After a quick rest in the early afternoon, we made it to our pick up spot in Syntagma square for an all evening trip. We had pre booked the trip on Viator. It was a bus with 20+ people being picked up at various hotels. It was a long drive to the tip of the land to see this temple.
We stopped by at a lake of sorts which was also an expensive club where folks came to spend an afternoon swimming in this lake. It was a quick rest stop. Then we kept driving to Sounion, where this temple sits on a hill.
There was some story about divers going into the cave and never returning.. over 100 of them over the years apparently..
There was one more stop, thanks to a pregnant lady on our bus who was sick because of the windy uphill road. We all got to take more pictures while the poor woman was throwing up!
The kids put their feet in water to check the temperature..apparently cold!
Once we were at the stop, there is a short hike to the top.. the sun already starts setting.. so the orange hues are inviting..
My recommendation is for folks to not stop and take pictures on the way up once you are at the temple!
There is a long line at the top as you have to buy tickets to get to the site! The line for the credit card counter is long and slow! The people might wait for you, but the sun won't!!! The guide gave us till 20 minutes past sunset to show up down to get back on the bus.
We did get to see a glorious sunset with all the little islands jutting out in the water. It was amazing. Have never seen a large crowd clap for a sunset!
Just got goosebumps watching the sunset through the columns. Imagined people watching the same sunset 2000 years ago. How magnificent it would have been with the statues all intact, the roof still intact, the colors on the pillars! What it must have taken them to build this without advanced technology and why would anyone desecrate a temple like that in the name of war? A lot of questions with not so great answers.. but thoroughly enjoyed that evening.
A short video clip..
Then we made a long drive back to the hotel. There is nothing to eat at this place. So you are better off packing some snacks or dinner that you can eat on the bus. We were starving when we got back to our rooms and thankfully, there was Maggi noodles to the rescue!
The next day was another all day Viator prepaid trip around Athens with a focus on the Acropolis..
Started the 50th year this week! My family and friends made it special with their wishes and blessings!
Got to do yoga in the morning with my teachers pushing me as usual. When you are in a Bikrram yoga class, you actually expect that your teachers to be tougher on your birthday and my teacher didn't disappoint! It was also awesome to have my guru in the front row with me! Always makes me give it everything I got.
My wife made me some potato roast with paruppu sadam (that is all I wanted) and it was yummmmy!
We had already gone to the temple earlier and celebrated Karthigai deepam.
My Tamil birthstar is Rohini and this year there was a lunar eclipse which was specifically related to Rohini. So I was advised to stay put at home and eat light.. which I did.. in anticipation of all the good eats that were coming!
Now that I am part of a music family, which is a large family, they made my day extra special. Got some special wishes from the music group and got to show some progress in the singing. Still writing what seems to be a never ending post on my recent singing experience. Hope I get to post it during the thanksgiving break!
The best part of this birthday was my baby showed up for thanksgiving break. Having her at home after 4 months made me so happy!
We went to LED lights this year for Kaarthigai.. simply because it is rainy and windy out here. We respect the folks who can still pull off lighting oil lamps in Cupetino!
My not so little girl baked an amazing cake. She has a gift. Hope she keeps up her baking. I asked Jr. to blow a candle with me given she spent her birthday last week without us!
A rare photograph of the four of us. It is going to get more and more difficult to get these photos as years go by..
A day that was made very special by all my family and friends! I am lucky to have all this love! Lucky to be healthy and happy! Thank you for all the wishes!
In an 8 day trip to Chennai, I sure got to visit temples every day. This time I took the time to smell the roses.. err photograph the Gopurams without being in any rush.
It is always good to go on a trip without a timetable..
The best part was the visits were after it had just stopped raining for a brief period or when it was still drizzling. So that made the colors vibrant.
Visited 7 temples, some with big gopurams, some small.. here is a collection..
The Kapaleeshwar temple..
The Parthasarathy kovil, where my parents were engaged!!! I got to hear both my parents version of the story for the jillionth time on the visit.. I think San and me tell the story of how we met in Kapali temple as often to our kids.... we are slowly turning into a version of them..
Valleswarar kovil, which is my mothers favorite as they used to live in TSV Kovil street, literally 100 feet away..
There is a lot of detail on the big gopurams..
many stories told in these..
births, deaths, marriages..
There are small gopurams for each deity which have their own thing going..
Then there are these colored statues that deck the halls..it is possible that the entire thing was painted at one point..
Then there are these little statues at the corner of the roofs..be it conch blowing men or women or white bulls.. they add a little touch whenever you look up..
The rear entrance gopurams are not as grand, but still are interesting..
The decorations for the cowshed...
and a last picture of the temple main gopurams back facade after rains.
This time saw more people with Canon SLR's than Nikons.. Guess Canon is getting bigger in India.. not that it has anything to do with the post topic. Had not taken my 5D on this trip.. so all pictures you see from the India trip were taken on the iPhone 11 Max (some of them with the 0.5 or wide angle lens) and edited on Snapseed app on the phone.
The best camera is the one you can get access to!
I really wish they would dismantle all these sheds with the blue coverings in the temple that have been put up recently. spoils the beauty of it and makes for an eyesore. They also keep filling the gaps in the stones with cement which clogs up the natural drainage that was set up 100's of years ago.. the temple floods at the first hint of rain. Sometimes new technology when applied without understanding to ancient temples which already had been well thought out, backfires!
I see 700 hundred year old stone walls and floors intact while the structures built with bricks and cement 30 years ago is crumbling.. better to leave the old temples the way they were.
They will outlast all of us... they should! Our kids and their kids deserve to play in the same halls and with the elephants the way we did..
Faith is an interesting thing.. it makes you do things that are ingrained in you from childhood. Everytime I lose something and I have to find it in a time sensitive way, subconsciously say a prayer to Ganesha and say "will light a camphor light(karpooram) for 10 paise at the local temple"..
a. we don't get camphor lights in the US that easily
b. there is no 10 paise anymore
c. local temple can be anything but was originally intended for Vembadi Vinayagar, a little ganesha under a pipal tree that I have circled with prayers to remove obstacles real and imaginary..
But it gets done.. and we are not even talking about if we actually found the thing on time or not.
In 2014 my MIL was going for a bone marrow test and in pure panic mode I prayed to my family deity (Gunaseelam perumal) that if the test came negative for cancer, will go shave my head in the temple. That was more of an extreme case of the camphor lighting thing..
Have made at least 6 trips to India since that time but never got the opportunity to go visit Gunaseelam. Faith is interesting.. seeing your family deity is not up to you, it is up to your deity.. or so the saying goes! Guess on this short trip to see my dad, there was no agenda.
Three weeks ago, was lying in a hospital bed myself, dreading some worse case scenarios, which fortunately turned out to be something a lot less threatening. While there, the thought of unfinished business with god somehow bubbled up to the top of the already buffering thought process. What if I died and did not do the "mottai"? After all the bone marrow test for MIL had come out negative!
The original plan was to just go alone with a driver and get things done and get back. Then my parents said the words "Can we come with you?".. In case you didn't get the reason Faith got mentioned three times in the title, "you cannot say no to someone when they ask to come to a temple with you".. My dad was bedridden two weeks ago and he barely started walking again. An adult in diapers who just started walking, coming on a day trip where we spend 11 hours in the car and 3 hours in a temple is no joke.
Somehow, we told ourselves, if it was meant to be, we will make it. I did a risk mitigation plan that would make any project manager proud and we left at 3AM. It was still raininig in Chennai but we were off to a flying start.. We had one stop for 25 minutes and were back on the road.
Given this is my n'th mottai at Gunaseelam, the whole thing was done in 7 minutes.. then came the best part. There was water in the river that flows to the temple! Had a great time taking a dip in the river and have the fishes nibble at me. We were on a deadline and I had to pull myself out of the water to go in and finish the rest of the prayer.
Our driver and some total strangers helped me navigate a wheel chair through the temple. The priest knows our family and was extremely nice and made sure my dad got to see the deity up close.
On our way out a puppy came up and lay down under our vehicle. This one knew how to put on a sad face like a pro..
It was time to drive back. My dad is like a kid who just got his tonsils out and knows that his parents won't say "no" to anything... we just got out of the temple and he mumbles "elaneer.. I want elaneer". He wanted coconut water. Was not even sure if this is coconut water season and we were watching the road for it and sure enough we found a vendor selling fresh coconut water. It is not a good idea for a person of his age to drink that instead of lunch. We stopped at an A2B for lunch and it was really delicious. Had a full course meal. As an added bonus this place had a wheelchair ramp!
Then came the bombshell from my dad "I want to use the restroom". That was not part of the plan. It was going to be diapers all the way. But a kid without his tonsils... is a kid without his tonsils. The restrooms here are not typically wheelchair accessible. They are simply not for anyone who is not fit and can manoeuvre around a potty, a door that swishes past the potty with millimeter tolerance and a bunch of taps and buckets on the floor that are trip hazards. In what can only be described as a houdini move, managed to get my kid to go potty and get him diapy changed. That coconut water was a bad idea. Our driver concurred.
The rest of the drive back was calm and serene. There were cops every 100 feet. So I started counting cops. After 270, I stopped counting. That was only on one side of the road from Dindivanam to Melmaruvaththur. My mind boggled at the efficiency of this whole security apparatus with so many cops just standing on the roadside doing nothing.. then again, maybe this system works, who knows! We actually slowed down to ask one of the cops to find out what the big deal was. He proudly answered "The Chief minister of Tamil Nadu is making his way back to Chennai on the same route!"
We made a dash for it to avoid his motorcade and made it back in exactly 14 hours. For a few minutes after reaching could not find my legs.. had let my dad doze off on me. . . which reminded me of my kids dozing off on me on another recent trip.
It has been another interesting day.
A picture that says it all..
and a short video of the days experience..
It is always a great feeling taking a dip in the river.. mottai or not. Was glad to see my parents smiling again, even if for one day!
Now the only thought in my head is "the mosquitoes are going to get me good tonight with this exposed scalp.. they will suck my brains dry and I might actually wake up smarter!"
My head feels lighter already, both literally and figuratively...
There was a reason Amritsar fit our "trip within a trip" concept perfectly. You could cover all the attractions in the city within 2 days, provided you had a good driver / guide.
We had one more site that got added. Gobindgarh Fort, which used to house the Kohinoor diamond, was open to the public after 157 years! We just were fortunate to be there after it opened.
We did a quick stop at the Durgiana temple, which was rebuilt to mimic the golden temple. Only the "willing to walk in the hot sun" subgroup went for this. The "rest" stayed in the Van under the shade. This temple also has a gold roof, silver doors and reminds you of how rich things were "once upon a time"!
Given Jr. had spent almost a month in India by the time we visited Amritsar, she had been trained by grandma to walk around temples. She was willing to walk in the sun and that to me was an interesting change!
We spent a litle under an hour at the Durgiana temple and were off to the Fort. At first we were disappointed to learn that the actual fort was a good mile or more from the parking lot.
That meant half our party would refuse to go citing leg weakness and heat! Fortunately, one of the guards said that for a fee they can get us inside on a vehicle, provided we can wait for 10-15 minutes. So we gladly paid and took the ride.
There were not that many visitors, it being a week day and we pretty much went through all the history of the place, watched a show in the theater within the fort, have San and the little one go on a "camel ride" and come out in time for lunch.
there were a few horses in the fort that were used to give rides. One of the horses was an albino (I think). It was beautiful to see..
and did I mention the "camel ride"? The little one for some reason, wants to go on Camel rides every chance she gets.. maybe because she missed out in Jaipur a few years ago... this time she was not disappointed!
The camel ride, short and sweet.. smile on their faces, priceless!
Then there was a late lunch. That lunch deserves a special post in itself !
Friday, December 29, 2023 at 11:24PM ;)
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