Nadunaadu Bike Trip: Part 2 - Mamandur

Mamandur is just 10 km away from Kanchipuram in Vandavasi road. We reached mamandur after crossing Dusi. Initially it was confusing to reach the place, since the local people were showing us two paths. But luckily we found the right one that had motorable road till the gate. The gate was closed with a big lock but the local boys who were playing near by told us the secret that the lock is just for show and if we remove the chain we can go inside.

What is in Mamandur ?

Cave Temples. Yes, As I have mentioned earlier, Pallavas started the experiment of building temples using stones in South India. The first phase of this experiment was cave temples like the ones in Mamandur. Then came the temples that are bulit using a single rock like the five rathas in Mahabalipuram. Then they built the magnificient Shore temple and Kailasanathar temples.

There are four cave temples in Mamdur. From the inscriptions here, it is known that these temples were bulit by the Pallava king Mahendravarman I in 7th century. The first cave is dedicated to Narasimha.

In the inscription on the first cave, the lines 12 and 13 say that the king wanted to achieve what was not achieved before in the field of music. Mahendravaraman I was excelled in many arts and thus got many names like Vichitra Chitta, Chitrakara puli, etc.

The second cave has three sanctom sactorums belong to the three gods; Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. This can be identified by the dhavara balagas sculpted for all these sanctoms. From the inscription here, we can know that the shiva temple here was called as Uruttiravaliswaram. 

Also the small lake nearby called 'Chitramega Tadaka' was also built by Mahendravarman I.

I can give you more facts about the cave temples but that would be just copy pasting from this post. So instead of that I would recommend you to read this, if you want to know more about these temples.

PS: There is a place called Mandagapattu nearby. From the inscriptions there, it is said that it was the first ever cave temple made by Mahendravaraman I. Thus we can say that it is the oldest temple of tamilnadu. Read this blogpost to know more about the place.

Nadunaadu Bike Trip: Part 1 - Kanchipuram

In Jab We Met, Shahid and Kareena discuss the fear of missing a train and running on the platform to catch it. My phobia is just opposite of it. I always fear that I will miss my station and sleep off on the train. That's why I prefer bus than trains. Even then, there was one incident when I slept off in a bus and got down in Kovilpatti instead of Virudunagar. But I will tell you about that in an another blog post.

It was the weekend of Republic day. Usually, my inner GPS works perfectly for bus trips. That day also, I woke up just when the cleaner boy shouted 'Kanchipuram' on a pitch that was not too loud to wake all the passengers but enough to wake those who should get down there. I used to wear contact lenses those days. And when I travel I wore them through day and night. When I wake up with those lenses, it takes a couple of minutes for the lenses to adjust from the dry state to normal. Even before I have those two minutes of eye adjustment, an auto driver rushed to me and asked where I wanted to go.

It was an early morning but still dark. I noticed that I wasn't standing on a bus stand. So I told him, brother, give me a minute, let me first check where I am standing. I took my mobile out, opened Google Maps and found out that I was standing on the by-pass road and need to get inside the city. There were only two autos there and thankfully only a few passengers got down. My friends had messaged me in the Whatsapp group(we create a separate group for each trip even though mostly it will have only the three of us!) that they have already reached (that's a first!) and took a room in Shri Moushiga Hotels.

When I reached the hotel, Sathya and Adhi were already there from Bengaluru on Sathya's bike. The other bike is coming from Chennai with Santhosh who is a wildcard entry on this trip.

Before starting the trip, let's know about at Kanchipuram first. It is one of the ancient cities in India. The reference to this city can be found in Patanjali's Mahabhasya. It is mentioned in Mahabaratha that Kanchi was supporting Gouravas in the final war. According to Wikipedia, The earliest inscription from the Maurya period (325–185 BCE) denote the city as Kanchipuram, where King Visnugopa was defeated by Samudragupta Maurya (320–298 BCE).

It was the capital for Early Cholas and later to the Pallavas. The great poet Kalidasa had praised this city as 'Nagareshu Kanchi' which means 'the best among cities'.

The whole city can be divided into three parts; Siva Kanchi, Vishnu Kanchi and Jaina Kanchi. It is said that there are thousand temples in this city. But in this trip, we tried to cover only a few temples in Siva and Vishnu Kanchi.

Kanchi Kailasanathar Temple

Sice we had a lot to cover for the day, we decided to see the Kailasanathar temple first and then have our breakfast. But unfortunately, when we reached the kailasanathar temple, it wasn't opened yet. Due to our time constraint, we just looked around the outer prakaram and moved on to the next temple.

Even though our early kings had built many temples with bricks, it was Pallavas who started building temples with stones in the early period(in southern India I believe). The two important temples that show the grandness and architecture intelligence of Pallavas are Mahabalipuram shore temple and Kanchi Kailasanathar temple.

The king Narasimmavarman II built this temple around 700 AD. Since he was also called as 'Rajasimman', this temple also got the name 'Rajasimmecharam'. The temple is built using sandstone.

When the Chalukya defeated the Pallavas, the Chalukya king Vikramathithya II took the Pallava sculptors to his kingdom and the queen Lokhamadevi built the Virupaksha Temple in Pattadakal to commemorate the king's victory. So these two temples have some resemblance.

Varadharaja Perumal Temple

After finishing our breakfast, we moved to Vishnu Kanchi. Kanchi Varadharaja Perumal temple is very important to Vaishnavaites next to Srirangam and Thirupathi. It is believed that it was a cave temple during the period of Pallavas and later expanded by Cholas in 1053 AD. The Vijayanagara Empire also built the East Gopuram, Oonjal Mandapam, and Kalyana Mandapam.

The Kalyana mandapam has 96 pillars-each are made of single stone and a small mandapam with four pillars inside. So totally it has 100 pillars.

Since it is a very old temple, many mythological stories are said about the temple and the gold and silver lizards in it. One of those is, once sage Gautama cursed his disciples to turn into lizards since they were careless and there was a lizard in the water they brought for him to do pooja. It is believed that they lived in this temple and got relieved of their curse by Vishnu. 

Yes.. I'm the one who is explaining :)

Apart from the main stone idol, the temple also has wooden idol which is made out of Athi tree and kept inside the temple tank in a silver box. For every 40 years, it is taken out and kept inside the temple for a month and poojas are done for it.

Ekambareswarar Temple

Our next stop was Thirukachi Ekambaram alias Ekambareswarar temple. It is one of the pancha bootha sthalam and particularly signifies Earth. This temple was also initially built by Pallavas and later expanded by Cholas and the Vijayanagara Kingdom.

The lord here has a beautiful Tamil name called 'Thazhuva Kuzhainathar', which means 'he who melted in her embrace'. The legend says that Parvati created a lingam out of sand in the river bank of Vegavathi and worshipped Shiva under a mango tree. To test her, Lord Shiva made the river to overflow. To save the lingam from the flood, Parvati hugged the lingam tightly. Due to this embrace, the lingam melted and got its present form.

Since the Lingam was under a mango tree, it also got its present name 'Ekambaram', which came from 'amram' to 'ambaram' and finally into 'ekambaram'. The sthala virutcham here is Mango tree and it is believed to be 3500 years old. It is also believed that it can yield four type of mangoes from its four branches. In the recent years, they have revived the tree using tissue culture method with the help of agriculture department.

It is also known as the place, where Sundarar got his left eyesight back. Please remember this name, since we will see his name in many places on this trip. I will explain his full story when the time comes.

The mango tree..

The other two temples we planned to visit in Kanchipuram were Kanchi Kamatchi amman temple and Vaikunta Perumal temple. But the line in the Kamatchi amman temple was really long and the Vaikunta Perumal temple was not opened that morning due to the sudden demise of an old person residing near to the temple. 

Since we had a lot to cover on that day, we vacated our room on noon and started our bike trip towards our next destination, Mamandur.

A Road Trip in Srilanka: Day 6 - The End

You might have noticed that I mentioned Colombo in my previous post but didn't say much about the city. That is because we did not see much places there. The only sightseeing we did was, watching some luxurious hotels in their full glory on the night.

In morning, we did not want to jeopardise our departure to the airport by doing some extra sightseeing. So after having our breakfast in a 'Saravana Bhavan' style hotel with our friend's uncle's friend who arranged his van for our trip, we thanked him and did some shopping on the streets. Later we went to a mall on the way to the airport and bought some t-shirts there also.

I was little nervous about reaching the airport on time because of the traffic but we made it on time. After saying goodbye to our driver and the unforgettable van that gave us all these memories, we proceeded to check in. Some our friends bought chocolates from the duty-free shops in departure area for their colleagues. I could not find any connection between our Sri Lanka trip and the chocolates that are definitely not made in Sri Lanka, so I did not buy any.

And within forty-five minutes of our departure, we reached Madurai. Since all our buses were on the night, we decided to book some rooms in a hotel and take rest for the day.

Later in the evening, we took a walk to find Kumar Mess because all that Yogesha could think was 'I want to eat a good meal.Dot!' We were also in the same mindset. On the way, Adithya showed us Sethupathy Higher Secondary School were Barathiyar worked as a teacher.

If you ask Sathya, Yogesha and Me (Since others are Vegetarians) which was your favourite meal during this trip, we would definitely say this one. It became the best meal we had on this trip and the Crab Omelette I had here became the most memorable item about this trip for me. After the dinner, we had the famous Jigarthanda of Madurai in the nearby 'Famous Jigarthada Kadai'.

Since all of my friends came from Bengaluru they started together early for their bus after dinner. And as usual, Being the first person to start and end this trip always, I vacated the rooms by midnight and started towards Kovai.

When I reached home on Monday morning, I had the luxury of having rest for two hours before starting for my office.

(Now to the conclusion.. Damn.. I hate this part.. It has to be wholesome about the trip and awesome..Hmm.. Let's try it..)

This was my first trip outside India. From memories of friends almost getting arrested to engaged guys purchasing handbags for their future wives, it has given all kind of memories.I remember my first sleepless night on Kandy, watching the full moon through the open window/door and wondering how the coming six days are going to be. I remember the petty fights they had between them and how GB almost played a Lakshmi Ramakrishnan of 'Solluvathellam Unmai'. I remember how my friends were disappointed after climbing Sigiriya. I remember their happiness after India winning the match against Bangladesh.

I wouldn't say that everything was perfect. But 'Ethu Nadanthatho athu Nadragave Nadanthathu'.

With our driver and the van..

PS: I have this nature of comparing and calculating the cost for everything before starting a trip and never calculate the total expense after completing the trip.So I am not sure how much I had totally spent on this trip, but it should be around INR 25000 including food, accommodation and travel. The rent for the van was not included in this since it was taken care by Sathya's uncle. But if we had to pay it, it would have added another INR 40,000 as a whole to the group.

A Road Trip in Sri Lanka: Day 5 - Kataragama, Galle and Colombo

Kataragama

The morning dawned earlier and when we shared the information about the temple we got from our driver to others, they were also confused. After having some appams from a small tea shop in front of our lodge, we started towards the temple. We were early and the temple wasn't opened yet. So we paid a visit to the Buddhist Vihara behind the temple and spent some time there. Some of our friends were still hungry and had some more breakfast in the name of annadhanam. Later we entered the Kathirkamam Karthikeyan temple and worshipped the curtain. We learned that instead of an idol, a yantra placed is placed behind the curtain.

The story here is, this is the place where Lord Murugan married Valli who was a tribal princess. There is a place nearby called 'Little Kataragama' (Okanda) where Lord Muruga's elder brother Vinayagar came as an elephant to scare Valli so that Murugan can 'rescue' her.

There is also a museum in the temple complex.It has many ancient sculptures that explain the history of the place. It has a souvenir shop too and I bought my souvenir here. My friend and I were planning to bargain the price but later found out that the items had discount and we got those for the price we wanted. Earlier we were thinking about visiting the Yala National Park nearby but later dropped it due to time constraints.

Our next stop was Galle.

Galle Fort

For South Indians, it is easy to imagine Galle. If you have visited the old french streets of Pondicherry, just imagine it on a larger scale and you got Galle fort. Galle Fort, in the Bay of Galle on the south-west coast of Sri Lanka, was built first in 1588 by the Portuguese, then extensively fortified by the Dutch during the 17th century from 1649 onwards.

We reached there at lunch time and after some argument about which hotel to choose, we had a proper good lunch at a not so cheap hotel. Now we had a lot of time to spend in Galle and we split into small groups like the ones went to the beach, ones who wanted to shop and the rest who just wanted to have a walk inside the fort. I was in the 'rest' category and was just roaming through the well-planned streets and looking at the architecture. We even saw a Tesla car there.

Tesla.. Not to be confused with the above one..

Shops.. And Yes, The guy going behind the girls is one of my friend only..

Later all of us joined near the lighthouse and enjoyed the evening sunset and the performance of a snake charmer nearby. Since we felt Galle would be costly to stay, we decided to reach Colombo by that night itself. We felt it would be more easy for us to go to the airport on the next day afternoon.

It was one of the wisest decision we have taken during the trip. But we had already done a major blunder related to it. Initially, we thought that we won't make it Colombo for the last day stay and we had cancelled it. Now we had to search for rooms after we reach there.

Some of my friends wanted to have the dinner at 'Madras Cafe' which was popularly said as a place where the assassination plan of Rajiv Gandhi was hatched. Personally, I was not sure how much that story was accurate and whether the Madras Cafe now in Wellawatta is that Madras Cafe.

When we reached there, it was past nine and the shop was closed. It looked mostly like a fast food joint which reasserted my belief. Anyhow, now we were out of options for restaurant and lodge. We started our search. Or to be precise, Yogesha was doing it. Finally, he found a small shop which had some veg dishes and Kothu Parotta. We left the job of finding a lodge to our driver and after some phone calls, we reached the 'Ajantha Rest Inn'.

I have read about the Nazi concentration camps and now I know how they look. I know it was very inappropriate to say that but that's how I felt. I am still amazed how we got the enough air for three or four people on that night inside that windowless room and still alive in the morning.

A Road Trip in Sri Lanka: Day 2 - Kandy and Nuwara Eliya

Kandy

The day started earlier. As I have mentioned earlier, we were without a plan. When we discussed our idea with the driver we realised that we have booked the rooms for two days in Kandy and it would be vain to return Kandy if we visit Dambulla and Sigiriya on the same day. So we decided to visit Nuawara Eliya on that day.

Our first place on today's list was Kandy Palace and the Tooth Temple. During old times, the capital city of Sri Lanka was changed from time to time, mostly because of the Chola attacks from India. Each of these capitals has a seperate temple for the Tooth relic of Buddha which was brought to Sri Lanka by Hemamali, the princess of Kalinga and her husband Dhantha. Being the last capital of Old Sri Lanka, the tooth relic finally rests here.

There is an audio guide available in the ticket counter and the photography is allowed inside the temple too. After visiting the temple, museum and the palace, you can visit ' The World Buddhism Museum' too. I have never seen a vast museum dedicated to Buddhism like this. Each asian country has a separate hall in the museum to show how Buddhism came into their country and how it has grown now. The India, China and Korean halls look amazing with so much data. But photography is not allowed inside the museum.

Inside the Tooth Temple

After seeing the palace, we came to the highway by walk and had our breakfast in Balaji Dosai. The dosai were not bad. And I had my first ever Ginger Beer here. I could definitely taste the ginger but I'm pretty sure that there was not even a hint of beer in it.

Then we started our journey towards Nuawara Eliya. Along the way I could see all the Hindu temples were celebrating Thai Poosam. Here Lord Murugan is the most popular god. On the way we could see a hill with a building and tower on its top. Our driver said that it was built recently and the view would be good from there. I still don't understand why did we took that detour.

The 'Ambuluwawa Multi Religious Center' was recently built by the President Rajapakse to honour all the religions. The place is almost deserted except from some couples who had taken sanctuary in some of the hidden corners. The view from the tower was great but I would advice you not to waste your precious time here if you are a foreigner travelling in Sri Lanka.

Nuwara Eliya

When we reached Nuwara Eliya around two or three in the afternoon I woke from my nap with a rumbling hungry stomach. The weather was good and we thought may be it was not such a bad idea to come here. We had our lunch at Sri Ambaal's.

Nuwara Eliya is a hill station with some old colonial buildings. It has some parks, a lake and some valley view points. The popular view point is called 'World's End'. When we finished our lunch it was already evening. While proceeding to the world's end, our driver said that since we have to do a trek inside the park to get to the point, the entry might be closed when we reach there. We had also planned to meet our vehicle owner who is a friend of Sathya's relative and lives nearby. When we called him, he told that he was not in home and we can meet him on the last day in Colombo. Now we were clueless about what to do next.

PS: If you want to know more about World's End, check this post.

On that time, we had realised that we had to do some serious planning or else we will loose some precious time wandering off. We hit the Lake Gregory park and while some of our friends were testing their kite flying skill, Sathya had a discussion with our driver. Soon we realised that our driver is a vivid fan of Obama. Whatever plan we propose, his answer was 'Yes! We can!!'. But thankfully Sathya took the responsibility of planning the trip by suo moto and laid out a plan.

While returning we stopped at Mackwoods Labookellie Tea Centre to buy some tea as souvenirs. The tea seemed costly but my parents said it tasted good when I returned back. At the tea cafe we got some free tea with our cakes probably because of where we come from.

Till then the day was treated as somewhat boring and wasted. But the day was not over!

We returned to Kandy at night, and stopped at a small hotel to have our dinner. I tried the Egg Kothu Parotta there and declared it as the national dish of Sri Lanka and decided to have it for dinner as long as I stay here. It was the best among the worst.

During that time the World T20 series was going on and we saw the first innings of India batting while having dinner at the hotel. It was around nine when we finished our dinner and we decided to hit KFC to watch the second innings. To pose as customers we decided to buy some ice cream while we were there. There was a small dining room adjacent to kitchen apart from the main dining area and we sat there and watched the match. The people working there were also watching the match with us and they were supporting Bangladesh. Whenever I went to buy some ice creams there was a wicket fall and my friends didn't mind to have more ice creams. We were rooting for India and the waiters for Bangladesh, it was almost like a Horse Race Club. When the match went to the final ball, we were all jumped from our seats to see whether Dhoni got the batsman and indeed he did! We were all shouting in joy and the employees there went little sad. Later we shook hands with them saying 'Good Game' and left the KFC.

That just made our day!

A RoadTrip in Sri Lanka: Day 1- Madurai to Colombo

The Arrival

Even though the flight was on Tuesday afternoon, for me, the trip started officially on Monday night. Since I was the only person to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai before the rest of the party who started from Bengaluru. Even though I booked in the last bus to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai by 4 am. But I had a plan to kill time till my friends arrive. And I was luckily on time for where the visitors barge into the biggest house in the city and wake its owners every day morning.

If i start to give a brief introduction to Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple, then this blog wont be enough. So leaving you to Google about it, I will continue to the events. So every morning the priests wake the holy couple from palliyarai (bed room) and then the pooja starts for Meenakshi first. In a way, I feel bad for the gods because these priests always start the pooja on time and the gods cannot say ‘Today is holiday, please let me sleep for a while’. But Sokkanathar is lucky; he gets another 30 minutes of nap time before the pooja starts for him.

I watched all the pooja, bought a book about the temple and was watching the pigeons thinking what to do next. At that time my friends have reached. Then we took a cheap room beside the temple and got ready. Again I went to the temple with my friends and finished the breakfast with Sakkarai Pongal from the Prasada Counter and Poori and Pongal from the Kaiyendi Bavan nearby.

Now the time has arrived for us to depart. We reached the Madurai airport; checked in at the SpiceJet counter and got the immigration slips. The procedure was simple; just answered a couple questions in the counter about why I am going to Sri Lanka, how we all got together and planned a trip (Yes, I did mention the whatsapp group),and we all got cleared and boarded the plane.

The plane trip was surprisingly short and even before I finish my Chicken Tikka Sandwich, the pilot has announced that we will start descending to Colombo soon. I did try to look out the window and guess on which part of the Indian coastline we are crossing by comparing it with map.. 

Do you know that each flight in SpiceJet fleet is named after a spice ?

Now we reached the crucial part of our trip: Clearing the immigration in Sri Lanka. Since the beginning of this plan I had many nightmares regarding this, like my visa would not be approved for some silly reasons and I would be asked to return immediately in the next flight. But the real was totally opposite to it. 

I filled the form, approached an officer and spoke only three sentences. 'Hi, Good afteroon!'; 'I work in Indian Overseas Bank.'; 'Yes, We do have a branch in Colombo.'. That's it! My visa is approved! It was so short that we thought there might be a second round of questioning before we exit. But before we know we are out of the airport.

If I could relate that event to an film scene it would be the interview scene of Prakash Raj in 'Abhiyum Naanum'. No one asked me about Bucephalus nor NOC. Then we proceeded to buy the local sims. I have forgotten the exact prices of tourist sims but remember these; Airtel was the costliest; Hutch offered more for less money but couldn't get 3G in most of the places; and Mobitel gives you value for money. If you had liked my instagram photos I posted during my visit, then you have to thank Yogesha for getting that Mobitel sim.

The manager of the place where we booked in Kandy has requested us to pick another guy who is coming from Norway and staying in the same hostel with us. When we asked how to find him he told us that the Norway guy will find us. And as it is, he found us with in five minutes. I believe that manager would have told, look out for the guys who look like natives but standing there with out any clue of where to go next.

Then Sathya called our driver and the van came. It's a Toyota Hiace. Before continuing about the trip, I should say more about this van. I believe almost 80 percent of the four wheeler market in Sri Lanka belongs to Toyota. In that, more than half are Hiace. I have never seen a van model where it  is customised into so many variety and used widely. During our visit, I have seen many variants of Hiace like tourists cabs, home purpose, school van, ambulance, etc..

Within minutes of getting into the van we have realised that we cant rely on the AC of the van on this trip. We knew it was on but we couldn't feel it. We started to Kandy and on the way we stopped at Hotel Euro Star to have our first Sri Lankan meal. I don't want to comment much about the food we had there, except to mention that the Chicken Biryani I had there was my first and last Sri Lankan Chicken Biryani during my entire trip.

Then the road trip continued towards Kandy. Soon we have noticed that the shuffle of the van’s music player repeatedly started playing the first song in my USB for every two or three songs. And the distance from the airport to Kandy looked not so far in the map but the winding road just keeps going on and on. Now some of us started to doze off and other intellectuals like Yogesha were having a conversation with the Norwegian guy about the life in India and Norway. Suddenly Adhithya got the doubt whether Frost Giants really live in Norway or people in Norway at least believe in it like we do! 

The rest of day was just slow and finally we reached Kandy. Without Google maps and Sathya, we would have never found our place, the Kandy City Hostel. We checked in there and left to have our dinner. It took us a couple of kilometres and nearly twenty minutes to reach the main area of Kandy by walk. And to our surprise most of the hotels were shut. Then we came to know that it was a New Moon day and all new moon days are national holidays in Sri Lanka. 

Our vegetarian friends couldn’t find any hotels, so they decided to have some Veg burgers from KFC. but others luckily found a hotel open. We ordered some items but the waiter brought some other items saying only these are available. Now I felt that my vegetarian friends are more lucky. The one unique thing I found here was the food items are placed in a tray and you can take how much ever you want and get bill only for those. 

Then we joined the Veg eaters in KFC and met a guy who was proudly saying to us that the greatest cricket batsman Sangakkara’s home is beside his. Since we didn’t want to upset him by comparing Sangakkara with Virat, we left the KFC soon. We had taken a bedroom with ac and a couple of beds in a dormitory room. I got the dorm and took a lower bed near the balcony. Due to the humidity, we decided to leave the windows and balcony door wide open and I could clearly see the ‘Poya Day’ moon. 

I could feel that the coming week is going to be fun but I was feeling nervous also. I was struggling to get sleep and when I finally fell asleep, I got a night full of nightmares with all my banking transactions running inside my mind in huge LKR and un tallied Lots(A Lot is a combination of credit and debit).

Thanks to Google for always watching me from above!