Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu), February 9
Finally Back in India I left Auroville! My story has lasted fifteen days instead of four or five expected. I'll be able to find the chaos of India, spitting, eating fried fish very yucky, heavy drinking task beer and smoking big firecrackers. Well, basically I did not feel like turning his head more than that, but at least now I have a choice. The show also incorporates dry. At the exit of Auroville, a small number made its balancing on the edge of the road, accompanied by his father to the drum.
When I crossed the large villages, I found these flashy billboards for diamond necklaces and luxury cars, completely shifted in the midst of dilapidated houses and vacant lots where these people live between their goats and their stand of donuts. At the edge a road, I came across a very oriental Jesus ...
At night, a cop asks me to stop. He has no reason to do so, outside of trying to rob me of a few hundred rupees to an unfortunate lack of license and insurance, so I dodge. Two hours later, I arrived at Chidambaram, where I found joy with the friendliness of the Tamils, always glad to get information and discuss the end of fat. The local temple is amazing, with its forest of columns emerging from the shadows, his black statues stashed in every nook and devotion of the faithful. In addition, there is not a tourist. During the puja, the Brahmins to the strange hairstyle angled run their candles in the teeming nest of gods, Krishna and then stroll on a palanquin drowned in the mists of incense, amidst the din of bells, drums and horns that resonate in the vault, surrounded by the jostling crowd to follow the show. Indiana Jones would land suspended his whip that I would not be surprised more than that.
The next day I win Thanjavur, known as one of the largest temples of south India. True, it is impressive. But I remember especially the young Brahmin nice, foreman in civilian life, which temporarily replaces his brother before the statue of a relative of Ganesh. Between two blessings, he left his serious concerns with me about his girlfriend and eventually make me a veiled proposal, which makes me laugh.
Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu), February 15
Pilgrimage to the end of the world
These are Aurovilliens who advised me to go to Rameswaram, they enticed me when I describe the place like a world away. I leave the bike in Madurai, where the rogue still has problems with the piston, and I go by bus overnight to this island at the southeastern tip of India, just across Sri Lanka. When I awoke, I discovered a beautiful traditional village with pastel houses smashed sunglasses. The streets are lined with ice cream, small restaurants, shops rental bikes, displays of religious souvenirs, shops mirror shell and travel agencies for the Indians.
There's even a few swimmers and beach with a small cotton candy vendor.
In the street, tiny Horses pull carts loose, whereas donkeys beside them taking the easy way with the cows who use their status to scrape bananas at the temple entrance. Meanwhile, drivers have little regard for ricksdhaws their turnover.
Women, as always dressed in bright multicolored saris, chat before a mirror or a glass of warm milk. As for men, almost all in traditional dhoti, the white skirt hemmed with gold that roll up to their knees, they doze in the shade until the heat down, as all the old weathered under his turban, which cuts the nuts of coconut without hurrying. Most wear on the forehead three strips of ash gray horizontal Shiva, the god of honor here. They travel in small groups in the costumes of their region. Because if some come from Tamil Nadu, others arrive in Bombay, New Delhi or Kathmandu. Rameswaram is that, despite its modest size, is home to one of five Hindu temples where everything must have gone on pilgrimage at least once in their life.
Its splendid corridors, to name a few, are known to be the longest in the country.
The day I arrived, there were celebrating the christening of the new temple elephant, just five years old, but already well known trumpet and bless the faithful in order for his driver when he not amuse the gallery at the tap.
The role of the penis of Shiva in the conquest of Sri Lanka
For those interested, I'm in this paragraph a brief guidebook on local mythology, as it was presented to me by a pilgrim knowledgeable. 8000 years ago that, in order to defeat a handful of demons who terrorized the population, Vishnu, one of the three major gods of the Hindu pantheon, incarnated by the name of Rama. One of the wicked, Ranan, the king of Sri Lanka was therefore not very inspired to capture his wife Sita, thus reminding the its mission. Furious, Rama gathered an army of monkeys and bears (which translates Bhaloo Tamil, it may remind you something) and fashioned a bridge to allow its troops to attack the island. Aided by a lingam, the phallic symbol of Shiva, he defeated the armies and conquered Sri Ranan Lanka. This is exposed lingam in the temple and the faithful revere as an incarnation of Shiva (do not laugh, Catholics do the same with Ostia). But a young Brahmin better educated than the average assures me that the lingam is responsible for energy because of the prayers of the faithful and not its divine character, something I had already read in Alexandra David-Neel and I am quite willing to admit. Anyway, thanks to this lingam groundwater beneath the temple is as sacred as the Ganges water and she would even treat skin diseases such as leprosy (provided to save much, anyway), especially washing the karma of his minor sins. That is why we see the pilgrims walk around all wet in the temple, where they became wet at twenty-two successive wells.
But this devotion does not convince everyone, especially the followers of Krishna Ari, many at the entrance of the temple to sell their Bagavad Gita and postmortem survival manuals. As pointed out to me one of them, shaking with disapproval the small quilt hanging behind his neck, "Indians are basically the temple to ask the gods of money, then they go home and smoke cigarettes." Ah, it was unfortunately forgotten that golden era goddesses yet aware of their obligations under the faithful corrected with recalcitrant ...
It smells like a fish But
Rameswaram is also a fishing village. Indeed difficult not to notice it, as it reeks of fish from miles around. The show unloading fishing is awesome. All day long, beautiful white oxen horns painted red and blue wade in the harbor until the Tamil fishermen, too beautiful in their traditional dress, their wagons loaded with baskets of fish.
They are then dried in the sun, women foolish to return them for hours under the sun with a wooden spatula.
As all these good people are quite willing to be photographed, is the opportunity to make a small gallery portraits.
But there is nothing to be done, it is even more beautiful.
His colleague, who fills up the gas station, I like also.
And finally, a last one for the road, with the boat in distress.
face Sri Lanka
I rented a motorbike and went to the tip of the island, Dhanushkodi, the famous end of the world then. After passing through a forest of pines, the road ends and I must continue on the roof of a van and then walk on a spit of sand completely desert, surrounded on both sides by the Gulf of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. A loss of sight one sees only crested busy digging sand and crows perched on shipwrecks half buried. All the point, there is an arm of the sea and behind Sri Lanka. Difficult to imagine more lost landscape.
After I bathed in scalding water, I'm leaving looking for a ghost town destroyed by a cyclone in 1964. The survivors have left and never returned, leaving behind the ruins, including a mysterious church, among which a handful of fishermen have built a few huts protected by fences of willows.
is one of those families who invited me to share his meal. To them eight, they must know five words of English, which does not prevent us from having a good laugh.
Well, we're not talking about philosophy, but now I know that the Tamil words moon, stars, fish, pretty girl and gastritis. By cons, and here I refuse to complacency, dinner is not worth Tripette: three patties are dry buckwheat broken into small pieces, which they pour on a sauce with spices glowing fail to mask the absence taste, elongated three miserable shreds of dried fish. But it does nothing. I am so happy to be where I let the truck back and I'm inviting sleep.
Then I left in Rameswaram beauty thanks to an incredible train that seems to fly above the water by bringing us back to the mainland in the orange light of sunset.
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