Bribing an Elephant for Blessings (but not at Mar-A-Lago)

Today was our first “temple” day, visiting temple sites which are the true focus of Anna (the bride’s) research. It was also our longest driving day of the tour, as we make our way south towards the wedding venue.

We started the day by visiting a street cafe for some coffee. The coffee experience is strongly reminiscent of being in Malaysia, which makes sense, since the Malaysian coffee stalls are usually run by Indo-Malaysians. After breakfast at the hotel, and lots of milling about (milling about is a bit of a national pastime it seems) we got on the road.

Our first stop was the temple site at Chidambaram. After years of learning about the site through photographs, maps, and articles, it was amazing to visit it in person. The temple site is 50 acres, with numerous individual structures. It was incredibly powerful to watch the crush of people in the midst of worship. We only saw a tiny slice of the site, but it was a powerful experience.

Our next stop was a lunch break at Gangaikonda Temple. The highlight was Kat being handed a baby to pose for photographs – her hair is very exciting for some of the women.

We got back on the road and made our way to our hotel, the rather amazing InDeco Swamimalai. Part museum, part eco retreat, part weird dude’s obsession, it’s a sprawling and gorgeous site. The more you learn about the founder (Steve Borgia), the happier you are that he went into hotels instead of founding a cult.

After checking in, we headed into the nearby town of Kumbeshwara to visit two more temples. These were less intense and overwhelming than Chidambaram, so we had a chance to dive deeper with our experts, understanding individual sculptures and the intricacies of the temple layout. Hindu temples are living spaces, which are evolved over time. A 9th century structure might be topped by a 20th century addition. As the importance of individual deities within society shifted over time, a sculpture might be surrounded by a new structure to turn an outside sculpture into an inside sculpture. We also got to meet our first “temple tree” – every temple in Tamil Nadu would have had a sacred temple tree, though some are gone now.

Along the way, we got a bit of a taste of the Hindu nationalism that’s been the bread-and-butter of Modi’s BJP party since his ascendency. The parallels with our own strain of Christian nationalism are pretty clear, though perhaps more clear is the line from religious populism to our economic populism, promulgating stories about how the most disadvantaged members of society are actually getting preferential treatment which is unfair to everyone else.

Our last tour stop of the evening was another temple, this one with its own temple elephant. Temple elephants aren’t uncommon in India, and the government works to ensure they’re treated humanely. But an elephant in captivity is always a bit hard to witness. This elephant will snack a rupee note from your hand, then give you a little boop on the head with her trunk as a blessing. It was beautiful and sad to watch her – even a well cared for elephant in captivity is still in captivity.

Tomorrow we’ll see (you guessed it!) more temple sites as we zig and zag towards Chettinadu.

(bit of a random photo dump at the end here – wifi was keeping me from posting last night)