Narthamalai & Tanjore

Sometimes it just seems crazy for one to be willing to go see some unknown, how much you crave for some sort of escape from human company, and rush to obscure places searching, searching for something that you know can be disappointing, might not even be there, and could all be a wild goose chase, but you still persist for that one good snap.

NO, this one wasn’t it, though I do like the emotions, the deepness, the character displayed in the same, I was talking more on the likes of this one.

 OR, this one.....

Was browsing for ruins on the net (apparently those are the only places that seem to attract me anymore, a passion for the ancient if you will, my psychiatrist words it differently though) in South India and chanced upon this one called Narthamalai someplace off Trichy. So with nothing else to do on a Friday night, the ticket was booked at 7 p.m., and the bus was duly boarded at 11 pm (not without the usual running at the last minute to the moronically out of the way Koyumbedu bus stand, which has become a sort of tradition now). The sleeper (yes, there was enough space to lie down) made good time to reach Trichy at 6 in the morning, booked a room with the famous VijEy hotels (yes, the brandname is with an E). A shower and a couple of idlis later (I know, I would’ve preferred some paranthas cooked by mom, but beggars can’t be ……) was out asking around the bus stand for some place whose name most people gawked at. Well I had to ask for the bus to Pudukottai (I’ve become adept at finally pronouncing these names right now), and finally I was seated in the bus for the 45 minute ride. The weather gods were gentle, as there wasn’t much humidity in the air, and the sun shining bright. No perceptible signs of a bus stand are visible to announce the small town of N (don’t expect me to write that name again and again).

The small crossroad bus stand is one I’m familiar with a lot now. Just a couple of lonely souls standing here and there, a dainty corner shop, and small country roads branching out as an offshoot in either direction to the main road. To be fair, there was more than one shop here, and the country roads were laid with tarcoal, even a small sign announcing a Siva temple somewhere down the road. The path is dotted with Banyan trees, with the nice vines hanging out, reaching out for mother earth.

 In the horizon through the trees one can see the various hillocks, nice hiking spot no doubt, easy slopes that a novice can traverse without breaking too much sweat. The small paths through the shrubbery are quite inviting, but in an unknown land, I prefer to stick to the main path. After a 2-2.5 km walk, there’s still no trace of the hill I was looking for; I decided to let go of the male ego (sacrilege, I know) which had hitherto stuck to its own superior sense of navigation based on the intensive study of the area on google maps (5 whole minutes to be precise) and approached the locals. Now, its never easy when you don’t know the local language, & harder still when you don’t really remember the exact name of the site you wish to visit (Vijayalaya Choleeswaram temple, you can see how it want easy for me to remember this one). Having satisfied both these necessary conditions, I proceeded to the usual dance of awkward 2 minutes of English-Tamil, complete with elaborate hand gestures and human emotions ranging from frustration to helplessness. 

I carried on the path I had seen already, and sure enough, there is the temple ruin hiding behind the gentle slope. The hilltop is no more than 200-300 meters long, but if you have stayed as well in shape as me, then you’d be huffing in the sun as well. The layered rocks are a treat to walk on, and with not a soul in sight (something tells me not many people come here), the land is for me to conquer easily. The wind is thankfully blowing, and already filled up with a couple of bottles of water, the going is easy.The base of the hill is laced with a few haystacks, reminding one that he is in the Indian countryside, a countryside where almost every thatched roof I looked at had a dish antenna, but the countryside nonetheless. On the walk up, you can also see the lotus pond, probably looks better when it’s raining, but the lotuses are still there. 

Midway through to the hilltop, there’s this small rectangular structure housing a small Ganesha statue. Beside this are small depressions in the hill which are filled with water, even without much rain. 

Incidentally, had seen a few pics on the net which showed the expanse before the hill occupied by a nice big lake, but in this weather all I see is a comparatively little watering hole, with the goats enjoying their bath. Was tempted to join the beasts, but the lure of the partially hidden ruins was just too good to resist. 

Once the rock formation slopes down a bit to the other side, you get the first full glimpse of this architectural beauty. Fine, it might not be as majestic as some others, neither is the artwork something over which wars would be fought, but it has something that simply cannot be described; nestled in a small pocket of the hill, it just gels in so beautifully with the surroundings, the stones on the temple mimicking the color of the hill like a silent chameleon over the ages, sitting mute right there, withering away with time.

Not a soul in sight I sat there to catch my breath, under the shade of the temple. Sadly its locked up, so all you can see is the façade, the Shiva cave in front is also locked up. Nice of them though to put out some of the statue remains, some looking like a weird sphinx, others just rows of animals I can’t really describe. The main structure of the temple is surrounded with 8 smaller shrines, and a nandi to boost. 

Most of them empty, with the lone diya inside suggesting someone once in a while comes in and still offers homage to the deity. The poor temple has probably seen better days, but like most other places of old, its succumbing to the elements. The notice from the ASI does mention some work being done to restore it, but that's just what it would be RE-store, not preserve.

The wall partition on the outside overlooks the side of the hill, and provides a nice vantage point, sit here and gaze into the horizon for hours on end. Just a stones throw away are the other hillocks of the region, and the lazy slope of every one of them seems easy enough for even a novice to traverse. Have to try out all of these hills another day, maybe one that does not leave sunburns on my skin! The best part is to sit atop one of these hills, the one that has almost a vertical fall on one side, now that is a view.

Now that the temple complex had been explored, I soldiered on to get to the top of the hill, and rightly so. The top of the hill provides one with a really nice shot of the entire temple complex, have always been a fan of the aerial shots that can provide a view from the top, take in the entire scene in one full swoop, and not just the side profile of it. 

After a couple of shots from the top, headed down to base, stopping by here and there to horse around. The vegetation consisted of a lot cacti, big ones rather, and clicked one with a  human being for the perspective.The walk down wasn't that bad either, it was the walk back to the bus stop, filled with some stops to look at the local shops, and a lot of hydration. 

A couple of hours, a quick meal, a shower, and 2 bus rides later I landed up at Tanjore. This place wasn't really on my wish list, but had heard a lot of the big temple, and so decided to visit it as well. Well, the Brihadeeswarar Temple, or the big temple as it’s called did not disappoint. It was massive, with the conical shaped high rises making up for some pleasant viewing. Supposedly, it’s the biggest temple in India, and together with the other 2 Chola temples at Darasuram and Gangaikonda Cholapuram, makes up ‘the great living Chola temples’. 

The temple, made of Granite, is indeed a treat, there’s nothing too great in the sculptures in terms of artwork methinks, but it’s this simplicity on such a grand scale which seems to mesmerize one. The only harrowing ordeal was when I decided to visit the main statue as well – a huge Shiva ling (not to hurt the religious sentiments of anyone, but as a good friend of mine describes it “its just a d***”). That turned out to be 20 minutes of standing in a cramped column, sweating profusely with hundreds of devotees packed together shoulder to shoulder, and moving at a snails pace inside the not ventilated rooms.

With the experience over (I’m not a fan of the religious sites, or the activities) I switched over my attention to the murals on the inner side of the outer wall. The wall is lined with Shiva lings – all of which seem just a bit different, some a bit more circular than the others, but the paintings are the ones that catch my attention- though most of them are crumbling away from the walls, they still retain enough of their earlier glory, letting the passerby know that once the artists took pride in their work. I can’t really decipher the sequence of events that these paintings depict, to me they are just remnants of an era when man had faith, and probably also an imagination that should put the avatars and the likes to shame.

The outer wall of the main sanctum is peppered with different dance poses (Bharathanatyam, Wikipedia tells me), and details the pains that were taken to carve it out on the Granite.The smaller Ganesha shrine is another one not to be missed, well, there are quite a few other sculpted delights here, so just posting the snaps. The Nandi at the entrance is also carved out of a single stone, and the dark shade of stone shine out nicely in the late noon sun.

It was quite difficult to take in a photo of the entire main shrine without the hordes coming in the way, but I did manage to sneak in a couple with minimal human intervention, and as always a couple with the sun in the background providing the silhouette. 

With a nice set of snaps in the bag and a splitting headache from the heat, I’d say that was one hell of a way to spend a weekend.

Good Lord's

Michael, the tour guide at this little known cricket stadium (I think they call it the Mecca of cricket or something like that) did turn out to be quite an entertaining fellow as he shepherded the group of 12 people crazy enough to take this tour on a bloody cold day, while the ground was covered with snow. The small museum that houses old snaps of cricketers and a few hand painted ones of later day famous ones also houses the original urn ‘Ashes’. The story is that in 1882, Australians defeated Englishmen in their home ground, and a sports writer wrote a scathing eulogy for English cricket. In the article he mentioned that the English cricket was dead and burned and Australians had taken the Ashes home with them. The public made some hue and cry asking the ashes to be brought back. Some time later, when the English were touring Aussies, they played a friendly game. After the game, one of the Australian cricketer’s wives decided to pull a small prank. She burnt one of the bails from the game played and presented it to the English captain as a gift, saying ‘ here are some ashes’. The fellow sportingly took them back with him to England and the urn remained with him till his death. The sports article is still kept there as well as the original urn in a glass case. The Ashes trophy presented nowadays is a replica of this one, as this does not leave its glass case.

The main tour takes us first into the famous long room in the main pavilion building. On a game day, the main table and the chairs around it are replaced completely with chairs on which the members of the club sit and enjoy the game. Having the capacity to seat about 2K people at a time, the club has a membership of around 18K, which poses a problem of sorts. Sometimes the members line up outside the main gate as early as 5 hours before the gates are opened to avail of the first come first seated rule. When the gates do open 2 hours before the game is to begin at 11 in the morning, there’s a mad scramble to get to the seats. Imagine a race where the average age of the sprinters is over 60, and all of them dressed in immaculately ironed suits, and well, you get the drift.

One of the doors in the in the long room leads to the bar, and according to the guide most players pass through here as well, and here was where Flintoff used to be confused as to which door to go through.

Next up is the home team’s dressing room, sadly no photography allowed. The seats all lined up along the four walls, with a big cube table in the middle. You have to be there to witness the stories that the guide narrates of numerous players’ escapades in that room, or how Matt prior broke the window, the area Pietersen keeps for his gloves and ego. Standing at the balcony right out this room, one can get a nice look of the entire field, which is covered with a thin layer of snow right now. Sadly, the visitors’ dressing room wasn’t accessible this time, so couldn’t see Dravid’s name on the wall boards there.

They also have a small ‘real tennis’ court in the ground premises, played with a small racquet, almost like squash, but has 2 sides like lawn tennis, but one can use the walls, I know, sounds weird! Next we move on to the spectator area, the Grand Stand, the white seats all folded up, and here finally thankfully, photography is allowed. On one side you can see the pavilion, and right opposite on the other end is the oval shaped JP Morgan media center, and between them is the big clock keeping time, so that the exhausted cricketers can break off for a cool one at the end of the day. So close to the green grass, yet can’t even walk on it, its completely forbidden. The pitch is completely covered in green grass, hard to believe that this is where the brown surface would be pounded on normally. On to the press center, which has been built using boat building technology, and stands right opposite to the pavilion. The story is, that when the plans for the weird oval structure of the center was shown to builders, most of them called it too crazy to be built, so they hired a shipbuilder to fashion the nice structure.

The tour ends , quite coincidentally ( in the tour guide’s words) at the gift shop, where you can buy some memorabilia, or just pose with one of the Lord’s hats, and call it a good day.

Edinburgh - a cold walk through history

Next time, I need to make sure I know the difference between a Coach and a train coach while traveling. It turned out that instead of a train bogey, the coach I had booked was a bus, so a bus it was at the Victoria bus station. After 8 hours of twitching and turning in the uncomfortable (!) seats, I awoke to the sight of the open countryside of Scotland. Just a few blocks resembling houses dotting the landscape, and the tiresome journey is forgotten. Out onto the Princes street, directions taken from the helpful people, and away we go to the Castle. I thought the London streets were peppered with old buildings, but the structures here were quite something else as well.

Well, I cross the North Bridge and onto the Castlehill high street to the top of the gently sloping road. A 15 minute walk on the cobbled street (yes indeed cobbled), the castle perched almost at the top of the city is quite something. And just before you enter you need to take in the view on both sides of the entrance path, one side lining the tall picturesque spires and the few monuments lining the other end of the road, and the other side occupied by mostly city buildings.

 The air is cool, a bit too cool maybe for my skin which is used to tees and shorts, so when I bravely decided to take the overcoat for a few seconds, sense took over and it was back on. The small moat at the entrance protects the only road leading up to the castle, the rest of the sides have steep falls, which would have made the castle quite difficult to capture. The 20 minute guided tour started at the main gate, and you can see the difference in the walls which have stayed the vagaries of numerous battles, battered, differentiated by bricks and stones of varying colors where the attackers would’ve torn them down. Pity, so few good things in this world do stand the test of time, rather of men. The guide kept pointing to various enhancements the Brits gave in Victorian style to give the castle a more pleasing look and be more suitable for the rich lords and ladies to reside and entertain in!

After the main gate there are a few cannons pointing out to the sea, but these came in much later in the 1800s. There’s another more modern cannon mounted a bit further up, and this one fires at 1 every day, hence its called the 1’o clock gun. The story goes that it reminded the town folk to set their clocks right. But why 1 and not 12 in the noon? Well, the guide said that that’s what everyone does, so the Scots didn’t. I did manage to catch the bang (and incidentally, that was his explanation for the phrase “bang on time”) later in the day, probably just a dud shell for noise, I’m guessing!

Further up on the cobbled path sloping up, on the left are the vaults where they used to keep the PoWs. The effects have been recreated, the cots, hammocks, tables , a bit of cutlery, even some conversation running in the background giving it a nice touch. It would be nice to visit this place in the evening in the fading light, and you would hear the slow whispers of the lives lost here, rotting away, while you walk past with your own. After that past the Chapel is the royal quarters, where they also have on display the royal scepter, crown and the coronation sword, and some royal jewels. Rightly so, they have a few guards here. The sword’s 5-6 pounds heavy and laced with gold, thus used mainly for coronation, and wasn’t the weapon of choice to fling around in the battlefield screaming ‘FREEDOM’.

And finally there’s a big block of stone called the stone of destiny along with all these precious articles. All kings and queens since centuries past have been coronated on this stone (probably kept under the throne out of sight, since its not much to look at, neither quite comfortable to park your rear on I’m guessing). The guide says that the Queen graciously returned the stone back to this place in the late 90s after a few centuries because she got bored of ‘sitting’ on it.

Next to these rooms are the weapon display rooms, spears, swords, pikes, and some later day muskets as well. Opposite this building is a beautiful hall where they’ve put up dedications to the soldiers who did in the period 1914-18 (but later extended to include all martyrs). The coat of arms displayed, the huge volumes filled with the names and ranks of he numerous who got slain in the line of duty, and their weapons are displayed. The inner chamber is even more breathtaking, it has a big statue of a soldier suspended from the ceiling, and the circular walls depict various scenes of valor, the artwork is quite something, sadly no pictures allowed here to respect the dead. There’s also the St Margaret’s Chapel, the only structure that has survived the tests of time in the castle. Probably the fear of the almighty deterred the attackers from besieging the Chapel, or it could be the huge cannon just outside the entrance, with cannon balls weighing 140-150 pounds.

After spending a good 3 hours in the castle and its small museums, it was time to move on, well, to the Scotch Whiskey experience. It’s just outside the castle entrance, for liquor enthusiasts a must see, but since I had too many things to see, it was a pass (not to mention a teetotaler wouldn’t enjoy the experience as much). A brief sandwich later at one of the watering holes in the city, St Giles Cathedral was the next stop up. I don’t think that one can capture the essence of the serenity inside here, even though it stands on one of the main roads in the city, shrouded by the dark clouds that cover the horizon, all of it fails to filter in through the tall tinted glasses of the Cathedral, which create colorful shadows of their own inside. With a nice 25-30 minute walk later, you reach the other end of the high street, which houses the Scottish parliament. The general public is allowed to enter, but I prefer to roam outside any day, even in the chill that had fallen over. The building though is designed to give the impression of an art gallery methinks. Opposite the parliament is the Hollyroads house, another exquisite building demonstrating the architectural façade to all those who wander here.

Now, I did want to see the Nelson monument, but I was cutting it a bit close to the return train’s time. On the walk back to the station, I chanced upon the ‘Jacob’s ladder’ just small steps seemingly leading across to the ‘other side’ where the monuments were. Indeed, it did ‘cross me over’ so to say. The small path, looked seldom frequented by mankind was lined on both sides with heavy bushes, but a short huffing and puffing journey later, it did ‘deliver’ me to the monuments I desired to visit. Now, the view from up here is something else, you have the city observatory at one end, the Nelson monument in the middle, and the National monument on the other extreme on the small hilltop. The last one reminds one of the front of the Parthenon, just a series of tall pillars standing there in the middle, and still being able to entice the passerby. It seems a place not frequented by many, which suits me just fine.

The lush green grass would be perfect to have a picnic on, overlooking the city towards the North and the great waterbody beyond. Ah, now wouldn’t that be something, pity I couldn’t be here in the springtime, for that is the time, I really would’ve enjoyed a walk barefoot on this grass. Well, another time then.