and then off to see some of the other beautiful houses in Chattinad. I say houses but the first we visited was in fact a palace owned by a modern day Maharaja whose family just happened to own Chattinad Cement who seem to supply most of the cement certainly in Tamil Nadu. the palace was huge, a kilometre from front to back and immaculately painted and maintained so that this industrial Rajah and his family can come for a couple of months a year from their main residence in Chennai. There was evidence though, that he
Then on to another house where the owner had made his money in Malaysia and had imported teak wood from there, and tiles from Japan and huge granite columns.
These were just huge houses standing empty right next door to peasant properties. Then on to Madurai where we first visited a memorial museum dedicated to Ghandi and the whole struggle for Indian independence. This was a very well put together history of the whole struggle against the British which started over 200 years ago with the infamous East India Trading Company and ended in 1948 With Ghandi's non violent opposition to British rule.
Then on to the main temple in Madurai. This temple is enormous with four huge towering structures at gates in the east, south, west and north quadrants. This is the largest and busiest temple we have seen to date. The painted gods and characters on the towers are truly breathtaking.
Finally we went to what was billed as an evening light show at the palace, but what turned out to be an hour long audio story of an ancient king with different lights coming on from time to time. A highlight of the story was when the audio was recalling a hunt against a fierce tiger and just as they announced the tiger charged, a small cat proceeded to walk across the centre stage. It was very comical.
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Location:Madurai
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