Chandrakalaa: Ramanashrama and Tiruvannamalai

When I left for India, I had completely different plans for traveling there. I didn't end up following them due to various reasons. And then the visit to Tiruvannamalai worked out. I was silently hoping to visit the ashram once and it worked out somehow. We went to Tiruvannamalai with an extension to Pondicherry.

Tiruvannamalai or Thiruvannamalai is a small town in the state of Tamil Nadu. Its named after the Annamalai - Lord of the Mountains, Shiva. The Arunachala hill is considered sacred.

Arunachaleshwara temple with the Arunachala in the background

This early morning view of the Arunachala hill from the temple was amazing. We were there just after the full moon so the moon was also visible in the background.

The Temple Gopurams are tall. I love the carvings and the elaborate designs on them. The four gopurams on each side are like the 4 Dwarapaal. The eastern one is the tallest and is called Rajagopuram.

The eastern gopuram - Rajagopuram, tallest and is 11 stories

Nandi in the Temple

This big Nandi reminded me of my clay nandi. Having worked on the details, it was interesting to see how much details I noticed in this Nandi.

Next to the Patala Lingam cave

This picture is interesting to me, I did not know I was being clicked from behind.

This was taken while walking near the temple.

This is the most interesting part of visiting temples. There is just so much intricate art and carvings that you find in these hidden nooks and corners inside temple.

This one had so much detail. Having done some clay sculpting myself, I couldn't imagine the effort it might have taken to carve these on rock.

I had to literally bend down to take this one. Was hidden at the bottom corner of a temple mandapa base. This reminded me of the trip to Hampi few years back, when I got a good collection of these intricate stone carvings. They reflect the history very well.

Since it wasn't possible to find the name of each god figure I saw (names were written in Tamil), I am trying to find the references now. I think this is the personification of River Ganga as goddess on her vehicle Makara. The Makara is an imaginary animal form composed of a fish like body, elephant trunk, feet of lion, eyes of a monkey, ears of a pig and prominent teeth. It can be interpreted as a turbulent state of nature and the ornaments shown coming out of its mouth symbolize the pralaya and the Ganga may be having control over that to make it life giving. Anyways, if one can just take it as water god and do something to save water that would be enough. The symbolism in actually very interesting and leads to a profound understanding of reality than it just being an idol in some temple.

The vaanar sena is always around in any Indian temple to feed and grow their family. This monkey took the coconut and the banana from someone and gave the banana to her kid. This reminds me of a hike to a hill in Karnataka several years back when a monkey took our cold drink bottle, opened the cap and drank in front of us :)

These pictures were taken randomly in the evening. I was just amazed to see the amount of work on these Gopurams. All I was thinking was how did they make these, did they build it somewhere else and got them here or the sculptors were sitting there to make these. The Gopurams are specific to South Indian Temple architecture so you won't see these in the North Indian temples which have an inverted beehive like structure called 'Shikhara' - mountain peak.

This kind of completes the highlights of the Arunachaleshwara temple - dedicated to Shiva and is associated with the five elements - Pancha Maha Bhootas. Agni is the element that is worshiped here. Other Pancha Maha Bhoota Sthalams.

Arunachala Hill

We also did a modern (by car) Girivalam or giripradakshina - circumambulation of the Arunachala hill. It's a 14km stretch and people do it on foot. Usually around full moon. It was nice to see the hill from different sides.

The other major part of the trip was the visit to Ramanashrama. In fact when I thought about the visit, the temple wasn't in my awareness.

The tree that welcomes into the Ashram

Ramanashrama is very close to the temple. It's right on the main road and the gate feels like a school gate with an arch and board on top.

It also rained in the evening and the peacock there was roaming around though didn't dance.

Samadhis of pets in the ashram

We sat in meditation and listened to the daily chants for a while. The bookworm inside me began crawling but the book store was closed at that time.

We wanted to go visit the Virupaksha cave (Ramana Maharshi meditated there) and the Skandashrama. There are 2 ways to reach them. One way is from inside the ashram and other is close to the temple. The one inside ashram is longer. The one close to temple is 10-15 min but steep climb. We were a bit late but still went ahead through the shorter route but some folks who were coming back on the way told that its too steep and also that its probably late.

The next day we took the way from the ashram. It wasn't too long. The way from the Skandashram to the Virupaksha cave is a path of downhill stairs. We decided not to take the same route back as it looked like getting on the road from the Virupaksha cave would take less time. It looked like we shouldn't have listened to the folks we met yesterday as it wasn't a bad climb for a pahadi.

Way to Skandashrama and Virupaksha cave

Most people do the hike to the cave barefoot so the path was pretty much clean. There were a few yogi dogs and pigs on the way.

Mid way you get this beautiful delight of the temple. The pictures are from my phone's camera so aren't doing the justice.

Vaanar sena on the way

Virupaksha Cave

We sat in the cave for some time. There are 2 parts of the cave, the inner one probably the actual cave is a very small and dark chamber and probably accommodates 5-6 people. The outer one is likely built new and can accommodate more (say 10) people.

Monkey who couldn't meditate due to his monkey mind

While we were sitting outside the Virupaksha cave, one local person came and told us to go visit the Mango tree cave as well which was 10 mins climb down from there.