Madurai

Tired of the humid and uninteresting cities of Kerala we were ready to move.

Our time in India is shorting down but we still have some places that we would like to visit before leaving this amazing country, places like Munnar, Madurai, Tiruvannamalai and Gokarna are on the top of our list. Therefore, we have checked the weather in Munnar, well known for the stunning landscaping and beautiful tea and spice plantations covering all over the mountains. Although, the weather was not helping us, rain and cold were our welcome ticket. We thought that we should probably skip Munnar, so we went straight away to the train station to buy our tickets to Madurai where we got 2 tickets on 2S class - unknown class for us - 250 rupees (3$) was the price.

When the train approached the station we looked for our carriage, but when we found out which one would be ours we just got dizzy and started sweating. We could not believe that we had bought those tickets for that class, we wanted to make it cheap so we ended up buying tickets for General class - General class is basically the class where there are no rules inside. The train would be stopped just for a few minutes so we started to try to go in, we literally tried, but it was impossible from that door because it was blocked with people... we immediately ran to the door on the other side of the carriage so we could be able to go in.

We were in!!! So now let's just find our seat...

No way...we were the only foreigners inside that place - foreigners usually do not travel on this cheap and crapy class - everybody was looking at us and probably thinking " what the hell are this guys doing in here!?" We tried to find out our seat but our best option was to stay on the place where we stepped in. There were 5 people seated where only 3 fitted, the floor was impossible to see... there were people laid down on the middle of the corridor and even underneath the seats, some people were also like us standing up waiting for an opportunity to squeeze and seat whenever and wherever possible, we tried to put our backpacks on the shelves above the seats but even that it was impossible...there were people sleeping on the shelves... basically there were people everywhere!!!! The smell was only one, pee! Cockroaches wandering all over the carriage... and we were there... like a bunch of refuges on a boat running away from somewhere...  we wanted to cry, Pedro even thought about bribing a security guy to allow us to move to another carriage...but after some time we decided to accept the destiny and to go on that 9 hour crazy trip do Madurai.

Several minutes later, a small space opened so Kika carefully, to avoid stepping on someone's head, ran with her backpack to occupy that space. Afterwards a little crack on the corner of other bench also opened so Pedro, with his backpack, went to occupy it but at this time there were no space to put the backpack on the floor close to him and there was barely space to put his feet on the floor because there were a bunch of people sleeping around him. So, Pedro just put the backpack on the top of his legs and sat. Despite we were seated in different benches far from each other at least we were seated, but now we both had this question "Are we going to be able to bear this for the next 8 hours?" We looked at each other several times and with eyes contact we knew that both of us were thinking about this question.

Guess what!? Lesson learned... instead of running away from that frightening and totally new experience completely out of our comfort zone, we have accepted it and tried to adapt to the situation, because of that our body and mind controlled everything in a very smooth way. The strong smell of pee and the cockroaches were not disturbing us anymore, even the people that were all over the place were just people like us... traveling with us... they were just trying to get as much comfort as they could. When our mind started to be open to all of this the trip started to become better and better, more space started to appear, we found a place where to put our bags and even ended up sleeping laid down in one of the benches.

At the end we were happy with all this crazy new adventure, we learned a lot from that and that is what we are looking for - Knowing ourselves better.

After this 9 hour experience we arrived in Madurai around 11am with only one goal, find a cheap room for the next days. We found one, located in the old city area, through our Indian guide book. The price was affordable for our budget. Immediately, we went to that part of the city trying to find it, which took us some time. Most of the locals that we asked told us that the name had changed but we though that maybe they were just trying to scam us so they could take us to another hotel and get commissions from that but after some wasted time looking for the hotel we realized that they were right. We went to the place and booked a room for 600 rupees a night.

On our first day in Madurai we were not able to explore the city that much, we just wanted to sleep because we barely slept on that crazy train trip. Nevertheless, we went for lunch and dinner in a restaurant and chai shop close to our hotel. The restaurant was called "Anna Meenakshi", one of the best restaurants in town. When we are the only foreigners in a restaurant it means that we are in the right place! Busy place, full of Indians, people shouting and people eating with no silverware - find a place like that and your Indian dream food will be real :)

We started our second day full of energy so we took the first part of the day just walking through the city.
Madurai is one of the oldest cities in South India. Even though, it is a very organized city where even the street's names are well identified, which is rare in India, the city is crowded with textile and tailors' shops, souvenir shops, jewelry shops (particularly gold shops) and furniture shops.
It is a very religious place where it it's easy to find several temples with multicolored mythological figures spread all over the city.
However, there is one huge temple that attracts all the attention - Sri Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple.

For lunch, we ended up going to a restaurant called "The Emperor" on the rooftop of a 7th story hotel. From there we could see a stunning view of the city with the main temples emerging into the sky.

After a great lunch inspired by the beautiful view of the temples we decided that our second part of the day would be to visit the main temple. Before going to the temple we decided that first we should go to the hotel to dress "proper clothes" to go into a place like that - covering the body as much as possible. On the entrance we had to leave our shoes outside, as well as Pedro's lighter, tabaco and a pack of playing cards. No addictions were allowed inside.

Sri Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple - "is one of the largest temple complexes in India, enclosed by a roughly rectangular 6m-high wal. It is very easy to get disoriented inside the confusing maze of shrines, sculptures and colonnades. Quite apart from the estimated 33000 sculptures to arrest all our attention, the life of the temple is absolutely absorbing, with brahmin boys under religious instructions wandering through the temple, the prostrations of countless devotes and approximately fifty priests that are living and working inside".

The temple was just amazing. No doubt one of the best places we have been in India so far. We took a lot of pictures of the amazing colorful mandalas covering the ceiling, the multicolored mythological figures, we were on the front line of the shiva ceremony, we got lost, we took pictures with an elephant and we just stared looking at the people's prayers. We are not an experts in Hindu religion so we could have payed for a guide to help us understanding all the details inside that religious maze but we are not actually that much interested in religion history, but for those who are this is a place that must be visited!

On our second day, we woke up excited about our next volunteering adventure in an orphanage in Tamil Nadu, so we thought about asking our family and friends for donations so that we can surprise the kids with nice presents! After visiting the Gandhi museum, where we learned a lot about Indian history, we created the post on facebook. Immediately we got a bunch of likes but we tried to ignore it and kept enjoying the day visiting the city around. We also got a bit tired and simply enjoyed watching movies in our room, it's not always that we get rooms with TV and channels with movies in English... for dinner we went to the amazing Indian Restaurant again.. the food there was really nice! :) Still thinking about our post on facebook and how the reactions were, we went to the lobby before going to sleep but god gave us a lesson in order not to be impatient.. in seconds, we were attacked by mosquitos and we had to run back to the room!

On our third day, it was time to check out... luckyly the hotel manager allowed us to keep the room until 13h45, we slept late and used the room until the last minute. Our bus was only at 23h... we tried to visit the city but Pedro was starting to get sick and was with low energy to walk around... also we were very curious about how well was our donation campaign going so we decided to go back to the Emperor where we had WiFi so we could track the progress! At the end we don't know if it was a good idea because it was very windy in the rooftop and Pedro ended up feeling worst. We went back to the hotel and just chilled in the sofas in the lobby area. At one point we felt like we needed to walk to get tired so that we could handle the bus trip, we went to another side of the city and ended up finding nice things like a huge statue of coloured cow in the middle of the street. After two weeks eating Indian food we felt like we needed something different, back in the hotel, we asked for a recommendation and the guy suggested the "British Bakery". We went crazy and didn't think about the budget... we had fried chicken burgers, melted cheese toast and a veg burger... a total crasiness if we think about our budget... around 450 ruppies (more or less 6eur)!!!!

Madurai ended up being a really nice place.. even though we are getting a bit tired of the crazy India, Madurai surprised us in a positive way. We felt well and the temples are beautiful. It is good not to have expectations, usually when that happens we are positively surprised!