Day 9: Sat 18 Nov 17: Kanadukathan to Madurai, 103 km - Total so far: 567 km

24 to 37deg, fine and sunny. Some hot periods during the middle of the day and our Brits Mates felt it a bit.

Our day started about 7am with a nice hot coffee in the courtyard, thanks to our Tour Leader Mike. Although I’d been up pottering since 5. We walked a couple of hundred metres to one of the Mansion/Palaces which had been converted to a flash hotel. Just stunning old-world charm.

Back to the hotel for breakfast with nice coffee; they beat the SE Asians hands down in the coffee dept.

Rode away about 9am into a town that was practically deserted, especially when you compare it with the chaotic cities we’ve been to previously. And the traffic is just about non-existent; we were on the road to Madurai. Mainly smooth bitumen roads today with a short section on a backroad.

The lush landscape becomes more arid today, with rocks and ridges becoming a common sight. It wasn’t till we were 20km out of Madurai that we saw any real agriculture, other than goats, thorny acacia and coconut palms. Idyllic rural riding brings us to perhaps the most famous of all of Tamil Nadu’s towns, Madurai and the unforgettable riot of colour that are the gopurams of Sri Menakshi temple.

There was the normal insane riding as we made our way to the hotel through the peak-hour traffic but I love this part of the ride. I now know why there are over 140,000 people killed on the roads every year in this country. Apparently one person dies every four minutes. That said, out on the open roads or even in the city chaos, I have never felt threatened or in danger at anytime and they seem very cautious; around us anyway. Not sure they give their own the same wide berth, but I hope so.

Checked into the Madurai Residency Hotel and did the normal ritual to rid and body and clothes of road grime. Met up with the gang just after 5pm and walked to the Sri Menakshi Temple Complex. What chaos, there were people everywhere. After going through security, including a thorough pat-down and paying (Mike) the $2 each not to line up with 1000s of locals, we entered the Temple. It was like riding a wave of people and it was difficult to stop and take a photo because the wave just kept coming. An amazing place inside, but us non-Hindus were not permitted to enter the inner sanctum. We were sort of spat out the other side and it was hard to comprehend what we had just seen.

For dinner the four Aussies ended up at the buffet in the restaurant on the 6th floor, while the others went for the view on the 7th floor rooftop bar. The buffet was superb.



Holy cows

Converted Palace courtyard

Dining room

Another abandoned house

Nice smooth road

With a good, wide shoulder

Drying rice on the main road

Temple on a rock

Hero/Honda

Rocky outcrop

Quite dry early today

Ladies with their animals

Morning tea stop

Rock-hewn fence posts; heck of a way to make posts

Rock fence posts

Wood is still used extensively for fuel

Rubbish is everywhere; some villages are making an effort to keep clean though

Nice paved street in one of the towns we passed through

Ken trying to educate the locals

More goats

First sighting of hills

And rocky outcrops


Lunch

Lunch stop

My room

Our digs

One of the many towers of the Sri Menakshi Temple










Cute kids, of the human kind

Ken about to attach the dinner buffet















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