Madurai? Why would you want to go to Madurai?

Oh how true this is. Shit strewn streets, non stop hawking and nothing to do were what greeted us off our night train when we arrived in the state of Tamil Nadu.

We had made the trip to see India's tallest temples that WOULD be spectacular, if you could see them. They are covered in shonky looking bamboo and palm leaf scaffolding for maintenance and have been for the last 1-3 years, depending on who you ask. Our Rough Guide to India was published in Oct 2008 so I am guessing the naughty editors didn't bother sending anyone to Madurai to do an update, tut tut. Not really got a high opinion of Rough Guide either these days, infact they are as bad as Lonely Planet in our minds now.

After a few hours of feeling sorry for ourselves and checking into a stupidly expensive hotel for a backpacker budget, we changed our train out and made the most of our 1 day there by doing what we seem to do best, wandering the muddy smelly streets.

Admittedly these pics don't really look smelly or muddy, but I can assure you 99% of it was.

We decided to check out the temple complex anyway. The Meenakshi Sundareswarar temples are as I said the tallest in India and are decorated with amazing brightly coloured staues. This is what we should have seen. Pretty impresive eh! Imagine how gutted we were.
You can go inside the complex but the shrines are closed to non Hindus. The queues were huge and we are not sure if this was always the case. It does seem to be pilgrimage season in southern India right now and there are hoards of black lunghied, bare chested men with no shoes everywhere here. These are all on pilgrimages to various sites. I have to be honest I googled this pic below as I wouldn't feel comfortable photographing them.

We had a hilarious hour being talked at by excited schoolkids in the queue who had come from Bangalore for a 4 day pilgrimage tour of a few key places for Hindus. They were full of questions and kept pointing at Ed telling me how they wanted a London husband too! "Very handsome, very nice"

Once we were inside it all got very confusing and without knowing it we ended up in a queue for a shrine. It was only once we had been shouted at and told to get out by a horrible security guard and a sadhu that we realised and felt really quite discriminated against. After our lovely, open experience with the Sikhs in Delhi and Amritsar it was a shame that they were so unwelcoming to us. So we left and decided the temples really were off the cards altogether.

Because there is so little tourism in Madurai (why would you want to go to Madurai???) the hawking from the cycle rickshaws, autorickshaws and sales people was relentless. The worst we have had so far. I actually felt sorry for the locals there who rely on this as an income. There was one lady called Maria whom I took a particular shine to. She kept bhindi-ing me (a tactic to get me to talk to her a buy something of course) and she had a very nice manner about her. So if you do go to Madurai please go and buy something from her outside the temples. She has some very nice ankle bracelets that her husband makes and she sells.

The begging in Madurai was also the worst we had been confronted with. We have since realised that Tamil Nadu state has a problem with homelessness, begging and drug and alcohol issues more than anywhere else we have been in India. This has been an issue that has not been as bad as we expected but we have had a year already of this to get used to it on and off. If you got straight off a plane from home to India I can see why it would be a nightmare to deal with. It makes you confront all sorts of things about yourself and how selfish you are, the world and how sad it is and what is right and wrong. It is never very black and white and neither of us have worked out exactly what we feel about it all even after this long.

Me trying to tell a lying salesman I did not want to climb to the top of his shop to see a "view" of the temples that did not exist. Knowing that we would not be able to leave without buying something we didn't want.

Lovely Maria and her ankle bracelets.

The one thing we really did enjoy in Madurai was the food. Banana leaf all-you-can=eat thalis for 35 rupees (Ed got his moneys worth yet again) and great chai. Good chai (Indian style tea, spicy insanely sweet and strong but soooooo good) had been sadly lacking in the south, so we were very happy.

These are the pots that the waiters in the banana leaf canteens go round slopping onto your leaf. It all looks a lot less hygenic than it is when you see it for real and it is pretty tasty for the most part. I just wish there was another option, sometimes! Our waiter was very proud and happy to pose for a pic. The men are real peacocks in India, in love with themselves you may say.