Temple City to Chola City

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009.

My travel continues from Neyveli to small places around it like Chidambaram, Vaidheeswarn temple and vadalur and to some big cities and towns like Pondy, Cuddalore, Trichy, Tanjore.
All these are famous and illustrious to everyone.
Chidambaram is called as land of both the Shaivite and Vaishnavite, and it is approximately 40-50 KM from my town & 250KM from Chennai. This place is eminent for couple of reasons, one for temple and other for education as it is the home of Annamalai University. This is a very big university having medical collage and hospital, engineering collage with quarters for its staffs and many hostels for students inside its campus. I have been there couple of times to give my engineering entrance exam about half a dozen years back. Believe me they have made a separate town for this university called Annamalai Nagar which is very close to Chidambaram. Another eminent factor of Chidambaram is its temple. The Chidambaram Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva in His form of the Cosmic Dancer, Nataraja. It is an ancient and historic temple dedicated to Lord Shiva Nataraja and Lord Govindaraja Perumal, one of the few temples where both the Shaivite and Vaishnavite deities are enshrined in one place. Roof of the sanctum sanctorum is covered with gold plates.It is at the centre of Chidambaram.
Vaitheeswaran Koil is about 24 km from Chidambaram. The place is famous for a Shiva temple dedicated to Vaidyanatheswarar, the healer of all diseases, and his consort Thaiyalnayaki. It is believed that a bath in the holy waters of the Siddhamirtham tank within the temple complex will cure all diseases. In this Temple offering Salt and milagu (pepper) are part of their rituals. Even though the proximity to this place from my town is pretty close still i have yet to capitalize on that ... the visits to this place has been far and few between but its definitely worth a visit....

From this temple city I am moving on to chola city (Tanjore) which is about 130KM from my home town. Rice bowl of TamilNadu is the other name to define this city. My uncle used to stay in this place. Kavery River runs thru this city, which keeps the soil so fertile for farming. I am closely attached to this soil as this is my mom’s native. Here there are two famous collages they are Shanmugha (SASTRA) and Tanjore medical collage. Tanjore is well known for its Periya kovil (Sri Brihadeswara temple). I was staggered a bit to see such a big Nandi & Shiva Lingam..But even more surprising information is that Nandi is made of single granite rock. And moreover the dome of that such big temple is also made out of single granite rock. Believe it or not shadow of the top most point of the temple at any time won’t even touch the ground. There are many researches going on about the temple and scientists believe that there are much scientific information is being unrevealed. Having so many amazing factors, this Sri Brihadeswara temple is considered as tourist spot and not as a temple for worshipping. This temple was built by King Raja Raja Chola. The son of king Raja Raja Chola, “Rajendra Chola” had built the temple (Gangaikondacholapuram temple) on the lines of the Big Temple of Thanjavur. Till date even the ruins of the temple are visited for the splendid specimens of the Chola sculpture. The artistic appeal of the carvings is simply put amazing! My dad used to go to this Gangaikondacholapuram temple, every year to serve people who come there to visit. At a distance of 13 kilometers from Thanjavur is the Thiruvaiyaru associated with saint Thyagaraja. In fact Thiruvaiyaru also happens to be the host for the eight-daylong annual Thyagaraja Aradhana music Festival in the month of January as a tribute to saint Thyagaraja. This place has enough tourist spots for entertainment, which is worth to make a visit.

So by this we are coming to an end of this post but will continue with some other place in my next post. My Next post is about a place which is not part of Tamil Nadu but very close to Tamil Nadu and this is also called as French colony or The French Riviera of the East. I hope you got what’s next, if not please wait for my next post and thanks for visiting and keep visiting to share my travel information.