The wells of Rameshwaram temple

My parents had visited Rameshwaram and I was not a part of that trip. There was this constant reminder for me to go visit with my wife, especially given we had both visited Kashi before.

So a big part of this India trip (previous post here..) was to go to Rameshwaram temple and get.a bath from waters of the 21 wells in the temple. The history and reasoning behind these wells is well documented and will not explain it here. 

The logistics of accomplishing this on the other hand, will get a mention. Currently the train that goes from Chennai does not go into the island. It stops at Mandapam station. Supposed to reach at 4:30 AM but is usually late by 30 mins to 45 minutes. That should factor into calculations for a one day trip!

We had a car pick us up and take us straight to the temple gate. Thanks to my chitti's friend, we were connected to one of the. priests at the temple who gave us a contact for a person named Lokesh.

His official title should be Technical Program Manager, Well bathing, Rameshwaram. He asked San, myself and my FIL to walk, after realizing my MIL couldn't walk that far. He took her on his bike to the side gate. Once there, he gave us precise instructions, took us to each well and got us drenched with water from every well within a span of 35 minutes with extreme planning and precision. After that we got to go change at the entrance and visit the main shrines. Within a 2 1/2 hour period we had done what we came to do and one of the main temple visits was checked off. (the other was Gunaseelam... not sure how many days it will take me to get to that post!)

This temple is a marvel !! just look at the pillars as far as the eye can see on every main corridor.

Saw the Sankara mutt on the way out and was reminded of the mutt in Varanasi in Hanuman Ghat! lots of memories..

We said bye to Lokesh and thanked him for pictures from his phone (we were not allowed a phone) and went to get something to eat.

After a quick brunch at a local vegetarian place (Hotel New Saravana Bhavan.. not in anyways related to Hotel Saravana Bhavan!!! but actually better..) we decided to cover the rest of the sights there in this sequence, thanks to our driver (who was from Madurai) who had done this tour many a time. However he said in his experience he had not seen anyone cram this much into a day!

First stop was Ramar paadhukai..(three of us climbed the hill and saw the sights while MIL stayed in the car.. it was a wise move. She was clearly told by our driver where there was flat nice terrain and where things would be difficult)

Then the Panchamukha Hanumaan temple with a demonstration of the floating rocks that were used by the monkeys to build the bridge to Lanka..(sadly my phone died and have no pictures or videos of that) followed by a visit to Lakshmana's temple and pond (there is a story or segment from the Ramayana that is there for each of these locations and you can read up on it if interested)

My FIL had his SLR for pics. I had to stay content with the iPhone.

Then we had finished with this area and were off to see Prof. Kalam's house. It was inspiring in its own way!

After visiting his house, we left for Dhanushkodi area. On the way we got to see the Kodhandaramar temple. Thanks to Modiji, the roads were nice and we also had access to go all the way to the end of the road to see the ocean. We had some ice cream and coconut water at the temple, then stopped by the light house. 

The lighthouse has a small elevator that simply cannot handle the tourist volume. So it was difficult to wait there, but after 30 minutes we did make it to the top for some spectacular views. (The restrooms behind the lighthouse are extremely well maintained !! )

After this we got to put our feet in the ocean water where two oceans meet.

There was crazy traffic at the end of the road to make U turns and get back. Our driver had told us to keep walking to find him. The three of us walked close to a mile to catch up with the van and were out of the area.. but we did stop for chai at a roadside stall.. it was pretty good!

A short video compilation of the few clips I took..

There were two more stops to go before we were to reach our hotel in Madurai that night.. 

will share that in the next post!

Chilling in Rio

The previous post on this series is here..

After a hectic all day tour of Rio which ended in Sugarloaf, we were all tired. After our Europe trip in 2018 when the kids made a new rule that there will be a "rest day" within the trip if we walk more than 6 miles a day for a few days in a row, San had put in a rest day.. Hell, she put in two rest days before we flew out as that was what was available ticket wise..

So we ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas day in Rio before flying out on 26th morning. 

We were told that the city shuts down by 1PM and most places close. We didn't care. Our plan was to go see two more sunsets from the two other popular places in Rio.. the first one was the Arpoador rock, the second one was the Copacabana beach and area. 

San had made friends with a lady who worked for the city of Rio on our flight into Brazil from Argentina and she had suggested spending time at a local mall.. eat at a famous Vegan place called Teva..

So we woke up late, took a cab to Teva (we had made reservations) and sat down pretty much as soon as they opened. I ate the pita bread with some side but the family ordered a lot of items and seem to finish everything with relish.. I am allergic to Jackfruit, so had to skip a lot of stuff, but San and the kids said it was mouth watering. 

After the lunch, we went to the mall and walked around for a good 2 hours. The stuff there was at least 50% to 100% more expensive than similar stuff in US malls. We also got the location of the mall wrong at first and ended up being dropped somewhere else.. so we walked around the local tiled streets before finally making to the actual mall location. After enough window shopping and having some ice cream there, we wanted to walk to the carnival area near the lagoon.

We never found the right spot and tickets were all sold out anyways. So we decided to just walk along the water front and took an Uber and came back to the Arpoador area. Got a nice vantage point on the rock to watch the sunset and headed back to the Airbnb. 

We did get great pictures that evening..

There was a photo by Jr. of the little one taking a photo of me taking a photo of San.. that photo I cannot find..

Here are video clips of our chilling in Rio..

the entire area was cordoned off by cops to local traffic for some reason..

had used this picture as the Happy New Year card for 2024.. 

It was time to make some pizza and thachchi mummum.. The kids made it after getting all the ingredients from the local supermarket which was still open! We also got stuff to cook for the next day.. 

Christmas was a laid back day.. we lazed around in the morning and did laundry! Then in the afternoon we decided to visit the Copacabana beach. We were clearly over dressed for this beach as the videos will show. The rain clouds rolled in and there was no way to see the sun set, but we got beautiful family pictures.. and startred walking from there all the way to Ipanema area. It was a long walk and the rains hit before we could walk back. We got cursed by the kids for not taking an uber. We were flying back the next day and wet clothes on the night before was going to be tricky. 

Rio is full of tall trees with wide leaves on all the local streets.. Chennai (Madras used to be like this when I was a kid.. not anymore) .. these streets brought back a lot of great memories..

we saw another painted step as we were going from Copacabana to Ipanema.. we stopped by a pastry store to get some stuff to eat as well..

This was my last shot as it started raining all of a sudden..

To date I have not washed and wrung clothes the way I did that evening. They were almost dry by morning and I ironed the collars and waistbands of what was not dry and got them to dry as well.. one of Daddy Narayanan's proudest moments! "There, see... all dry!!" and all I got in return was some eye rolling from the women.

We got to see the Redeemer one last time on our drive to the airport (you really cannot miss this guy from anywhere in Rio!) and took off.. We got to see a beautiful Panama city skyline and had a 3 hour stop over before heading back home.

Jet lag for a +5 hour time difference was interesting to deal with. We have. never been to a place 5 hours ahead till now. It wore off in two days though. The fact that we went on a break before the rest of the folks went on break was a blessing. 

On a whole we enjoyed the trip to Argentina and Brazil.. We definitely all agreed that Argentina was more welcoming than Brazil but we did have fun in both places.

Have managed to finally finish blogging about a Christmas trip in early March!  That brings me to the next trip..

From waterfalls to beaches

The previous post on this series is here..

We moved on from Buenos Aires to Rio. We got scammed right outside the airport where a fake Uber showed up to pick us up... after some tense moments once in the car, we did get out close to where we needed and after the local Airbnb lady negotiated in Portugese we got out. 

Brazil is a sharp contrast to Argentina. You cannot trust folks on the road. Scammers everywhere. Everything is expensive and the locals are not exactly the welcoming type.

The Airbnb itself was very good. A walking distance from the Ipanema beach and close enough to grocery stores. 

The kids had had enough and decided to stay in after doing groceries. San and me decided to go to the beach for a short time to see the sunset. There was so much fog that we didn't really get orange hues that day and it just started drizzling when we made it back to cook dinner!

We called it a night.. there were a lot of interesting art books in the Airbnb and we just decided to crash early after watching Rebel moon on Netflix!

The next day was going to be spent touring Rio!

We already got a glimpse of the Redeemer statue on the way from the airport. The plan was to see him up close the next day!