TOWN

This afternoon we went to Town with a capital T. Although I say I am here in Tirunelveli, I am actually in its twin town on the other side of the river, Palayamkottai. The whole area though is known as Tirunelveli as is the administrative centre. Tirunelveli itself is the older part, it consists of two main parts, Junction - where the railway station is and Town, the old centre where the temple is. So today I went to Town 

Driving up the road from Junction, you can see the gateway to the temple area ahead of you with one of the towers of the very famous temple behind it. The temple dates back to the 7th century and is dedicated to Shiva along with his consort Parvathi, and Vishnu. There are one of these decorated towers at each of the four gates. Last time I went in, there was an elephant there, but I've heard she died last month aged 56. There are certainly fewer temple elephants now as their welfare is seen as important. The temple is  a huge and very famous religious and tourist site, with everything inside on a very grand scale.

Once through the first archway into town, you turn left and the road circles the temple, over a mile I think to go all around - in theory with all traffic going one way. In theory. 

Both sides of the road around the temple are packed with shops and vendors and on the South side there is a larger food market. There are many jewellers shops in this area too with a mixture of modern and traditional craftsmen. Gold players a very important part in society here. The little yellow auto heading through the gate is the same as Raja 's.

The other parts of the main collage are, the entrance to Pothys with its Ganesh shrine which is decorated and celebrated daily. Pothys has been on this site for decades. RMKV which I visited the other day, made a very good decision to move from this area nearer to Palayamkottai around 20 years ago - I went there on the opening day much to my friend's husband's amusement!

The other picture, of sarees on models is to give an idea of costs. If you zoom in you'll see that most cost between 1 and 2 thousand rupees 10-20 pounds. Quite manageable on most salaries these days.

The extra is of some wildlife, largely taken around the large Tank or Lake on the edge of town. There is a grey headed swamp hen. I hadn't seen one before but it was running around very happily on top of the water hyacinth, it looked about the size of a large pheasant.
The picture below shows the lake. They have tried to make it a pleasant place to come, by building a fenced off walk way around it, but sadly there are very few ways onto and off the walkway. 

The area along the side of the Lake is used by long distance lorry drivers as a parking and sleeping area so it's not the most welcoming. The walkway area around ⅓ of the lake has lots of play equipment which looked very hot and dusty in the heat of the afternoon but Raja says it's very busy in the cooler evenings when food vendors and toy sellers bring their stalls.

The other two pics are of water buffalos which are treated the same as cattle here and kept for milk. They have an accessible area of the lake which is wet and muddy where they can wallow! I get so used to seeing cows and goats wandering the streets that I forget that it is in fact unusual to see.

The final picture is of an egg plant (white aubergine) in Ida's garden, she is thrilled to bits with it as she's grown it from a tiny plant. She's delighted it's a white variety as it looks even more like an egg, lol.


Here is a link to the temple info if you want to know more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellaiappar_Temple