Thanjavur - Brihadeeswara Temple

Religious revellers on their way to the sea.

 The main road south, that goes through local towns.

 Peanuts drying in the road.

 A full load.

 One of two gopura (or gate) leading to Brihadeeswara Temple.

The second gopura. 

 Brihadeeswara Temple with the massive tower at the rear.

 Local devotees.

Lord Shiva's bull which is his transport.

Thursday, March 1^st.

We loaded up right after breakfast and began a 4 to 5-hour drive south. As we left Pondicherry we drove past a number of processions from different temples that were heading to the sea as this is a holy time with the full moon and the beginning of spring. They were pulling colourful floats covered in flowers.

I sat up front and watched the road as we drove. This is the main route south but it is hardily a proper highway. The road wound through towns and rural areas and the traffic was a mix of public buses, motorbikes, pedestrians, carts pulled by ox and a few trucks. It made driving slow and an obstacle course for our driver. The road was only one lane each way and sometimes narrow than that, in particular two large one lane bridges. In many areas police put barricades on the road, one on each lane so that traffic has to slow to go around them. But the really crazy thing was I saw five or six times a piece of tree branch on half a lane that was obviously put there to stop vehicles from driving over the peanuts that were drying on the road! Even Thoufeeq said that was crazy.

We stopped at a hotel restaurant for dinner and we all had a plate of eight different little bowls of differently spiced and prepared vegetables with a paratha and a poppadom and a glass of fresh orange juice. We drove for another hour to our hotel in Thanjavur and checked in. 

An hour later we met again in the lobby and drove to Brihadeeswara Temple. This has been given the name Big Temple. It was originally constructed in 1010. It is beautiful and massive. It is made and carved from granite that was dragged 60 kilometres from a quarry by elephants and oxen. The temple is partially surrounded by a fort wall that was built in the 16^th century and a moat. It has two large entrance gates with hundreds of statue carvings of Lord Shiva and his different incarnations. There is an inner courtyard that served the area culturally, socially, politically and religiously. In the centre is a huge temple that has a massive 15 storey tall tower which is again covered in carvings. We were allowed to go into the temple, but not take photos. We lined up with the faithful and went in a long corridor to where a holy man was blessing people. We had a local guide who gave us lots of information, but a lot of it goes over our heads. As you can imagine over the last 1000 years the temple has seen some conquests, some wars, different rulers and has been used, renovated, damaged and restored by many different peoples, both local and colonial. But it has withstood all of it and is truly amazing, especially when you think of the work that went into carving all of this granite. The local people were very welcoming of us with lots of smiles and some wanted to take pictures with us. The women in particular were dressed in their best go to temple colourful clothing. We were there for a couple of hours.

Then we returned to our hotel to freshen up before dinner at 7:30.