Travelogue: Visit to Tamil Nadu!

This trip was actually not supposed to happen. Infarct it was only because of mom n dad making persistent attempts in changing our original Ooty-Mysore plan that I decided to plan instead for the Tamil Nadu tour.

So while it was at its beginning it was meant to be just a trip to Bangalore to meet brother, it became full-fledged holiday for the family. So at the outset let me put the original itinerary that we had planned:

Bangalore -> Madurai -> Rameshwaram -> kanyakumari -> kodaikanal -> Bangalore

Considering the fact that the total distance we had planned to cover in Tamil Nadu was approximately around 1200 kilometers we decided to rent a car that could take us comfortably through the entire tour.

Bangalore was supposed to the home for us and thus we completely sidelined visiting any tourist spots in the city. Although the few cab rides that we took made us feel as though we had covered the entire city. We took a KSRTC bus to Madurai which reached its destination well before the scheduled time. Our car came to pick us up on time and without much ado we were resting inside our hotel room after some very long journey.

Day 1: Madurai

They call it the Athens of the East, but I would rather refer to it as the Temple city of TN. If one Google’s a bit about the city one would find that there are a number of attractions for tourist in the city.  So we went ahead and covered Azhagar Temple, Pazhamudir Cholai (Hills) Thirupparankundaram, Thirumalai Naicker Palace, and Gandhi Museum with our cab barring the Meenaxi temple which was just  a few minutes’ walk from our Hotel. The temple experience was very nice and they have it all organized and systematic for people to visit the deity.

Inside Madurai Meenaxi temple

Day 2: Rameshwaram

Who doesn’t know about the place and its significance! This is basically an island connected to the mainland with Pambam bridge which is the single largest railway bridge of the country. Also the bridge opens up for ships to sail through. After a four hour drive from Madurai we reached Rameshwaram and covered the places. We also went to Dhanuskodi which is island on the Gulf of Munnar and is a spectacle to the eyes as we saw water from three sides hitting a stretch of land.

Pambam Bridge

Day 3: Kanyakumari

Now our drive from Rameshwaram to Kanyakumari was rather a very long one and we also stopped at Thiruchendur to visit the Murugan temple there. By this time I could understand that the architecture of the temples in Tamil Nadu was almost identical across the cities with changes in color.
The experience inside Rock temple was very soothing one and the silence makes one introspect within. Although the weather played a spoil sport and we missed the sunset due to clouds, the sunrise was masked by heavy rainfall and thunderclouds.

Sunset in Kanyakumari

Day 4: Kodaikanal

We took the NH7 that goes to Dindigul to reach Kodaikanal and boy what roads have they made! We reached Kodaikanal in about 8 hours drive without feeling anything about the long journey. After some nice experience with the sea, now was the time for enjoying the weather of the hill station. We did enjoy all the tourist spots of the place and the boating experience was also worth mentioning. Although we could not find water in the rat tail falls and very less water flow in the silver cascade falls, the feeling of rainfall was clouds go past your body was amazing.

The Kodai Lake view

We had taken up hotel at every place and spent a night in each of the places. Finally our trip ended with us catching up the train to Bangalore from Madurai station. We had a day to relax in Bangalore before getting back to Kolkata and routine life which we invested in visiting the Iskon temple. If in Bangalore do visit the place.

And thus ended a blissful experience of Tamil Nadu!

P.S: In case you are interested in more photographs you can find them here, here and here!!!

Knock Knock! Where's my parcel?

While I have been a fan of Flipkart courtesy the drive for excellence to provide customer delight, I was always skeptical of other eCommerce sites. The online retail space is growing by leaps and bounds in the recent times much of which is due to the success of Flipkart. Due to the unavailability of certain items on their site, I was tempted to look elsewhere mainly because I had a travel journey lined up. So I went to eBay India’s site and bought the stuff. This is the news of 02^nd March 2012, when I also got a confirmation of the shipping of the item. On the 4^th of March 2012 (late in the night), I bought few other items from Flipkart. As anybody would easily guess, I received the items on 6^th March 2012, in the morning itself. Whereas the seller from eBay seems to have shipped the item through Speed post and the status of the parcel as on today is given below:

 

The item is still to be received by me. Point what I wanted to raise through this blog is the status of the high speed mail service that Indiapost is supposed to provide at least between two metro cities of the country is not working. In the sea of umpteen courier service providers, survival of Indiapost relies on the top class service that customers expect from them. Merely entering into other channels of business (selling Gold coins, Mutual Funds, etc) for raising profits would not be a long term solution unless they want to make these their main source of revenue. While Indiapost has made major changes in its way of working to keep up with the times and competition, at the end of the day we want timely delivery of items shipped through them.