We arrived in Madurai after taking a couple of government buses from .. It was a city like many others in India, sprawling, dirty and noisy but this one was nit just noisy, it was deafening- horns beeping everywhere were so loud that they actually hurt the ears! We weren't sure whether we'd become too used to the quiet at the ashram or whether it really was much louder than usual, but actually someone told us later that they had thought exactly the same and that Madurai seemed not to adhere to the normal rules of decibels!
We had planned to spend two nights in the city and our train wasn't until after ten on the third night, but it seemed like much too long once we realized that the only famous thing about Madurai was its temple. We visited the temple the first day, and it was pretty impressive. We were trying to feel the good vibes of the place until that is, we got into a fight with a guy on the door of the temple museum. He started yelling at us (and I mean yelling) because we had bought a ticket only for the museum and not for the temple, even though they were separate, so Angel yelled back but it didn't help him to let us in. Shanty shanty man! Sometimes people get really wound up if you don't follow the rules to the letter here. - It happened somewhere before that the person on the desk sold us the ticket but then we were yelled out later on... So to calm down, we found the meditation hall and did a bit of positive thinking to help dispel the shock.
The best thing about Madurai was probably the Gandhi museum which was very well put together, even though there was ALOT of reading involved! It told the whole story of colonization by the British and the Indian resistance later led by Gandhi. It even had Gandhi's bloody dhoti that he was wearing when he shuffled off his mortal coil!
I think that was it for our cultural journey in Madurai but we did find out via Facebook that Kristina and Karl (German friends from Gokarna) were staying in an ashram about 45 mins out of the city, so, on the last day, we took a local bus out into the countryside to visit them.
They were staying in a Sivananda ashram which was all small structures with palm leaf rooves and far prettier and more tranquil than the ashram we stayed at. They'd been there for two weeks and they'd just happened to skive off a lecture when we showed up and surprised them. They left Gokarna to go to an interview fior a volunteer job, the day we arrived but really regretted it when they ended up in a cold place with no real restaurants at Christmas. we missed them at our Christmas parties on the beach but it was really nice to catch up again at the ashram.
Next stop the beach at Mamallapuram...
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