This was more of a personal visit than a trip. We visited people whose unconditional love left me with less remembrance of the places, much more of, questioning the fairness of the world.
Any place we go, there will be mix of junior and senior places. There is lot of passion for fathers in taking their daughter to places and showing them the world. They take a lot of pride in that. Our first place to visit was Butterfly park, 12 kms from Trichy Junction. This is conservatory spread across 24 kms and is home to 111 species of butterflies. It has plants and trees that attracts butterflies. Squirrels, Peacock, garden lizards roam the park freely. They don’t get disturbed by the human intervention. It feels home and that was nice to see. We have a kitten growing up in our backyard and it took more than 2 months to get comfortable with us. They get scared than us.
We visited Rockfort in the evening. Streets through the city and to rockfort are narrow. Roads are packed with houses and shop on both sides, driving gets challenging in these congested streets. Our villages are formed when group of people moved to a place, they start farming in the fields where good water source exists. Then supporting jobs are created and more people come in to reside. Then they build temple for worship and wells for common use. Later schools and primary health care came in. Sitting on the rocks at the top, looking at this city, wondered what made this congestion. Why not spread across the place? Could be the temple, could be the group of people or source of employment which was the temple itself.
From Rockfort temple, one can see the Kaveri on one side and city on the other side. Pillaiyar temple is at the top and Shiva temple under neath. Rockfort is said to be one of the oldest formations in the county and the structures are built as early as 2nd century AD. There are granta scripts (in existence during pallava period) inscribed on the walls surrounding Shiva shrine.
Srirangam temple is said to be largest hindu temple in the world. It is spread across 150 acres and has 21 gopurams. This was renovated by different rulers in the last 1000 years. It took 2 hours to just walk across. There is a view point near the entrance where we can see all the gopurams. The white gopuram is painted white as Vellaiyamma saved the temple from looting by the sultans. She pushed the sultan from the that gopuram and she herself said to jumped off from there after that.
There is Ramanujar shrine inside Srirangam and it has the mummified body of Ramanujar. He lived in 11th century, it is believed that his body is preserved in sitting posture in the temple. People there say, nails and hairs are visible even now. There is no pooja done as it is real body and only pachai karpooram/kumkum coating done early twice.
Kallanai Dam is 22 kms from Trichy and was our last stop. Kaveri river is wider here and i think widest seen so far. Route is in banks of kaveri for atleast half of the distance. Inspite of river near by, there is no agircultural farm on the route. Land mostly covered with seemai karuvelam.
நான்.. இன்று.. என் பார்வையில்... 