Madurai is a place famous for its colorful Meenakshi Temple which I often saw in television programs. My curiosity increased even more when I heard Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bacchhan visited this temple before their marriage.Its said if a couple visits this temple, their relationship will never break and mostly people come there after their marriage.
We came to Madurai from Bangalore by train, we boarded the train in night and reached in morning before time.This was the first place in Tamilnadu I visited by train.We took a room in railway retiring rooms, despite that that it was AC 1 retiring room, it was in pathetic shape, chairs and tables were strewn around without order, bedsheets were unclean, toilets were pathetic to the extent that I vomited, since we had very less time to visit this place, we decided to bear with it and after bathing, we went to the temple which was near the railway station, after going through a market, you reach the entrance of temple, after depositing shoes, you have to stand in a queue.
After security check, you’ll be allowed to enter the premises of temple.You are still not inside temple, but in its campus, it has many gates, you can chose any gate and go inside the temple, We chose the right one and entered the temple, inside the temple, there is again a queue which is mighty long.We saw men in black lungis, lots of them, we thought they were temple staff, but later on learned that they were Ayappa people and pray in this attire this season and visit many temples and they pray mainly Ganesha.After a long wait when we finally entered the main central hall of temple where the Goddess Meenakshi idol is put, we couldn’t see it properly as the temple staff keeps prodding you to go ahead and their behavior is rough, they almost push you forwards, we came back again, this time from a paid line and then could see the deity properly, all south India temples have similar architecture and very different from north Indian temples, the deity is put very inside where nobody can go except priest.
There are smaller temples around. We came back again to the place where we started. There we saw something very interesting, a huge decorated elephant along with a bull came with people taking out a decorated umbrella. The elephant came just in front of deity and and made a namaskar kind of thing with its nose. The scene was mesmerizing. Later on we learnt, there was some kind of festival going on there, we went around the temple and appreciated the huge ceiling and pillars.
When you come out of the temple, there is another thing to see, A thousand pillar temple inside the premises of Meenakshi temple. One unique thing in all south Indian temples is that there are statues on outside wall of temple and pillars of temple. Very old paintings are also displayed in a museum kind of place inside thousand pillars temple. We came out of temple and ate some unripe mango pieces which are sold in Mumbai plus most parts of south India. We took a battery operated vehicle which is free and reached the shoe counter and took our footwear.When we came back to Madurai railway station, we drank excellent tea and ate vadas. The railway staff was good enough to suggest us we take the 4 pm train to Nagercoil to visit KanyaKumari.We got reservations immediately and after resting for some time boarded the train to Nagercoil.
All in all I can say if you’ve curiosity enough to visit this temple (Meenakshi temple), then go to Madurai.Also Please do not stay in railway retiring room there, but take the train to Nagercoil to visit mesmerizing Kanyakumari.
Thanks for reading my review, Hope it helps you in some way.