Hi dear Hive community,
From Uthamapalayam, around 30 minutes away from Kumily (still in Kerala), we took a long bus ride of around 5 hours to reach the city of Madurai (in Tamil: மதுரை). It has around 1 million inhabitants, and it’s located in the southest state of India, Tamil Nadu. It is the transportation hub connecting south India with the rest of the country as it has a good railway station and a smaller airport.
The city was vibrant and very alive. On every corner you could find nice small shops or food places. Everywhere you could buy religious items, as it is a known pilgrim place.
One of the most important areas of the city is Meenakshi Amman Temple initially made between 1190 and 1205 CE. Later the whole city was destroyed and therefore they needed to rebuild everything, so the last renovation took place between 16th and 17th century. In the ancient scripts of Tamil culture the temple is mentioned already in the 6th century. The temple is dedicated to Goddess Meenakshi, which is one of many forms of Parvati, and is Shivas consort.
The legend of this temple goes like this:
“According to the Tamil text Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam, King Malayadwaja Pandya and his wife Kanchanamalai performed a Yajna seeking a son for succession. Instead, a daughter was born out of the fire who was already 3 years old and had three breasts. Shiva intervened and said that the parents should treat her like a son, and when she meets her husband, she will lose the third breast. They followed the advice. The girl grew up, the king crowned her as the successor and when she met Shiva, his words came true, she took her true form of Meenakshi.” (taken from Wikipedia - Meenakshi Temple)
Unfortunately the camera and taking pictures inside the temple was forbidden.
However if we briefly describe it - area is very big and it includes four main temples or towers, which height is around 50 meters! The place was very crowded and enormous, so we explored it only roughly. For us was the most interesting the area or hall of thousand pillars. They were incredible and we found many with mesmerizing carvings.
What we found very interesting is, that in Tamil Nadu, the big temple towers are made in a way that it can be painted. They have a custom of painting this every few years as the colors fade way too fast on this extreme hot temperatures.
By accident we discovered the best sweets of all the India. It’s a must visit place when in Madurai, and to be honest Tamara would visit place once again only for this reason. Luckily we found out that they have another shop in Bangalore.
As the rush of the city and its intensity was for us a bit too much we didn’t want to stay longer. The next day after breakfast we were again on the bus heading even deeper into Tamil Nadu.
Thank you for reading. Wish you a nice day!
Text was written with the help of the page: https://www.britannica.com/place/Madurai
Besides that, we included what we’ve read or heard in the temple.
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Wow, India looks like an amazing place, and although you couldn't take pictures of the temple, I could imagine its magnificence and magnitude. I am also fascinated with the pictures, especially the one of the sweets. I loved this trip, I send you a hug!
Hiya, @lizanomadsoul here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Honorable Mentions in Travel Digest #2134.
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Meenakshi mandir bahut hi beautiful h uski pic or dalni chahiye thi👍