Arriving in Madurai, or How India Got Our Groove Back

The towers of the Meenakshi Temples rising above Madurai

Arriving in Madurai

We had been waiting for this moment for so long.

There had been so much hope and anticipation. We talked about all the food we wanted to eat. We talked about cities we expected to be bursting with energy, life, color. We talked about the architecture of the grandest of monuments. We talked about the wildlife (tigers!).

But there was also some trepidation. We talked about all the food that might give us stomach troubles. We talked about cities we expected to be bursting with chaos, rubbish, poverty. We talked about the incomprehensible bureaucracy of transportation logistics. We talked about the predators of the human variety.

We talked about India.

And now, we had arrived. Welcome to Madurai, India!

Arrival: Bureaucracy with a Side of Dust

After being more or less bored out of our minds by the end of a month in Sri Lanka, we finally touched down in a little Spice Jet puddle jumper on the runway at Madurai, in southern India.

We jostled along with the crowds getting from the airport shuttle bus to immigration. Upon arrival in Madurai, we didn’t just go through one line for immigration and one line for customs as usually happens. Nope, not in Madurai. In Madurai, we stood in like eight different lines.

It took a while.

We also went through security checks (just in case we had figured out how to smuggle whatever through the three checks it took to get on the plane in Colombo but then got sloppy).

It took a while longer.

Once we finally got through all the lines and waiting, we headed outside into the Indian air. That dusty, golden, glowing air that I remembered from Nepal all those years ago. I breathed it in.

I was excited.

First Glimpses of Madurai

We whizzed in our taxi through the 20 kilometers between Madurai and the airport. There were cows, and dogs, and kids. There were smells that were amazingly good. There were smells that were amazingly bad.

And there was color. Color everywhere. The people. The women’s clothing.

The houses we saw were dilapidated, boxy structures clumped together in a tangled, stacked mass and they had the potential to be horribly ugly. But how could anything with so much color be anything other than beautiful?

Oh, the color of India! We felt like blank canvas in Jackson Pollock's studio studio. We sat passively, and let the colors of Southern India splash down on us.

First Steps in Madurai

The road our hotel was on was alive with chaos. Travel agents beckoned to us. The smell of roasting chicken called to me, already tempting me away from my decision to go mostly vegetarian while I eased into India.

But we left the siren’s call of the street and into the hotel we went. It had been a long day, so we all decided to lay down and rest for a half an hour before exploring. And that is what the wife and daughters did.

I couldn’t sit still.

I ran up to the hotel roof and caught the briefest glimpse of the temples we had come to Madurai to see.

Chaos in the streets of Madurai

Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple

Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple is not subtle. Some religious sites aim for quiet contemplation or minimalist grace. Not this one. The Meenakshi complex is a full-throttle, technicolor explosion of sculpture, paint, and architecture—a riot of gods, demons, and elephants scrambling up soaring gateway towers (gopurams) so intricately detailed that you could spend a lifetime trying to count the carvings (someone probably has, and I hope they had a good chiropractor).

For over two thousand years, the Meenakshi Temple complex has been a spiritual, cultural, and architectural flex.

And it was time for us to go see it.

Into the Heart of Madurai

Before long, the excitement drove us all from the comfort of our beds so out into the street we went.

We walked. Gawking. Staring. Absorbing.

We melded with the flow of the city and made our way towards the temple complex. It took us about 15 minutes to get there, walking past cluttered streets with more stuff packed per square meter than we would have believed possible. Power lines made a crisscross canopy over our heads, and soon the towers of the Meenakshi complex loomed above us.

Worshippers seemed in full celebration mode. A group of men set off a firecracker that seemed more like a concussion grenade as we walked by. The excitement in the street was literally stunning.

We were almost staggering in awe by the time we reached the gate of the temple complex. Our heads dropped back, and we gazed up. The sky glowed with evening light, splashing pink on clouds hanging just above the temple walls. Birds flocked around the towers.

A tower at the Meenakshi Temple above the chaotic streets

A huge grin split my face.

Even for a traveler like me, who has stood before more temples than I can easily recall, Meenakshi stopped me in my tracks.

And it wasn’t just that it was beautiful. It was. But it was also more than that.

Meenakshi was, well . . . it was just unapologetically itself.

And you could say the same of Madurai.

And in the coming months, we would learn that all of Inida is the same.

My grin grew even wider.

The Return of the Travel Smile

I had found my travel smile again. I had lost it somewhere (Maybe a tuk tuk driver in Sri Lanka lifted it). But it was back.

 One night in incredible India changed everything for us. We all felt it. We were all excited, ready to spend almost the next half year exploring the country.

Dinner and a Revelation

We walked all the way around the temple complex, planning to return the following day and hiring a guide to take us through the complex. But for now, we had a more immediate desire. It was time to eat! So, we found a little hole-in-the-wall place and set about ordering some food.

I have eaten Indian food in the US, Fiji, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the UK. But this meal was special. Our first meal in India.

We went full on vegetarian. We got masala paneer, and some kind of curried cauliflower, and fried mushrooms, and some different kinds of flat bread stuffed with vegetables. It was all amazing. The kids went nuts, proclaiming that India would probably “kill us with deliciousness.”

That meal was all it took to make me decide that if I ever become a vegetarian, the first thing I will do is move to India.

Slowly, we walked back to the hotel, dragging our bulging bellies along as best we could.

We were all full, not only of cauliflower and curry, but also of excitement for the coming months. And full of a renewed lust for travel.

India, in only one day, got us to remember that anytime someone asks us why we do this, the answer doesn’t have to be any more complicated than: BECAUSE TRAVEL!!!