Thanjavur – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Indian Friday: Couchsurfing

Today, for one week only, I am abandoning my diary in favour of a piece I wrote just after I had left Thanjavur. I do sound a bit smug, I know. But I stand by every word I wrote then. My time in Thanjavur still stands as one of the highlights of my Indian journey. I’ve nearly used up any appropriate Thanjavur photos though. So there is just one shot today of a building I forgot to label at the time, a sad ruin of what it must have been, But red enough for #SimplyRed.

Couchsurfing

The following is an unsolicited testimonial for CouchSurfing. No money has changed hands in the production of this advert!

In case you don’t CouchSurfing is an online community in which travellers offer hospitality, and make use of hospitality offered while on the road. It’s based on the premise that this makes travelling more affordable, but more importantly, gives travellers the opportunity to experience the community they’re visiting at first hand, rather than in the somewhat detached way hotels and so forth can offer

That was a bit of a long lead in ….

In Thanjavur I stayed with Gwen, an American doing post-graduate research at the University there. We’d exchanged emails over a month or two, so she didn’t feel like a stranger when I met her. She gave me a wonderful welcome and time with her, so I wanted to treat her on our last evening together. She asked to eat at the best hotel in town, as she’s heard the food was good, and as a student of modest means, it was she thought, beyond her reach. Good idea.

A we passed through reception, we might as well have shown our passports. Thanjavur disappeared from sight to be replaced by marble walls and floors, corporate decoration, and uniformed staff of the kind that usually frequent these places. Where were we? Birmingham? Milan? Dubai? Mumbai? Who knows? And so into the restaurant, where we pulled our dupattas tight round our shoulders to combat the cold of the air conditioning. Consulted the menu (Indian, Chinese and European) and ordered our meal. Got talking to the English couple next to us as they finished their chicken and chips. They turned out to be on an organised tour, and it looked as though their time was spoken for. They were enjoying it, but were scurrying along at the pace set by the demands of the tour, with no opportunity to go off on any tangents, and certainly no opportunity to meet local people on their own territory.

Compare my time in Thanjavur with theirs. Gwen’s American, certainly, but she’s made it her business to be part of the community she lives in. She’s learnt fluent Tamil, so has good relationships with her neighbours. So while there, I had the chance to mooch round and enjoy with her the rangoli decorations and lights put out at night for a Hindu Festival of Light (not Diwali, yet another one). I met the neighbours and was invited into their homes. Narrowly avoided a big faux pas in one. Invited to sit down, I nearly plonked myself in the nearest vacant place on a sofa. Recovered myself in time and did not sit there, next to the husband, but squeezed onto the other sofa, with the women. Gwen said it would have seemed very odd to them if I hadn’t remembered in time. Chatted to another neighbour, a Christian, who explained that she liked to keep the Hindu festivals too, and showed us her Hindu decorations taking their place alongside her pictures of the Pope.

I ran errands for Gwen, and in that way had several language-less conversations in the food market, where everyone was keen to shake my hand, because tourists in Thanjavur don’t generally go and buy half a kilo of carrots.

We zipped round on her scooter and bought takeaways. We caught local buses together and visited temples. We had meals in local cafés. I wandered round her neighbourhood when she wasn’t there, and saw a small community going about its day-to-day business.

I was woken in the morning to local sounds (actually I was invariably awake anyway, I don’t do sleep in India); the Muslim Call to Prayer transmitted by loud microphone at, erm, 5.30 a.m. The church bells ringing a few minutes after that (20 % Muslim and Christian communities here). The street hawkers who kick in at about 6.45. The day-today noise which seems to begin so early in Indian communities.

And of course it was interesting to talk to Gwen, who knew exactly what I would be finding difficult, and could guess what assumptions I might be making. Gave me a quick Tamil lesson, and more importantly a gesture one (‘Yes’ and ‘No’ aren’t the same here, I learned rather late in the day). She’s much the same age as Tom and Ellie, but that didn’t seem to matter – it didn’t to me, anyway.

And I saved money, though that wasn’t my motivation. I tried to make sure I didn’t cost Gwen anything. So what did our new English acquaintances gain from their corporate type hotel? A thicker mattress maybe. Constant hot water possibly (doesn’t really happen in India). I’m willing to bet I had loads more fun. Oh, and by the way, the meal wasn’t that good, and cost exactly 9 times as much as the meal we’d had at lunch time in a local cafe.

Indian Friday: A Tourist in Thanjavur

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.

A Tourist in Thanjavur

Saturday 24th November

Up betimes and off. Why wouldn’t I be up early when I’d been woken by the Call to Prayer from the mosque at 5.30 a.m.?

The view from my window as I got myself organised for the day.

Gwen had told me how to get to the bus stop, so I did, and got on a bus and asked for ‘Temple’. Though he indicated he didn’t go there, he didn’t turn me off, so I wasn’t concerned, as Thanjavur isn’t a big town. However … we fetched up at the New Bus Stand, miles out. Nobody spoke English, so I chose the most built-up road, and headed, I hoped, into town. It soon petered out. I had no choice but to go back, pick on the local part of the bus stand, wait for a bus and ask any prospective passenger if it was going to the temple. Luckily it worked, and soon I was there.

It was a wonderful place. Exquisite carvings, a lovely atmosphere and I even got a good guide, so I happily spent a couple of hours there. Then the bank. It’s just chaos. Luckily I didn’t have to queue, but I still had to wait 20 minutes white a bored functionary filled in endless forms and passed me along the line to get my money.

Bank of India Thanjavur. This shot was taken VERY surreptitiously because there were attentive guards with real guns. Needless to say, they are not in shot!

A walk along Ghandiji Road (I was able to check because of the presence of a Ghandi statue); lunch at a great cafe; an hour on the internet, then back to the Palace Museum. What a dump. Dusty, unkempt, piles of rubbish everywhere, long unmown grass. But worst of all, a ‘guide’ who had the most rudimentary English attached himself to me, and I couldn’t shift him. So I didn’t go and see the Chola bronzes, the most interesting part. He also took me to a shop, which I fled from, though later I found another, with quite lovely things.

I walked back to the centre making friends with two stall holders in the outdoor market who wanted pictures sending on. Then shopping there for Gwen – very friendly people with no English who wanted to know my name, shook my hand and generally made me welcome. They laughed when I proffered Rs. 70 (under £1) for my purchases. They wanted Rs 7. Oil laps everywhere because of the Festival.

A rick home then a tour of the district on foot with Gwen to see the rangoli decorations lit with candles outside each house. It was all very attractive, and everyone was out and about admiring each other’s lights.

*Street decorations, Thanjavur. And this one’s squared to qualify for Becky’s #SimplyRed.*

We went into two of her friends’ houses and sat down. I nearly boobed in one by all-but sitting down in the easiest spare place – next to the husband. That would have been a real faux pas! The home was very sparsely furnished: these people are young academics. Gwen says two bedrooms are more than enough as families generally all sleep in the same room.

We made pasta sauce, ate… and so to bed.

The fearured photo of Brihadishvara Temple is from Unsplash, by Avin CP.

PS. One of today’s suggested tags courtesy of AI is ‘Fiction’. Really. This is not fiction.

Indian Friday: Hello Thanjavur!

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.

Indian Friday: The Goat Ate my Blog Post

I have had a busy time: away last week, currently away again. I’ll rely on that (probably apocryphal) schoolchild’s excuse: ‘The dog ate my homework’. In this case, it was these goats, spotted in Thanjavur, who ingested my blog post.

The Elephants I met in India

The first elephants I met in India were in Karnataka, at Dubare Elephant Camp. Nowadays it seems to be a holiday lodge destination with added elephants, but when we visited, it was still largely home to elephants who’d given years of service to the state’s Forestry Department as log-hauliers.

As we arrived, the elephants were being a good old scrub in the River Cauvery, It was clear they relished having their hard leathery hide scrubbed, their hard bristly hair scratched. And it was obvious their minders were enjoying it too. After that – breakfast. Here’s a picture of a cook in the cookhouse. He’s boiling up an appetisng concoction of jaggery (dense dark sugar), millet and vegetation before rolling it into giant balls which the men feed to the expectant animals.

And here’s feeding time. And that was it really. A short but memorable experience.

I had a very different time about ten days later, at Kumbakonam, where my new American friend had taken me to visit some of the eighteen – EIGHTEEN – temples in this small town. I’ll take you for a tour another time. This time I’ll introduce you to the elephant who, at one of the temples, was available to bless visitors in exchange for a few coins for the temple’s finances. Gwen took me to meet her. As I stood before her, she lifted her trunk and laid it gently in my shoulder. I did indeed feel blessed.

Temple elephants are a common sight – here’s one in Thanjavur.

But only once did I see one in the wild, a youngster crashing through the undergrowth and feeding at the edge of a forest.

With thanks to That Travel Lady in her Shoes, whose challenge Just One Person from Around the World has had me rifling through my archive hunting for memories of long-gone adventures.

A Bad Day and a Good Day in the Market, Indian style

When abroad – or even somewhere fresh here in the UK – a big pleasure comes from visiting the local market. People-watching ordinary folk going about their daily business: seeing what’s on offer at the run-of-the-mill fruit and veg stalls. What are the local cheeses? Is there any honey from round and about? What have they got on sale that‘s unexpected? Perhaps a stall holder will invite me to try this kind of apricot – and then that one – before I buy. Maybe a nun from the local convent will be selling home-pressed apple juice.

In India, it was spices I was particularly keen to see. But in Mysore, which isn’t short of European visitors, I had such a bad time I almost didn’t venture into a market again. I had Tourist emblazoned across my forehead for all to see. And I was pestered, by one young man in particular, who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, whether I was nice, nasty or ignored him.. Whatever. I left with no purchase, and in a very bad mood. Though later I got a few photos – the ones you see below and as the featured photo.

Pondicherry was much better. Here were men, women, seated on the floor and selling whatever they had – a few vegetables from their land, a few fish. There were larger, more business-like stalls too. I was doing my usual diffident-about-asking-to-take-photos there, so I only have one of a woman selling fish, and one water buffalo, who made a good story for the day by peeing copiously all over my feet.

Best of all was Thanjavur. Here, I stayed with a young American academic, who spoke fluent Tamil, and took me into the homes of her Indian friends, walked me round the back streets to admire the Diwali pavement decorations, and generally gave me a good time.

One day, she wanted me to go to the market for her. Just a few simple purchases. Carrots, onions, that kind of thing. For the first time in India, I met people who spoke no English at all. And my Tamil didn’t extend beyond ‘please’(தயவு செய்து Tayavu ceytu) and ‘thank you’ (நன்றி Nanri). But pointing’s fine.

I don’t think they’d ever had an English tourist wanting anything, let alone humble carrots at the vegetable stall, and soon I was the centre of an amiable group helping me make my purchases. They tried to increase my vocabulary, and begged me to teach them the same words in English because it was the end of the day and they weren’t busy. It was such fun. And when it came to payment, I tried to press far too much money into their hands. I thought they’d asked for 70 rupees (about 70 pence), and felt it cheap at the price. How ridiculous! They wanted seven. Honestly, that English woman! Is she made of money? And my new friend, the one who actually served me with the vegetables I needed, begged for a photo. Here it is.

So here we are: Two market traders for Just One Person from Around the World. There are a few more from where these came from. If we can’t go very far, we could at least do a Virtual Trip to India for a week or two.

Another India Season: Thanjavur

After I’d left my new English friends to do solo travelling, my first stop was Thanjavur. I wanted temples in Tamil Nadu, and it seemed to be a toss-up between Thanjavur and Madurai. Thanjavur won, because I suspected it was less on the tourist trail.

Thanjavur and its Chola Temple at sunset.

In case you don’t know, CouchSurfing is an online community in which travellers offer and make use of hospitality offered. It’s based on the premise that this makes travelling more affordable, but more importantly, gives travellers the opportunity to experience the community they’re visiting at first hand, rather than in the somewhat detached way hotels can offer.

So I stayed with Gwen, an American doing post-graduate research at the University there. We’d exchanged emails over a month or two, and she didn’t feel like a stranger when I met her. She gave me a wonderful welcome and few days with her. Gwen had made it her business to be part of the community she lived in. She’d learnt fluent Tamil, so had good relationships with her neighbours. So while there, I had the chance to mooch round and enjoy with her the rangoli decorations and lights put out at night for a Hindu Festival of Light (not Diwali, yet another one).

Rangoli decorations lit up in the street at night.

I met the neighbours and was invited into their homes. I narrowly avoided a big faux pas with one household: a young couple, both teaching at the university. Invited to sit down, I nearly plonked myself in the nearest vacant place on a sofa. I recovered myself in time and did not sit, after all, next to the husband, but squeezed onto the other sofa, with the women. Gwen said it would have seemed very odd to them if I hadn’t remembered in time. We chatted to another neighbour, a Christian, who explained that she liked to keep the Hindu festivals too, and showed us her Hindu decorations taking their place alongside her pictures of the Pope.

We zipped round on her scooter and bought takeaways. These are known as ‘parcel meals’, and neatly packed up for you in a cotton cloth. We caught local buses together and visited temples. We had meals, served on a square of banana leaf, in local cafés. I wandered round her neighbourhood when she wasn’t there, and saw a small community going about its day-to-day business.

Street scene, Thanjavur

Another street scene, Thanjavur.

Goats eat breakfast in Thanjavur

I was woken in the morning to local sounds: the Muslim Call to Prayer transmitted by loud microphone at, erm, 5.30 a.m. : the church bells ringing a few minutes after that (20 % Muslim and Christian communities here): the street hawkers who kicked in at about 6.45: the day-today noise which seems to begin so early in Indian communities.

View from Gwen’s window. She looks healthy, despite her diet.

And of course it was interesting to talk to Gwen, who knew exactly what I would be finding difficult, and could guess what assumptions I might be making. She gave me the odd Tamil lesson, and more importantly a gesture one (‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are the opposite way round from ours, I learned rather late in the day). She was much the same age as Tom and Ellie, but that didn’t seem to matter – it didn’t to me, anyway.

I’m ashamed not to be giving you an art history lesson involving all those temples. Quite simply, I didn’t label my photos well enough. Instead, I’ll give you a picture-show: From Thanjavur itself; from the small town of Kumbeshwara which has eighteen temples; from the exquisite temple at Kambakonam; and from Dharasuram. Sadly, one of my main memories of Dharasuram was the astonishing pain of trying to walk round the site. One always leaves ones shoes at the entrance to a temple, and the paving stones were fiery hot and burning. As usual, no surface remained unadorned, but studying them in detail proved impossible.

Besides the detail of the sculptures, enjoy the temple elephant giving us a blessing, and the bronze worker busy working at the bazaar within the Nageshwara Shiva temple in Kumbeshwara. Don’t think of these places as simply being lavishly decorated places of worship. They’re living communities, with bazaars, sometimes cattle and elephants. Some, such as the Chola Temple at Thanjavur, have inviting grassy spaces. Bring the family for a picnic!

Chola Temple at Thanjavur.

A blessing from the temple elephant.

Temple detail at Kunbakonam.

Bronze worker in Kumbakonam

Chola Temple, Thanjavur.

Dharasuram.

Dharasuram. The pavings were SO HOT on our bare feet!

Kumbakonam

Kumbeshwara and its water tank.

View of Nageshwara Temple, Kumbakonam

Kumbeshwara Temple, Kumbakonam, the Shiva Temple.

Temple cattle

Temple elephant, Thanjavur

Trompe l’oeuil: Is the cow’s head resting on the elephant, or is it the other way about?

The Great Indian Train Journey: Mysore to Thanjavur.

Mysore to Thanjavur: 415 km by road, more than 600 km. by rail, and a 12 hour overnight journey: £6.00.

I’d booked my ticket the day before, and arrived at the station as directed, about an hour ahead of its scheduled departure. It was just as well. A station official took pity (for a small fee…) on the clueless European , who had no idea that she had to check in, in the manner of an airline passenger, or that she would find her seat by looking for her name on the passenger lists posted at each carriage door.

Mysore Station

On the station platform, everyone was getting on with life. A large family spread themselves on the ground, got out metal plates and canisters of food and got stuck in. Rather than sit in a hot train, I headed for the calm of the Ladies’ Waiting Room until it was nearly time to go.

My train to Thanjavur

The train itself, once it got started got into the habit of making long stops nowhere in particular. Chai and coffee boys went up and down the train.

As darkness fell, I was struck by the low level of lighting in the towns we passed through, and more particularly the stations. Even at Bangalore, where we stopped for ages. More chai, coffee and water sellers got on, then vendors selling hot meals: I chose a vegetarian meal with rice and several different vegetable dishes – hot and very good value. A young woman got on, having had her hands and wrists recently henna-ed on both sides. Managing her life, which seemed to consist of calling people on her mobile, without using her not-yet-dry hands was quite a challenge. One family produced a three course supper with several dishes, on metal plates, then mum disappeared to wash up at the sink in the corridor. I had different conversations with various passengers, limited by our inabilities in each other’s languages.

At about 9.00, we all got ready for bed. Our compartment got separated out into two sets of beds at three levels and smartly uniformed staff handed out crisply laundered sheets, pillows and a double blanket each for us to make up our beds in our own way. For once, I slept … until 4.00, when so many passengers got out at Trichy. I had only an hour to go before arriving at Thanjavur.

I was dreading having to wait on a dark deserted station for two hours (Waiting for whom? Another tale for another time). But it wasn’t deserted. Not at all. The booking hall was thronged with men – young men, old men, all sitting in convivial groups on the ground sorting and collating that day’s newspapers. It took them almost the whole two hours that I had to wait until the next chapter of my story began….

Collating newspapers at Thanjavur Station

Click on any image to view full size and to read the captions.

This was part of my Indian Adventure, November 2007. I have used the place names that were then widely used, rather than the official names, which now seem more widely adopted.

Snapshot Sunday: Adverts repurposed as breakfast

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is ‘Repurpose’. We’re to submit an image of something of our own that we’ve put to a new use. I couldn’t come up with anything worth a snapshot, even though I’m rather keen on ‘repurposing’.

Instead, I want you to come with me to Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. I was there almost ten years ago as part of my Indian Adventure. I loved this town. It’s not quite on the tourist trail, as its glorious and extravagantly carved temples remain unpainted. They are not vibrantly painted like those in nearby Madurai, so Madurai gets the foreign visitors.

I stayed* with a young American academic, Gwen, who for seven years had made Thanjavur her home. She whisked me about on her motor bike, introduced me to her Indian friends and neighbours, asked me to run errands for her in the market where nobody spoke English or saw tourists much, and took me to tiny back street shops to buy freshly prepared and sizzling-hot evening meals.

I was by myself though, when early one morning I came upon these goats. They’d found a new use for the adverts pasted on the walls of a house. Look.

And here’s the cow that was tethered outside Gwen’s window. It’s found an unfortunate use for the pile of rubbish tumbled into a pile on the corner.

View from Gwen's window — View from Gwen’s window

Finally, here’s a different use for a pavement. It’s become a canvas for traditional drawings in fine sand. These designs frame the lights which lit our path homewards every evening during Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light.

And here are three picture postcards – temple views.

Thanjavur: Breehadeeswara Temple.

Temple elephant, Thanjavur

Thanjavur: Periya Kovil Temple

* via ‘Couchsurfing’, a scheme which matches travellers with locals, who offer beds, local knowledge and friendship.