namma mejura

Rock Temple 2, originally uploaded by daynee2003.

Yaanaimalai (Elephant hill) at the outskirts of Madurai has a unique shape & a treasure trove for archaeologists. It has jain caves at the top, numerous inscriptions all around the hills and also two carved temples at the bottom.

Lakshmi Narasimha temple is carved deep into the hill and the deity (carved in the hill) stands near the centre of the hillock at ground level.

It’s a wonder that some people thought it fit to propose cutting the hill, carve a sculpture in the middle & scoop the remaining rocks for granite exports. The effort was named as beautifying the place & to give Madurai a tourist place!

Well, Yaanai malai already earned it’s own merit over thousands of years (it’s even mentioned in very old tamil scripts) to become a tourist spot. And being a unique shape, it already have a striking pose, looking majestically at the approaching urbanization.

Rock Temple, originally uploaded by daynee2003.

Thankfully, protests were loud & that proposal was officially struck down last week by Government of Tamilnadu. Now it only needs beautification around the hillock & promoting it properly.

The tail end of the hillock still retains a lot of greenery and a nice picnic spot, untouched by urbanization.

Two days back I had to make a trip to an interior part of Theni district. The entire district was part of Madurai district till 5 years back. Now after the creation of new district, it is blooming into a cool, quaint & attractive holiday hill country.

The temperature at Theni is always noticiably cooler than Madurai. But it dips further if you travel further west. The scene is also beautiful with green hills and fields with occasional water canals.

Theni is 2 hours by bus and about one and half hour by car. If you travel further west, there are two routes, one leading to Thekkadi and another leading to Munnar (pronounced Moo-naar – Three rivers) . Both were well known hill resorts in Kerala filled with foreign tourists.

Now with improved roads and mobile access, these village areas were much better places to live than Madurai.