Friday morning we had an early start picking Andrea up from the airport after her epic trip to India – flying from Ohio to New York, to Paris, to Chennai and after a 6 hour layover in the middle of the night there on to Madurai!

She arrived right on time and back at the hotel she caught up on much needed sleep before we gathered as a group for our first dinner – a chance to get to know each other, share stories and talk about the adventure that lay ahead.

The next morning, Saturday, we ventured forth for a day of cultural immersion on the streets of Madurai, starting with a visit to the famous Sri Meenakshi temple.  Madurai is known as the Temple City because of Sri Meenakshi.  A temple has existed on the site since the 3^rd Century BC, and the current structure covers some 6 hectares and was largely constructed in the 1500s.

Leaving our shoes outside, we walked in and toured the many shrines to Hindu Gods.  Our fantastic guide explained that in Hinduism there was one god, but that god had many manifestations depending on their particular attributes and role.  Just as one person has roles or manifestations as a worker, mother, daughter, sister, a god has many manifestations and roles all with different names.  In all he said there are over 33 million manifestations in the Hindu religion!

We saw a shrine where people make offerings and hang little baskets with painted clay babies in them from the tree above, asking to be blessed with children.  If they are successful, they return later and take down a basket and take it to a river (always running water) and let the raft go on the water and perform a pooja or holy ceremony.

Further in towards the inner temple we encountered the first of several Temple elephants.  We each made an offering to the elephant and were rewarded with a blessing and tap on the head with his trunk!

It was a busy day in the Temple as it was Saturday and the different and fascinating shrines would take all day to describe but included a statue of Shiva in warrior mode that people pacified by hurling butter balls at him to keep him cool, a shrine for women wanting an easy childbirth where they poured oil over a statue and then collected it in a bottle when it ran off the bottom, to take home and rub on their stomachs.  We also encountered a sacred cow being led through the Temple and took the opportunity for another blessing!

We then headed out of town to a second temple up in the nearby mountains.  As our car climbed through the forest and the hills we passed many people walking up with their families and a picnic lunch to spend the day at the temple.

We also began to pass families of the non-human kind – wild monkeys!  When we reached the temple itself it could have been straight from an Indiana Jones or Lara Croft movie.  Carved into the rock and surrounded by jungle, with hundreds of monkeys climbing on the walls and sitting on the roof.

In the centre of the temple is a statue of Shiva and from underneath it gushes a torrent of water.  The local believe the water comes from Shiva and is holy, and doesn’t come from the ground or rain – no matter how much rain they do or don’t receive, it always has the same flow.  Devotees were lined up to bathe in the holy waters, and a local guide took us straight to the wellspring to bless ourselves with the water.

On our way out we stopped for our own quick three wise monkeys photos, then off back down the hill and back to the hotel for lunch.

Later that day we headed out again to another local temple – smaller in scale, but packed with local villagers.  It had much more of a local community feel, and was replete again with a temple elephant and some monkeys!  We had fun playing with the local children, and our guide took us behind the scenes to see a group of boys from the Brahmin (priest) caste practicing chanting in Sanskrit school.  Our arrival did cause some distraction with kids peeling off to have their photo taken and see their picture on our digital cameras, but no-one seemed to mind!

Then we headed back towards the city to visit the Palace of the last great King of Madurai.  We lathered up in mosquito repellant before taking our seats inside the central atrium for an evening light and music show.  It was kind of like Bollywood under the stars but only with music and lights, no pictures!  The palace was beautiful and atmospherice, but as Arokiasamy (Sami) our local fixer said, “it’s a very long story”!  We ducked out early and back to the hotel where we had dinner on the roof, serenaded by the children at the local church singing Christmas carols and dancing.

Tomorrow we head out to visit the orphanage where we will be working all week, and to visit some other development projects!