this weekend, we visited the temple city of madurai, several hours outside of coimbatore.
i have visited madurai several times before, but this time was different. it's nice to visit a place and compare it with your 'home city'- not for comparison's sake, of course, but in a deeper sense, to be able to notice subtle differences that wouldn't be apparent at all to someone who hadn't spent two months trying to see and learn the intricacies of a city's culture.
anyway, why you're all really here:
our first glimpse of meenakshi temple. it was, believe it or not, harder than it would look in this picture to navigate the crazy streets near the temple entrance. (i blame the a/c bus. it was a nice bus, but certainly made navigating narrow, busy streets difficult.)
one of the main gopuram of the temple. this one's around 170 feet, or 17 stories tall. the temple was built in the 1600s in its present form.
nandi, shiva's bull, surrounded by clay diya lanterns.
golden pillar near the inner sanctuary of the temple (closed to non-hindus. sorry, no photos).
i love how much more dramatic even pigeons can make a picture!
the temple really is a visual overload. even in black and white, there's no shortage of things competing for your attention!
taken from the rooftop of a nearby building filled with beautiful treasures. we may or may not have just used the store for its view.
this temple made the short medium list to be one of the 'new 7 wonders of the world.'
if i could correctly identify even three of the deities on this temple, i'd be pretty proud of myself. there are around 33,000 sculptures on the 14 towers like this one, so i guess i could cut myself a little slack.
thanks for stopping by! i'll be posting more photos from our trip throughout this week.
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