TNB - Srirangam and Tiruvannamalai

The next morning had JM and I visiting the largest temple complex in South India at Srirangam, the nearby town across the holy Cauvery River from Trichy. As it was nearing the end of the year, the Vaikunth Ekadasi festival was in full swing, and as a result the temple was packed. All seven concentric rings to the inner sanctum were a sea of moving bodies. As I went in toward the inner sanctum for darshan, the crowds just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then I noticed the "special darshan" line. There were about 600 people in it. And about 2,000 people in the general darshan line. And neither were moving. At which point I said a small prayer to Ranganathswamy asking for forgiveness for not having the patience to wait and turned around and walked out. I was greeted by a CCTV showing, amazingly, the reason why the line wasn't moving. Ranganathswamy Himself was on procession- He wasn't IN the inner sanctum. The CCTV's were giving a live, close-up feed of the murti being paraded through the complex. I prayed that Television Darshan still counted and after some photos, JM and I were on our way.

Our driver, however, was not at the car. So JM and I found some lunch, shared my 'magical' gatorade powder that turned water blue and made it taste like fruit, and played a little cricket with some school boys for a while. We then left for Tiruvannamalai.

We went for darshan at Arunachaleshwar in Tiruvannamalai when we reached, but as much as I hated to say it, we were pretty much templed out. And after Meenakshi and Rameswaram and a great experience in Tanjore, Arunachal's temple wasn't so enthralling. But JM did get his palm read for free (the guy wanted American coins - and he did have quite a collection of international coins - but we didn't have any). The great hill-fire that makes Arunachal so famous was not lit. That and the fact that we were just tired after literally blazing our way through Tamil Nadu meant that the next day we just decided to head back to Chennai and pass-out till our flight the next day.

Which is exactly what we did.