We took a five hour train to Madurai, which was supposed to get in around 11pm…but after a 2 1/2 hour unexplained stop on the tracks we rolled in closer to 2am…thanks last train ride!  We dragged ourselves out of bed the next morning to go explore the Sri Meenakshi Amman temple.  This temple was incredibly vibrant – it had lots of brightly coloured and designed towers, an elephant and lots of worshipers. We couldn’t go into all of it as some parts are restricted to Hindus but we had fun wandering round and visiting the temple art museum.  (We weren’t allowed to take a camera in…but since everyone was using their phones to take photos we followed suit).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterwards we were ready for lunch, and found a cool local place that had a set menu served on a banana leaf. We thought that the portions were stingy until we realised they would replenish them as many times as we wanted – score!

 

 

We did lots of last minute shopping (especially at the chemist – medicine is incredibly cheap in India) then headed over to the Gandhi museum. We had planned to go to see different Gandhi memorials all over India, so thought we should probably go on our last day!  This memorial has the blood stained loin cloth he was wearing when he was shot, which was a bit disturbing.  We originally went to Madurai as it was where our cheap flight to Sri Lanka left from, but ended up having a good day exploring its highlights.