Chidambaram - the Lord of the Dance

Madurai to Chidambaram: 25th May

This morning I said goodbye to Pete. We exchanged presents, I gave him an orange powder drink and he gave me a cloth bag with Tamil writing on the side. He took a bus up to Kodaikanal, the only hill station in India set up by Americans. The hawkers have got on his nerves, and he wants the relative quiet of the hills. I later learned from him that Kodaikanal was just as busy and he ended up getting on the next bus out. He ended up in Rameshwaram and stayed in a shoreline hut with a fisherman who every morning would pour a cold bucket of water over him. From there he went north to Orissa , Calcutta which he loved, along the Ganges to Varanasi. He wants to be in Dharamsala for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday in July.

I got off the bus at Chidambaramam, a small town famous for the great temple site of Natarajah, Shiva as Lord of the Dance. The temple complex occupies 22 hectares and is about 700 years old. It has a large courtyard with many shrines, and lines of people stared wide-eyed as the doors to the inner sanctum were opened. There are huge gaupurams around the courtyard, and as the sun set, a cloud appeared in the west.