On the last day of 2014, we leave Thanjavur for Madurai, exploring the epic Living Chola Temple of Brihadishwara before visiting a village tile factory and contenting with shoe stealing monkeys at Tirumayam Fort. While everyone made it to the New Year unscathed, one of our rickshaws didn’t.
Day 3, Thanjavur to Madurai
The road to Thanjavur yielded potholes, villages with thatched roofed houses and smoky chai shops, as well as a few mandatory breakdowns along the way, so it was a relief to hear that the road to Madurai would be relatively smooth in comparison. While most of our teams made it in before sun down, the day was not without its setbacks, challenges and even a road collision and a trashed rickshaw.
Kicking off from the hotel, the local press waved off the whacky rickshaw drivers before they headed off to the nearby and spectacular Brihadishwara Temple.
Sprawling out in a complex of carved sandy yellow and orange stone, this ancient temple dates back over 1000 years and is a glorious example of Chola architecture. Thanjavur’s Living Chola Temple takes a proud place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
We checked our shoes into a cloakroom and entered through the second gate into the inner wall, entering into a huge courtyard enclosing the towering, 61 meter high pyramid-shaped temple, with small shrines dotted around sporting exquisite sculptures.
Climbing the steps into the cool long tunnel, the crowd behind us pushed us into the packed line towards the main shrine. Queuing in the long columned assembly hall felt more like waiting to get into an exclusive nightclub, until we approached the 4m high statue of Shiva, where the priest dotted our forehead with ash and wished us a long life. Prior to the New Year, the crowds flock to the temple to start 2015, as women sat on the grassy corner in their best saris, sweeping the floor of the covered walkways and frescoes, to school kids running up to us on in the courtyard asking to be photographed with us.
As the hot rock burned our feet, our grumbling stomachs reminded us it was nearing midday so we hoped in the car and drove after the rickshaws on the road to Madurai.
We didn’t see any of the participants on the way to Tirumayam Fort, although we got distracted on the way as we stopped off at a tile making workshop in one of the villages on the way. After watching the dyes being mixed, poured into marbled patterns on glass before the concrete was applied, this family of craftsmen showed us some of the tiles that were already made.
“They export these all over the world, there are clients in Germany, other places in Europe,” Aravind, head of the Travel Scientists.
As the kids hustled us for pens, Guillermo from the Publicity Team tried his hand at making a tile – and not doing a very good job at it. The young man next to him just laughed and did his best to rectify the tile.
“He’s been working here since he was 11,” Prashanth told us, “He’s 30 now.”
We said good bye to the family, giving the kids some foreign coins as a present, and our only pen, before we headed off to Tirumayam Fort.
Most of the participants made it here hours before us, as we saw photos from near and around, along with funny captions and images from the day. The Norwegian team Game of Horns stopped off for a paint job before going into the middle of nowhere and the Mighty Ducks climbed up to the top of a canon.
We climbed up the rocky steps to the historic fort that blended in with the epic boulders on the site. A large rock inside the fortress had been turned into a shrine to Shiva, perched high up and accessible only by ladder. Like with all Hindu shrines and temples, I left my shoes outside, on the bottom, only to look down to see a curious monkey on the verge of running away with them.
Our drive to Madurai was smooth, until we saw our service truck. We stopped to see what happened, and Team Dukes of the Green II had a minor breakdown, but a few meters ahead, their buddies Dukes of the Green’s rickshaw was in a sorry state with a smashed up rickshaw and a missing windscreen.
The team came face to face with a motorcyclist who crashed through their windscreen before the rickshaw toppled over, and not the first time for this team. The participants were unscathed, physically, and while the injured cyclist was OK in the end, much to all of our relief. The Bavarian Barbarians saw the accident, sacrificing one of their team members to help the young Brits out as they made it to the daily finish line in Madurai.
The rickshaw might be banged up and in the workshop, but that didn’t dampen our spirits for the New Year celebrations. The cyclone had caught up with us, pouring down tropical rain over our party, but hiding in the hotel’s special tent complete with a Bollywood talent show and drinks, we partied on into 2015 Indian style!
Find out who is in the lead to win this year’s Rickshaw Challenge Classic Run!
02Jan
