Jan. 18 : Madras, India

Wednesday, January 18 :: Madras (Chennai), India :: 9km today / 2677km total

There was one reason that I had come to Madurai, to see the Sri Meenakshi Temple complex (Hindu), and as usual I was there very early to beat the crowds and have a chance to see the place. Hindu temples certainly have a distinct character to them; basically, they are loud in all senses. Music playing, smoke and incense, with brightly and garishly painted figurines, ceilings and pillars. Flashing lights, vendors with brightly, garishly lit booths, colourul carvings of all sorts of deities doing all sorts of things. Hindu temples are never dull, thats for sure. There are sacred animals inside, although it was hard for me to tell the difference between Sacred Elephant and Terribly-Bored-But-Well-Fed-Elephant. Hindu religion is filled with animals... but they're all native to India... I'm not sure how you push Hinduism as a world religion when it's extremely biozone discriminatory. Are animals from other parts of the world lesser beings? Hinduism would suggest so. I mean, where's the sacred kangaroo? The holy polar bear? Now THAT would be a religion I could buy into.

Out of the temple, over to a 5-star hotel for breakfast. Yum. For only $2.50CDN it was a buffet, with many Western items. The coup-de-grace was the bottomless freshly squeezed pineapple juice. These breakfasts are aimed at guests of the hotel, for whom they are free... but they work great for me!

To the train station... booking trains straight through to Bhubaneswar, on India's Central Eastern coast (North of Bombay, which is on the West coast). The first 9 hour train ride to Madras was quite uneventful. After some messiness getting my bike loaded onto the second train, I braced myself for a 24-hour train journey.