This Temple Goes to 11

Doing some catch-up blogging today. There hasn’t been a lot of downtime on this trip to blog, and it’s been so fun to chat with members of the group, I haven’t wanted to sequester myself to blog during the days.

I’ve been nervous to get too deep into South Indian Hindu history in the blog, because it’s very complicated. So, forgive me for glossing over things a bit. But a few basic points – Tamil Nadu is the state in southern India we’re in, and it was ruled by a series of religious dynasties over the millennia. One of the most powerful and long-lived dynasties was the Chola, whose empire at one point covered southern India, Sri Lanka, as well as parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. They ruled for about a thousand years, through the 13th century. Most the sites we’re visiting date from the Chola dynasty and temple sites often heap praise upon the king responsible for their construction.

Monday started with a visit to the temple site at Darasuram, which was built towards the end of the Chola rule. It’s no longer an active temple, so it wasn’t as overwhelming and busy as the Chidambaram temple and we all loved wandering through the pillar-filled interior spaces.

One quirk of the trip is that we’ve got a local tour guide as part of the group. I’m not clear why exactly – perhaps required for groups to enter some sites? He’s a lovely man, but very into Hindu nationalism (welcome to Modi’s India) and wrong about a lot of Hindu history, in the typical ways most tour guides are wrong. Not the sort of thing you’d notice, if you don’t have a bunch of actual experts with you. It creates some “unique” dynamics. Luckily everyone is very good natured about it all.

In contrast with the Darasuram temple, our next stop was a very small Chola temple that wasn’t on the “official” itinerary. Bonus temple! (And bonus temple cows) We enjoyed a quick walk around the sculptures before moving on. After lunch and a brief stop at the hotel to check in, we went back out to visit the royal palace museum, which houses an extensive collection of bronze sculptures. The bronze work is stunning, and we huddled around our nerds learning about significance of each piece. From the royal palace, a group of us went to a local bronze workshop, where an extended family is making pieces in a very traditional manner. It’s not the kind of work that OSHA would approve of.

I walked back to the hotel from the workshop, and enjoyed a chance to wander the back streets of Tanjavur by myself. It was great – little kids chasing me down to say hello, people offering rides back to the hotel and so on. Everyone is incredibly friendly and warm. I got a coffee at a street stall and poked around some of the streets near the hotel. Kat and another group of folks stopped at a fabric store on their way back to the hotel.

Today, we started with a visit to the Rajarajesvara Temple site, which includes a massive 216 foot tall temple building. By this point, we’re feeling a little more comfortable understanding and interpreting temple sites, so we were able to get our bearings pretty quickly. This site was also full of Indians who wanted to get selfies with members of our group, which was a lot of fun.

We then traveled to Sri Ranganatha Swamy in Trichy, an active temple site like Chidambaram. The priests at this temple site are more strict, so we weren’t able to enter as many spaces (though some hands may have been greased as it were). This is the largest temple complex in southern India – perhaps 100 acres? It’s distinctive because of all the vibrantly painted temple structures (mostly early modern period or later).

We had an amazing buffet lunch at the Marriott hotel in Trichy, before splitting the group up for some afternoon activities. One group went on a shopping excursion, while another went to visit more temple sites. We weren’t sure which group we’d join, until we found out that the temple in question is perched on a giant rock outcrop. Sold.

Narthamalai is from an earlier part of the Chola period (perhaps 7th-8th century) and blew us away. This was our first chance to experience more of a rural setting – getting to the temple involves an easy climb up the rock hill, with the sounds of goats, tractors, and distant temples echoing around. We essentially had the site to ourselves, which made it even more special. We explored, climbed the rocks, and enjoyed the views until nearly sunset. At that point, our tour organizer dragged us (reluctantly) back to the vans for the drive to the wedding venue. I’ll share more about the wedding venue in the next post, once we’ve had a chance to see it in the daylight.