mar 30th
all this talk about the south reminded me of my plans to travel around and visit temples and other important places in south india. one of these days...
maybe some of you folks can advise me.
1. karnataka. this is my favorite state in the union, for its diverse tourist attractions: the temples, coorg, the karavalli coastline, the game sanctuaries, etc.
i have been to belur/halebid and i enjoyed the beauty of the temples even though they were desecrated by mohammedans.
i really liked the kollur mookambika temple in the western ghats near mangalore.
i have been to hampi/vijayanagar and i had tears in my eyes about the wanton destruction visited upon what was the largest and richest city in the world.
i have been planning to go to badami/pattadakkal/aihole but i guess the only good time to go is in the winter, is that true? i went to hampi in december and it was still quite hot then. what is a good time to go to that part of karnataka?
one of these days i think i'll drive up the malabar coast to the konkan coast to goa, or maybe take the konkan railroad.
2. tamil nadu. i have been to a number of temples, and my favorite temple of all is chidambaram. liked srirangam and tiruvannamalai and kanchipuram and madurai meenakshi, but chidambaram -- that's special. also liked kodaikanal and auroville. i have enjoyed driving in the southern districtsnear madurai, off the beaten tracks, on the smaller highways.
3. andhra. i have only been to hyderabad and tirupati, but would like to go to the buddhist ruins in amaravati as well as to kalahasti for the (water?) lingam. any other suggestions?
11 comments:
Hi Rajeev,
As luck may have it, i will be visiting Cochin next month.
This will be my first time in Kerela. I will stay put for about a month there.
Any words of wisdom for my visit to "God's own country"?
:-)
I was looking at the official website http://www.cochin.org/tourism.htm.
Not surprisingly it talks a lot of Churches to visit.
Periyar wildlife it seems is around 5-6 hrs from there... I was hoping to go there... But not sure since i will have only weekends for myself..
Can Kerelites on this forum help me with food that i should try? Anything in Veg ?
Thanks a lot bodhi dharma.
Thanks KapiDwaja,
I am actually looking at spending time on the beech. A couple of drinks and gold-flake. :-) That used to be my brand during hostel days...
Thanks bodhi dharma, for all the delicacies you mentioned.. will certainly try most of them..
I know its bit-off tangent, but came across this link on Rediff.
Interesting thoughts and pearls of wisdoms from the GREAT Aamir Khan on the media as well as its (positive) treatment of Gujarat riots and the Jessica Lall murder case...
Where else (but on the Congi mouthpiece and the leading bastion of 'sickularism'):
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main17.asp?filename=hub040106Mainstream_CS.asp&id=1
Some excerpts (straight from the horse's mouth):
The media coverage of the Gujarat riots or Jessica Lall would definitely be positive examples. ....
But very often the media fails to be intrusive or take the lead in the stories where it should do so. Take the Varanasi blasts for instance. Here, I want to speak at two levels. Being a Muslim, it is very sad that people — I’m not quite sure, has it been established who’s done it?
--(As always a speculation when its crystal clear even to a moron to as to what forces were behind the blasts)
An act by one Hindu or Muslim or Christian should not be read as what the community feels.
Having said that, I would also like to say that we really should find out who is behind it. And I find it a little surprising that irrespective of which blast it is or of what magnitude, I realise that somehow authorities very conveniently find one or two people within two hours or within one or two days of the incident and kill that person in a shootout or something like that. What I want to know is why can’t they do that before.... (---Sure they can if your Muslim brethrens don't create a ruckus or raise a lot of hue-and-cry whenever the law wants to take its own course like when Gujarat Police landed in Hyderabad to arrest some (Mulsim) criminal)
This is the same guy, whom I had mentioned in one of my earlier comments,realized that he was a Muslim only after the Babri Masjid demolition...(Aamir's interview with Hindi newspaper Jagran)
KapiDwaja, i am being sponsored by my company for this "Hajj".. so won't bother our govt for that...:-)
100, why do you even care to go to sites like tehelka... ? Aren't IE,TOI,The Hindu et al enough to boil your blood.. that you choose other channels ?
Actually this f$^^#ing joker -Amir Khan - [some call him actor] - is having the best,life has to offer, in India. I guess Rajeev mentioned how it is lucky to be an 'Indian Muslim', sorry muslim born in India, with the state pampering you no end.
And if you happen to be a rich muslim, then that's it. You are the king.
I wonder how much collective wealth the Muslim population in India has? I am sure it must not be very less than the entire wealth of Hindus. Considering they are 13% of our population, it's quite an amount then.
thanks, folks, for the many suggestions!
yes, kalahasti -- that sounds like one to add to my itinerary. i have seen the fire linga at tiruvannamali, the ether linga at chidambaram, and the earth linga at kanchipuram; now for the water and air lingas!
nogchidambaram, thillai, the site of the celestial dance of siva, this is where manikyavachakar ("he whose words were as rubies") lived too. he was the greatest of the bhakti saints as far as i know, and when he died, his soul merged with the deity in chidambaram.
i was in udipi when i went to the kollur mookambika temple. i went to the udipi woodlands, licking my chops, anticipating the best idlis and dosas in the universe. my uncle who had been there told me to tone down my expectations. and so it was, the madras woodlands and saravana bhavan have better idlis, dosas and sambar! the udipi sambar was thin and slightly sweet. darn! i was mighty disappointed. must be as madhva says, the good cooks are all gone. to sunnyvale, etc.
but i tell you, i love karnataka. mark my words, it will be india's biggest tourist attraction in future. awesome place. in addition to everything else, they have hampi ('a teardrop on the face of time') and shravanabelagola.
i haven't been to sringeri or gokarna, i will have to remember them. i guess i'll have to spend a few months wandering about to visit all these places. my friend a sent me a long list of temples as well. btw, my old acquaintance kannikeswaran has a terrific website on the temples of south india, www.templenet.com
to kaunteya, get on a riverboat from alappuzha and get down to kollam. a long trip but worth it. then spend the night at acquaserene near kollam. this is a rs. 2,500 a night backwater-beach resort which is as good as the much-hyped and more expensive places in kumarakom. as for beaches, head down to varkala or kovalam and hang out there, or poovar island near kovalam. and i agree with bodhi dharma, eat standard hindu sadyas. with 10+ accompaniments, on a banana leaf, these are finger-licking good. if you get invited to a wedding sadya you may even get 3 payasams!
madhva, i meant to suggest to you, there is no 'w' sound in any indian language. it's better to say 'madhva'. if you live in the us for any length of time, you realize there's a big difference between 'v' and 'w' that indians just cannot hear.
pennathur, i think girish karnad is the jawaharlal nehru of kannada literature. :-) heavily overrated and a big-time self-promoter.
malayalam reached its peak in the 1970s. there arent that many good writers still around. there is m mukundan who's really good, mt vasudevan nair, sethu, the self-promoter zachariah, et al, but you're right, the stalwarts are gone. but wipe that sneer off your face, pennathur, about lowbrow writers. you couldnt get much higher-brow than ov vijayan, who for my money was the best writer in india. certainly he was the greatest fabulist and the most versatile writer of 20th century india.
hari, i stayed in hospet when i went to hampi. first day, i went in style in a tourist taxi, and paid rs. 750. next day, i went by bus and paid rs. 5 :-) to go from hospet to hampi. and hampi was hot with the sun beating down on the rocks. i went in dec 2003 or so. i definitely wont go in the summer months. i would like to go to badami some winter. the unesco funds had been used to spruce up the place and a lot of the archaelogical treasures are now fenced off and exhibited nicely. i would suggest to every one of you, go to hampi. see what barbarians do to civilization. and weep.
god, there's so much to see in india!
>>100, why do you even care to go to sites like tehelka... ?
Kaunteya, as I mentioned in my post I came across the Tehelka link on Rediff and as such it piqued my interest as to what (to borrow your words) this f*****g joker might have to say this time, I guess I kinda knew as to what this moron might grand-stand or pontificate about, and as for your suggestion why do I even care to go to the 'sickular' media sites, I occassionally (very rarely indeed) visit them as people like you and me (and fellow posters on this forum) already are aware of their mental servitude, but more tha that I wanna know what are they planning for the next round, and to quote Sun Tzhu (the famed ancient Chinese war strategist):
"Know thy enemy"
or as Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino in Godfather III) said:
"My father taught me to keep your friends close but your enemies closer"
--
Hey Nizhal Yoddhha, did you notice my style--it has been altered so that you don't have hard time understanding (thats what you complined about) and I had posted my response (in Saudi Missile post) to your comment and I am still waiting to hear from you!
thanks Rajeev, this info was of far greater worth than all the websites i am visiting. Though i must add that the websites maintained by Kerela Govt are quite professional in their look and feel.
one of my colleague who's joining me for this trip is insisting on visiting Taj Mahal in Agra. I said no - point blank.
Can't blame him. He has been brainwashed into believing that Taj is all that is to India.
{BTW, one must never visit Taj in summers. You will hate yourself for coming there in that scorching heat]
I also feel that the North-Eastern region of our country must be the most beautiful. Never been there. And not sure if people actually go to Meghalaya,Nagaland,Mizoram for tourism. But i think that region will beat any other region.
I am hoping Kerela will prove me wrong :-)
100, point taken.
Kaunteya, do visit Kerala, its very beautiful ... lush green, dunno whether its still that way...I visited it thrice--starting in 93 with 97 being my last trip and I really enjoyed being there, the first time I saw the ocean (Kovalam beach was considered one of the finest beaches in the world at that time) and the people I came across were nice too, the Thiruananthapuram area I went to had a nostalgic feel about it with the way the buildings, houses were built and it felt like I was experiencing a time bygone...
yes, yes, 100, you're a good boy. you get a gold star for effort.
we 'celebrity columnists' have to preserve our bhav. so unless you say something very interesting we celebrities dont respond. you had discovered that stephen cohen is a prize ass. this is well known and not worth commenting on. cohen is a pakistani stooge who's trotted out as america's "greatest 'south asia' expert". i'm sure he's making a lot of money from the pakistanis (that is saudi money laundered by pakistanis).
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