11 days in Tamil Nadu

LindaK

As part of our 7-week trip in South India, we spent 11 days in Tamil Nadu: Madurai, Trichy, and Coonoor (near Ooty).

We took a 7-hour train from Trivandrum to Madurai and arrived about 11 pm. I had booked a suite at the Supreme Hotel but it was not available, so we spent the first night in a deluxe room. The room was large and clean but had no view of the temple. The next day we were moved to the king suite. This suite needs to be refurbished, and half the temple view is blocked by a big building. Any of the other suites would have better views.

The Supreme Hotel has very good food (veg only). The rooftop restaurant opens at 4 pm and is a great place for beer and/or dinner.

After Trivandrum, we found Madurai to be less hectic (less traffic, more bicycles and cycle rickshaws instead of motor traffic). The huge temple in the middle of town was fabulous.

I highly recommend a day trip by autorickshaw to Sikandermala temple at Tiruparankundram. This was described in the Rough Guide. There were no other western tourists there and there were several weddings going on. A guide offered his services and it was definitely worth it. The temple is build into the side of a monolithic rock / hill. After leaving the temple, we walked about 1/2 km to the left, then turned left to start walking up the hill. Although we only walked halfway up, we enjoyed the walk and the views. On the way back to Madurai, we stopped at the Taj Garden Retreat for a lovely lunch with a view.

LindaK

Trichy:
We hired a car and driver to get us from Madurai to Trichy. To us it seemed as if we just barely missed 15 head on collisions during the trip.
We had a reservation at Jenney's Residency (now called Breeze Residency) but no top-floor rooms were available until late in the evening. They gave us a temporary room on the 2nd floor which we avoided spending any time in. But the top floor rooms are wonderful.
I don't really like the area of Trichy where all the hotels are - there is nothing much to see or do. We took bus # 1 every day to other parts of town and enjoyed the various temples. Just inside the temple walls of Sri Ranganathaswamy (the big temple), look right. There is a restaurant with A/C room and also a garden area nestled against the temple walls. They have very good, very inexpensive veg food - the parotha was especially good.

We took at day trip to Thanjavur, enjoyed the temple and museum there, and had a lovely fish lunch at the Ideal River Resort (10-15 minutes out of town).

LindaK

Coonoor:
From Trichy we took the 8 am train to Coimbatore, arriving at noon. This must be one of the shortest trains in India - only 5 cars. We enjoyed the ride. 'The Tryst' guest house in Coonoor arranged for a car to pick us up in Coimbatore. The road up to Coonoor has many hair pin bends and was a bit scary.
The Tryst is a wonderful guest house (www.trystindia.com) in a stunning location. You can go walking through tea plantations in any direction from the guest house.
One day we drove to Ooty and enjoyed the great pizza at the 'Sidewalk Cafe' (on Commercial Rd. across from Higginbothams bookstore). The bookstore is a great source for english books. At 3 pm, we took the toy train to Mettupalayam (3.5 hours). This was OK, but the scenery was very similar to what we had seen from the car and the best scenery was in the vicinity of the tea estates where the Tryst is. I had booked the tickets in advance on the internet.

Merchant

Only half way to the top of Tiruparankundram?? You missed a temple and a mosque--the view from the front steps of the mosque is quite nice. Sounds like you had a great time in TN.