Tag: Chola Temple

My diary, revived from my trip to India back in 2007. This second part details my solo travels during the last three weeks or so.

I should explain. These next few entries cover the time when I stayed with a young American academic. I’d linked up with her through Couchsurfing, an organisation that enables travellers to stay with locals with a view to getting more of an insight into the local community than the average tourist does. Gwen was the only person who contacted me in Thanjavur, and I was a bit reluctant. An American in India? How wrong I was. As you’ll find out.

Hello Thanjavur!

Friday 23rd November.

5.00 a.m. The station was heaving with life! Such a surprise.  But it was a bit too dark and gloomy to read, so off to the booking hall.  What a party! Well, no, not actually.- just a score or so of boys and men sitting in convivial groups on the ground collating the day’s newspapers.  This took most of the time till 7.00 when  Gwen arrived … on her motor scooter.

In fluent Tamil, she negotiated me a rickshaw and off we went.  And at her flat, she gave me breakfast and the first decent cup of coffee of the holiday.  I really like her.  She’s lots of fun, and at the same time, very committed  to her archaeological studies.

Towards 10.00, we hopped on her scooter and she gave me a lift into town, dropping me off at the Chola Temple.  What a place! Magnificent multi-sculpted edifices – several separate temples all on the same site.  I just explored for a long time. Then I mooched round town.  I can cope with this one.  It has a shape I can follow, though the streets are familiar now.  Internet cafe, then a hunt for lunch.  No language passed between us, but I got my rectangle of banana leaf, my choice of rice, and helping after helping of the various sauces dumped onto the rice.  They went out and got me bottled water as I indicated I wouldn’t have that in the jug.  All for about 10 bob (50 p in new money) and ½ of that was the water.

Eventually, I found a bank: a chaotic jumble of customers, with areas of desks all over the place behind which sat officials and their untidy piles of files.  More dusty files in dusty metal cupboards, and for me, no sense at all of what happens where.  I was shunted to three different places and told eventually to come back tomorrow.

Back to the temple and a rickshaw home.  Gwen took me out to get a take-away – a ‘parcel meal’, which was indeed neatly parcelled with cotton and cost Rs.65.  Lots of talking …and so to bed.

And so today’s Square for Becky’s #SimplyRed is clipped from the shot above, where goats were lounging in a disused brick-red building in the centre of Thanjavur. They seemed very content.