A to B - Madurai to Chola temples:
We hop on the train again, but this time for a glorious afternoon journey to Trichy. Some of India's greenest lands pass before our eyes, paddy fields and palm trees shimmering in the sun. After that there is no option but the local buses to get between these magnificent isolated temples of south India
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.... Then R decided to accelerate the travelling tempo much to A's horror and we left the disneyland for a whistlestop tour of the Chola temples of eastern Tamil Nadu. Tanjavur, Kumbakonam, Darashram and Gangaikodacholapuram. These thousand year old granite structures towers gracefully inside walled compounds, adorned with exquisitely carved images of Hindu gods, both sensuous and serene. Lines of lingam stretched as far as the eye could see. The calm of these temples contrasted with the playfulness of Madurai.
For hundreds of years the local speciality has been, and still is, the crafting of superb bronze sculptures using the "lost wax" technique. We cycled to one of these workshops, a hut smothered in palm trees, on the edge of a small village. Here we saw the initial wax models, clay moulds drying and the final polishing and etching of detail.
The results are gods, languid and eternally young dancing in rings of fire or posed curvaceously radiating inner calm. Their exquisite quality shone through despite the dust murkiness of the government museums.
