Although I wanted to post something in past few months, it just is coincidental that I am writing a sequel of my previous post about our Tamilnadu tour. This fresh trip, is a sequel to our previous Tamilnadu trip and, covered what we could not cover earlier in Tamilnadu plus places of interest in Kerala which we never visited before. This may be a slightly lengthy post but I hope it doesn't bore you because I sandwiched it with interesting information, lot of experiences and hidden details.
Introduction
We, a family of 4 people (this time, 2 adults and 2 kids) planned to travel most parts of Kerala and few parts of Tamilnadu to visit multiple temples which are of great historical, architectural and religious importance. But its not just temples, we planned to visit beaches, naturistic places, sculptures and places of tourist importance. This was in Oct 2024 lasting for 7 days - primarily during the Navratri festival time. I will not provide much details about each temple as the information is already available in the internet. This is more of an informational post. So, post any questions in the comments. The planning was personally done by us after doing some level of research from family, friends and internet. Remember that in Kerala, temples have specific timings and most of the temples have dress codes. In most places, gents should remove all their upper clothing like shirts, vests etc and go to visit inside the temples.
So what places did we plan to go to?
These are the places at a high level but if you read further, there were many other places we visited as we drove through.
- Thiruvananthapuram, KL
- Suchindram, TN
- Nagercovil, TN
- Kanyakumari, TN
- Thiruchendur, TN
- Rameshwaram, TN
- Madurai, TN
- Coimbatore, TN
- Guruvayur, KL
- Nelluvaya, KL
- Thrissur, KL
- Kalady, KL
If you compare this map from our previous post, we have a sense of satisfaction that we are able to visit almost all high importance tourist places of 2 states of India. These 2 states have a large number of places with tourist importance.
Having said that, I should list down what we didn't cover in these 2 states in past 2 years. This is just because we visited those places in the past and may be we should re-visit them some time later but not part of long trips.
- Ooty, TN
- Kodaikanal, TN
- Thiruttani, TN
- Kancheepuram, TN
- Vellore, TN
- Alleppey Backwaters, KL
- Munnar, KL
- Sabarimala, KL
Details
Day 0 - Reached Thiruvananthapuram by Air and reached hotel by 10 PM.
After visiting the Lord few times in those peaceful early hours and visiting rest of the temple, we clicked selfies, visited the Mahaganapati temple, had breakfast and waited for our pre- booked taxi.
As the taxi we booked for rest of the trip arrived, we visited the Parasurama temple and Attukal Bhagavathi Amman temple. The Parasuram Temple is located at a place where Lord Parasuraman is said to have created the lands Kerela by throwing his axe and as a result, the sea water backed off. This tells why backwaters are situated only in Kerela. After this, we went to Jatayu Earth Centre.
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| Jatayu Earth Center |
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| Sunset at varkala beach |
Day 2 - The next day we checked out of our hotel in Thiruvananthapuram. Remember that hotels in Kerala have varied checkout times no matter when you check in. It should be taken into consideration when you plan for your trip and hotels. Today's target was to reach Kanyakumari by sunset. The Kovalam beach was closed due to high tide. So - first, we went to the Azhimalai Shiva temple. Its main attraction is the huge Shiva statue which depicts the story of Gangavatharan or how the river Ganga came from the heaven to earth. We went to Poovar, well known for its backwaters. We first took a boat ride in the backwaters where one could feel mother nature in a very intimate way. It was here that some parts of the movie Anaconda were shot.
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| Poovar backwaters |
While boat riding, we can see different types of birds, plants and even types of fishes. It took us 15 minutes to come to the. Golden sand beach. It was very hot. So, we were only there for a little time in the beach and we came back on our journey to
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| Golden sand beach island in Poovar |
Kanyakumari. The next place we want to visit is the Padmanabhapuram palace, which is a well preserved palace of the Kerala kings. However we did not go inside it to save some time. Next on the way, we went to the Aadikeshav Perumal temple in Thiruvattaru. It is one of the 108 Perumal divyadesams and known for its resemblance of the Ananta Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram. The Adikeshava perumal temple is older than Ananta Padmanabhaswamy temple. Here we see the deity in the exact opposite direction of what we see in Anantapadmanabhaswamy temple, i.e., from the leftmost door, we can see his legs, in the central door, we ca see his stomach region and in the rightmost door, we can see his head and hands, which is vice-versa in the Anantapadmanabhaswamy temple. It is believed that the moolasthanam of Anantapadmanabhaswamy temple, Adikesavaperumal temple and Sri Ranganatha Swamy temple in Srirangam is Anantapadanabhaswamy temple. The temple is made of 16,008 Saligrama stones.
From there, we went to Thirupurappu falls which is located near the temple.
After lunch, we thought of seeing Suchindram and Nagercoil but could not cover Nagercoil as we were close to the sunset time in Kanyakumari. We visited the Trimurthy temple in Suchindram.It is said that everynight, Lord Indra comes to this temple and does a puja to the Trimurthy deity. That is why, every night, the priests of the temple keep all the required things in the sanctum (garbha gruha) and lock it from the outside, and by morning, the deity looks like he had been offered puja and all the puja utensils are freshly used. From here, we went to Kanyakumari to watch the sunset (it was a bit cloudy 😥) and in the late evening, we visited Kanyakumari Amman. The specialty of the Amman here is that she is standing and her nose piercing is made of a special and rare diamond which is said to sparkle so brightly that it is seen even from the sea. We checked into the hotel and had a night's sleep.
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| Thiruppurapu water falls |
After lunch, we thought of seeing Suchindram and Nagercoil but could not cover Nagercoil as we were close to the sunset time in Kanyakumari. We visited the Trimurthy temple in Suchindram.It is said that everynight, Lord Indra comes to this temple and does a puja to the Trimurthy deity. That is why, every night, the priests of the temple keep all the required things in the sanctum (garbha gruha) and lock it from the outside, and by morning, the deity looks like he had been offered puja and all the puja utensils are freshly used. From here, we went to Kanyakumari to watch the sunset (it was a bit cloudy 😥) and in the late evening, we visited Kanyakumari Amman. The specialty of the Amman here is that she is standing and her nose piercing is made of a special and rare diamond which is said to sparkle so brightly that it is seen even from the sea. We checked into the hotel and had a night's sleep.
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| A view of sunset and moonrise at Kanyakumari |
Day 3 - Our hotel was very near to all the tourist places like Kanyakumari Amman temple, the southern most land of India, Vivekananda Rock Memorial Ferry boarding point etc. So we went for a sunrise view, morning bath in the ocean and came back to the hotel for fresh up. Without any break, we quickly went to the adjacent town of Nagarcoil for seeing the Nagaraja temple. In this temple Lord Nagaraja (a snake) is worshipped in its full nest. It is said that the nest's clay changes its color every 6 months alternatively white and black. The snake nest clay is given to the devotees as "Prasada". Immediately we came back to Kanyakumari and went to the ferry ride to the Vivekananda Rock memorial which is built on huge rock in the sea.
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| A view of Vivekananda Rock memorial |
This can be treated as the southern most tip of India as well. There were large queues to on-board and off-board the ferry which is something we should get used to when you are in India. The ferries to Thiruvalluvar statue were suspended as there is an bridge construction work in progress.
We came back to the main land, had lunch and started our 3 hour journey to Thiruchendur. This was the 6th Lord Subramanya site (out of 6) that we could not visit earlier in Tamilnadu trip(s). This temple is literally on the sea shore and you have to walk on the beach to go to this temple. The "darsan" was not too delayed because we took the paid queues. We also felt very satisfied to see peacocks on the walls of the temples where their stone sculptures are kept coincidentally. It was already 7 PM and we decided to reach Rameshwaram in the night whatever time it takes. We had dinner on the way and we reached our hotel by 1.30 AM in the night - tired & exhausted.😫
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| Peacock on a peacock |
Day 4 - Rameshwaram is itself a 2 day trip if you go in a relaxed way. Just remember that cars cannot go within 0.5 km radius of the temple. So you should take local auto rickshaws if you are staying beyond that vicinity to visit the places around. We went to Agni Theertham first to take a holy dip in the sea water. We collected some sand from this shore as its been said that this sand needs to be taken to Kasi and merged with Ganga as part of a "complete spiritual trip" in India. After here, we went to the temple to bath in the 22 fresh water wells which are of historical and spiritual importance. Remember that Rameshwaram is also on the seashore with salt water all around. This place is tightly coupled with Ramayana, so all the places here are of significant importance with Lord Rama as the main figure. We contracted an external & dedicated personnel who pours water from all these wells on each one of us. It was so refreshing as people who used to bath near wells knows. We changed our wet clothes in dedicated area in the temple and went for darshan of Shri Ramanathaswamy and Parvatha Vardhini Amman. When we came out, it was lunch time. There are lot of tourist attractions around. We started with Dhanushkoti where the 2 seas of Indian ocean and Bay of Bengal meet.
It was surprising to see Indian ocean was on high tide and noisy while the Bay of Bengal on the other side is comparatively calm. Kids enjoyed this place and collected a lot of sea shells. This is the place where the Ram setu is said to start from. Its a 5 KM strip road from Rameshwaram to Dhanushkoti with 2 seas on both sides. All you hear is the sound of waves and abandoned structures of the Dhanushkoti old town. On the way back, we visited Kodanda Rama Temple where Lord Ram made Vibeeshana the future king of Lanka before going on war with Ravana. From here, we went to Gandhamadana hill and Hanuman temple on top of it. Then we went to see Rama theertham, Lakshmana Theertham and Seetha Theertham, all are small holy ponds created by respective people for their penance after the war. The Panchamukhi Hanuman temple is also near by these theerthams and its where you can also see floating stones used in Rama setu. We then went to Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's house to spend about 30-45min and get some inspiration from his life and achievements. Towards the end of the day, we came to know that there will not be much queues in the temple and had another darsan of Ramanathaswamy. So much for that day!
Day 5 - We had an early morning famous "Spatika Lingam" darsan. This darshan of Ramanathaswamy is not available after 6 AM everyday. After breakfast, we started from Rameshwaram, visited Villondi Theertham where it is believed that Lord Rama has put an arrow in the middle of sea for getting fresh water out to quench the thirst of Sita. Its interesting how the water from the well is potable where as the water around the well is as salty as how the sea water can be. You will get the taste of both the waters at this place to experience the difference. We crossed the Pamban bridge to enter the main land again and visited the Navagraha temple, again believed to be established by Lord Rama.
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| Walkway in the sea to Navagraha temple |
During high tide, these navagraha stones submerge into water. Next up is Vaarahi Amman temple followed by a long journey towards Madurai. When we reached Madurai in the evening, it being the Vijaya Dasami, the last day of Navaratri, we wanted to take a break and go to darshan of the Meenakshi Amman. The temple had extended its closure timings for the day and we had a satisfying "darsan". Coincidentally, Madurai is the common stop in this trip and previous trip. Next morning, we started our journey towards Isha Adiyogi center, Coimbatore. It was lunch time when we reached Coimbatore.
We reached Isha foundation in a pleasant atmosphere almost by evening. We spent some time around the Adiyogi statue and then it started raining quite heavily. Somehow we made it into the Isha Ashram and visited various places like Surya Kund, Linga Bhairavi, Dhyana Linga etc. They are all specially consecrated meditation spaces by Sadguru and some how I got a feeling that they are all believers of Naga due to the asthetics around the ashram. By midnight, we reached Guruvayoor for a short sleep.
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| Nelluvaya Sri Dhanvantari Temple |
This is also an Ayurvedic composition good for stomach ailments and overall health. By late evening, we reached Thirussur to visit Vadakkunathan and Bhagavathy temples which are so pleasant. Our night stay was at an hotel near the Kochi International airport and we reached there by 10 PM after our dinner.
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| Sri Adi Shankara Sthupam |
There is a big tower called the Shankaracharya Sthupam with multiple levels inside it. Each level depicts various happenings in the life of Sri Adi Shankaracharya in the form of paintings and statues, which was very interesting. With this, our trip came to an end as our taxi bid farewall to us and we boarded our return flight in the noon.
Overall, it was a satisfying trip as we visited different places belonging to nature, devotion, art and peace.
Sarve jana sukhino bhavanthu
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