Central Tamil Nadu

Monday and we crossed back into Tamil Nadu. Last time we crossed into TN we were stared at to check if we were on the list of Maoist activists. Today they wished to look into Lenore and my back packs to see if we were carrying "black money" across the border. The drive thru TN was punctuated by many stops to find an ATM with money in it. We eventually found one!

We saw many interesting things including men and women washing clothes in a river and missing cows on the road! Kodhai the 'woman god'.

The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple or Thiruvarangam is a Hindu temple dedicated to Ranganatha, a reclining form of Hindu deity, Vishnu located in Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli (Trichy).

The temple has an imposing tower over the entrance gate and two large concentric rectangular enclosures around its perimeter. The entrance to the inner sanctum is through multiple columned halls.

The architecture is Dravidian characterised by the highly decorated and colorful pyramids.

There are many examples of superb stone carving including this row of figures dominated by horses. The detail is both precise and dramatic; e.g. Swords being thrust through flesh.

Our tour through Southern India continued on Tuesday (Day 2 Tricky) starting by the river bank. Trichy is located on the second most holy river for Hindus after the Ganges. An elephant blesses both of us. The photo of the elephant with its handler shows the handler pocketing one of the notes that we had placed in the elephants trunk to initiate the blessing. The photo at the bottom includes our trusty driver/guide ("Mr P") and the owner of the tour company, Padmini.

The middle photo on the left is one the 50 priests who work the riverside. Priests work on a completely free enterprise "fee for service" basis, and most services are booked by mobile phones these days. The next step must be a mobile phone app!

Once again today we saw many long queues outside banks and ATMs. Obtaining money here remains chaotic with the 2000 rupees (about AUD 40) per day limit remaining in place. Many ATMs remain empty due to lack of supply of the new notes, or the ATMs have not been modified to dispense the new notes.

On Wednesday we were pulled up on the highway by soldiers with automatic rifles around their necks, searching cars for "black money". According to news reports they seized many billions yesterday. Fortunately in this case the appearance of a couple of western tourists in the car led to as being waved through.