Interesting weekend...

The weekend of 24,25 Jan was a long weekend as 26 Jan was a holiday and my parents were out. Decided on Friday morning that I am not going to laze around at home for all the three days. So searched in net to book tickets to some damn place. Finally managed to book an onward ticket to Trichy on Friday night and got a return from Pondicherry on Sunday night.Did some search on wiki on the places and noted down the names of places to visit.

Armed with the print-out of tickets, a print-out of TamilNadu map and Rs 2000 cash, I set out on Friday night to the Bangalore bus-stand. The onward bus to Trichy was crappy, but my enthusiasm kept my spirits up and got to Trichy on Saturday morning 5.30 am. There was a small coffee stall near the bus-stand serving filter coffee for 5 bucks. That was one of the best coffees I have had outside for a long time. (my coffee standards are quite high - thanks to my mom). Checked out a couple of hotels nearby and got a room in one of the hotels near bus-stand for 600 bucks.

Freshened up and set out to visit the places near Trichy. Started with Srirangam, where, when I was debating whether to stand in queue to say 'hi' to God, one of the pujaris convinced me to get in, and gave me a kind of guided tour. The fact that he expected some money from me was a different aspect :-). From there, set out to Thirvanaikaval temple, which was almost empty the time I went. Spent some time the huge temple in the serenity. Reminded me of a temple in my grandma's village.

Got  back to bus-stand, grabbed lunch at Saravana Bhavan and set out to Thanjavur. Thanjavur is a 90-120 minutes travel from Trichy. Found the local bus to go to Brihadeeshwara temple from the Thanjavur bus-stand ( called Periya koil ). Reached the temple at around 4:00 pm. The architecture of the temple, was just amazing. It was quite impossible to imagine that a group of people had built this almost 1000 years back !

Returned back to Trichy at night and caught up on dinner. The next morning, went to Rockfort in Trichy. Wanted to see sunrise from Rockfort, but got a bit late for that, as I reached there by around 7.30 only. The sculptures were great. It was quite interesting to find a Mamallapuram style sculptire in Rockfort temple. Later figured out from net that the particular cave temple I saw was built by Mahendravarma Pallava.

From there, set out to Pondicherry on a local bus. Did not find a direct bus to Pondicherry. So, took a bus to Chennai and got down at Villupuram and from there went to Pondicherry. The map I had printed out helped me here. Reached Pondi by around 2.00 pm, had a cup of tea in 'tea kadai' in motta veyyil. Then went to Arabindo Ashram to soak in the peace for sometime and then hit the beach. Spent a long time at the beach and the Le Cafe near beach reading the book I had taken. Shook a leg at the music fest in the beach later in the evening and then got to the bus-stand for my return journey. It was a fitting relaxing end to my trip.

1. The whole trip costed me somewhere around Rs 1800 including the travel and the stay. The only time I took an auto was when I went to bus-stand on friday night. All the other travel was through buses. 

2. It was a nice feeling to live life very down-to-earth, soaking in the surrounding and enjoying the scenery around. There were a few interesting observations, which I'll add in a follow-up blog.

3. This was my first solo back-pack trip. It was reasonably interesting that, I might do something like this again.