On the third day of my Tamil Nadu visit, I got up at 4 early in the morning. My mobile phone alarm helped me to get up so early though I told the receptionist of the hotel to have me get up at 4am and he assured me to full fill my need. After getting up I took fifteen minutes to be active, and then I took another fifteen minutes to be ready to go. Mean while Mira also got up. I came out of the room and saw the receptionist still sleeping. I made him get up and told him to call an auto-rickshaw to go to the railway station. The station was just 10 minutes away from there. I cleared my account of the hotel and went in to my room. Mira was ready and our bags were also packed.
A hotel boy kept our bags in the auto and we went to the station. Reaching there I bought two tickets for Madurai. There was still half an hour in arrival of the train so to pass the time I took a cup of tea and started enjoying it. Mira didn’t take tea. When the train arrived all the passengers waiting for it got in and sat on the seats. After ten minutes the train left the station. On the way the train crossed a bridge, named Pamban Bridge. The bridge is made on the sea that is the specialty of this bridge. It was the first bridge which I saw on the sea. It was also quite long. The train crossed it in slow speed. I don’t know the reason of it.
Reaching Madurai we got down at the station and came out of it. After that we got a room in one hotel that was near the station. We lay down on bed for an hour and after that I cleaned my shave and took bath. We decided to take complete rest on this day except to go to Meenakshi temple that has achieved a great popularity.
A rickshaw puller offered his services and told me that Meenakshi temple just near by. We sat on his rickshaw. The rickshaw puller stopped it near a restaurant. We entered there and took breakfast. The meal was good so we decided to have dinner at the same place. Having breakfast we went to Meenakshi Temple on the same rickshaw. Near the temple, the rickshaw man took us to one cloth shop and told us to leave our shoes there. I told him that we would keep our shoes in the shoe room of the temple. Then he replied that there is no such arrangement in the temple. I was surprised at his answer and we left our shoes at that shop and paid him the charges so he went off.
When we reached near the temple gate I saw a shoe room there. We entered the temple. It was big in size. A man told me that it is one of the largest temples in the world. There was a long queue of devotees. There was a facility of paid line for those who want to get Darshan without going in queue. We also took the opportunity of paid line. After that we came out of the temple and did some shopping from the shop where we kept our shoes.
There was a battery operated four wheeler which was quite attractive so we took round of the temple in it. We wandered in the market and came back to our hotel. We went to sleep and passed a few hours in siesta. In the evening we decided to go out of the hotel but soon there was a drizzling. Late evening we left the hotel and went to the restaurant where we had had breakfast. Having dinner there we went to the railway station. The train was late by an hour. At last we boarded the train and took good sleep. In the morning it arrived at Coimbatore that was our destination.