities between the 9th & 13th centuries. Parvati is the main Hindu goddess. Her sculptors were really into crafting figures that were quite callipygian (a fabulous word, one of my favourites – look it up here). Many thousand year old Kardashians to see.The library is one of the largest in Asia, est. 16th C, and has over 50,000 manuscripts, but only a few are ever displayed. There have been plans to digitise it for many years, with little progress. No photos allowed. I saw palm leaf Sanskrit manuscripts dating 11 C, and an old illustrated book in English about ancient Chinese Punishments - somewhat unpleasant. I think my teachers at a Catholic school used this as a manual. 

The temple is a UNESCO Heritage Monument, dated 1010 AD, built by Chola King Rajaraja, and utterly spellbinding. Constructed in only 10 years, all with interlocking blocks and no mortar (1000 year old granite Lego – lucky for Lego the patent expired). It houses a nearly 9 metre tall lingam, weighing about 80 tons. I didn’t get to enter the temple to view this, as it was a festival weekend with huge crowds and the queue was over 2 hours long. I felt time poor, and my last Indian crowd experience confirmed I am not agoraphobic. So no photos inside.

There is disagreement among scholars whether lingam represents a penis, or is an abstract representation or sign of Shiva. The only lingam I saw that day is well known to me and unlikely to draw crowds or queues, is of comparatively inconsequential dimensions, is not for public display anyway, and no photos will ever exist.

Had a nice small vegetarian dinner, and retired early after a long day, without salad dressing, no vibrating, but not out of tune.