Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Madurai was just a stop-over for us on the way to Trichi. Though Madurai is famous for the awe-inspiring Sri Meenakshi Temple complex, the city itself was annoying. Touts seemed a lot hungrier for tourists, and therefore were more annoying. About an hour after we got off the bus with our big backpacks and were heading out to locate our hotel, we were swarmed by touts trying to persuade us to go to their hotel (they would get a commission if tourists are brought in). Normally, after several "no thank you" we would be left alone, but not this time. Just like mosquitoes, touts would still swarm around us, trying to get "a piece of action". I told one of them that I was getting angry, and that I was tired and hungry, and that when I am tired and hungry, I turn into a bad woman, and that he wouldn't want to be around when I am in those moods. The tout laughed, but still proceeded on bugging me. Eventually, realizing that no commission coming from us, they stopped bugging us, and one of them pointed out the direction to us to that hotel we were looking for about an hour. The next day was better except for fighting with a restaurant for being over-charged, and walking several kilometers in the mid-afternoon heat trying to locate a long distance bus stop. I swear the temperature was close to 40° (104°F). We did get a nice big watermelon though, and took some good photos while hanging around the bus stop, so it worked out OK. Rob went to the famous temple in the early evening, and I treated myself to a few HBO movies in the room - I needed a little escape and re-charge that day, so even a world famous temple couldn't beat a bourgeois TV channel for me that day. :)
Trichy was refreshing after Madurai. And, I was again enjoying the temples. One of them was absolutely fantastic. Called Rock Fort temple, it is perched 83 meters high on a massive rocky outcrop. We had to climb bare-footed about 437 stone-cut steps, and once we made it to the top, the views were incredible. Eagles were soaring beneath us, the entire city was below us, pilgrims were climbing the rocky steps, air filled with burning insents brought from the temple - it all seemed to have an element of mystery... The next morning we also visited a vast Sri Ranganathaswamy temple and Sri Jambukeshwara temple. Both were interesting, but not as mysterious as the Rock Fort temple. As a matter of fact they were too real - lots of beggars, touts, and pseudo-priests, business as usual. In both, we saw domesticated (or I call it captured) elephants. They were trained to accept donations by taking money by their trunk, then people would bow down and the elephants would touch the heads by their trunk, thus giving a blessing. It was sad for me to watch this... These magnificent animals that I had an opportunity to see in the wild were standing all day long, some with chains around their feet, and ignorant people thought it was cute to get "blessed" by these captured creatures. I came closer to one of the elephants, and looked into her eyes. Her eyes were so beautiful, and so sad... I whispered to her how sorry I was for us, cruel humans, destroying their habitat and turning them into slaves. I so much wanted to tell to the people wanting to be touched by the elephant how wrong it was, but I didn't. They would never understand me, or accept that the ignorance is dangerous, so I bid a sad good-bye to the elephants and walked out of the temple grounds...

Tanjor temples have a Unesco World Heritage status, and rightfully so. We took a special trip there to watch the sunset over the temples, and it was absolutely beautiful. The setting sun gave a special golden glow to the temples, and the sunset over the temple peaks and old trees was dramatic and gorgeous. We took a lot of photographs that day, and we also talked to a lot of strangers too. We were used by then to be asked by locals the usual questions where we were from, if we liked India, etc. That day was no exception, lots of school kids wanted to talk to us, take pictures with us, shake our hands, etc. By then, during out trip around India, we made thousands acquaintances, and answered thousands of questions, and took thousands of photos. It was all good, people treated us very decent, and we try to be good ambassadors of our countries and cultures as well.