Madurai

We checked into our hotel in the town centre after a little drama when one of the autos went missing on the way from the bus stop to the hotel, Michael the tour guide went balistic at the other auto drivers to find out where the 4th one had gone and eventually after about 30 minutes he turned up, it turned out he had not listened to the instructions from his boss and just driven off and must have followed the wrong auto in front of him!
We met up for lunch and then again for 3pm were we walked down to the huge temple complex in the centre of the town. It is really is huge and you enter through one of the cardinal gates each of which is below massive towers which are made up of hundreds of brightly painted statues, each in some way representing figures and stories from the Hindu scriptures. Once through the unusually very tight security (for India); and having left your shoes out side you can enter the main part of the temple, however there is a part that is so holy that only Hindu's may enter and we were not aloud to enter the inner sanctum. The rest of the temple is full of statues and beautiful paintings on the ceilings again representing Hindu gods and beliefs. The temple was very crowded and after awhile I was glad to get out of there and just sit and people watch. In the evening Les and I went in search of Internet and found a Cybercafe where we could use our own laptops – but they only had one spare connection so we shared it and split the cost.