Rajamannargudi: The town and its vicinity

A wedding of one of my friends, Ramesh, made me plan a trip to Mannargudi (MNQ) on June 26. Sridhar Joshi, Vimal, RTI Nishanth, Chidambaram joined the trip (Senior KK had to drop out at the last moment).

Travel to Kumbakonam:
Boat Mail dropped us at Kumbakonam at 330 on Sunday morning. Being a trip with railfans after some time, we had a lot of items to chat, notes to share and updates to note. As usual, Nishanth shared a weird RTI inquiry that he had applied – “How many North Indians are working as ALPs in SR?” The discussion then took a turn to defining who will be classified under this category? His standard reply was “let us wait and watch!” One of the crack-pot performers in WDM-2 series, 14127 from Ernakulam shed did the honours for us (the other one I have experienced is 18555 from GOC in 2662 Up), it was a decent run overall. I took videos of two midnight crossings, 6780 Meenakshi Exp at Melpattambakkam and 6176 Kamban Exp at Cuddalore NT.

Mannargudi:
After a round of early morning tea, we walked down to the Bus Stand and boarded a private bus, as Nishanth was insisting on hearing songs while travelling in the bus – we lost two government buses in the meantime! We finally started at 430 and reached MNQ at 545, as the bus driver had decided to ‘roll’ the bus all along. I had some good sleep enroute between Valangaiman and Nidamangalam, continued it after checking into the lodge, for an hour. Ramesh gave a ring to inform that the tiffin will be ready at 730 – this made us feel wide awake and was the motivating factor to finish our morning proceedings quickly!!

The most exciting thing of the trip happened then. As it was my first trip to MNQ, I was looking forward to visit Sri Rajagopalaswamy temple. The only information that I had before was that the temple has six prakarams and the tank is as big as the temple itself. The very sight of the Raja Gopuram (East 6thprakaram) with its 11 tiers and 11 bronze kalasams at the top, shining in broad sunlight at 8 was stunning. This temple had a Samprokshanam quite recently, so it was appearing entirely fresh and clean everywhere.

All the 6 prakarams were neatly laid out as circumambulatory paths, with gardens in the periphery of the outer two prakarams. Being a Sunday morning, we did not have any typical ‘tourist-gumbal-from-an-omni-bus’. It was crowd free, I was able to stand in the ardhamandapam for more than 10 minutes and have peaceful sevai of Perumal. I had ample time to experiment exposure values and macro angles in photography as there were a lot of gopurams, small and big, pathways, mandapams with huge pillars and sculptures.

It is almost a couple of days now, and I am still trying to digest and come out of the grandeur this temple possesses in itself. It is certainly not like Srirangam, where the 6th, 7th and 8th prakarams are filled with flats, choultries and houses – there is no commercial element anywhere inside the Mannargudi temple, on a comparison.

We then went back to the mandapam to attend the wedding ceremony. Later, we took an auto and went to Pamani (Paambani) thevara kovil. Lord Naganathar here is famous for healing all sarpadhoshams. On the way back, we had a chance to peep into the GC work that is going on between Nidamangalam Jn (NMJ) and Mannargudi. The station building is built, three platforms are being built (two are ready with PWAY), track is laid, signal posts are installed. It is just the LC and wiring works that need to be done – we can expect a passenger to NMJ or Tiruvarur and some slip coaches being added in Kamban Exp at NMJ (for MNQ) in the near future.

A good sleep for 3 hours made us feel refreshed. We had the same shareauto-wala pick us up for the evening trip and drop us at a place convenient for us to board a bus to Thanjavur. We took the picturesque road to Kumbakonam – 10 km away from MNQ was Puvanur. This thevarakovil has the only sannidhi for Goddess Chamundeeswari in entire Tamilnadu. It is believed that she is Mysore Chamundi herself taking an incarnation and present here (similar analogy can be traced for Goddess Mookambika in Tiruvidaimarudur for Kollur). We then took a left turn at NMJ and went to Koyilvenni. This is the famous ‘Venni’ of early Chola period, where KarikalaCholan had a decisive victory over all his enemies at an age of 13. Lord Shiva here is worshipped as VenniKarumbeesar, the lingam is in the form of sugarcanes stacked together as a baanam. After a peaceful and amazing darshan, we decided to come back to NMJ to catch Tea Garden Exp. We started around 1755 from Koyilvenni and reached just 30 seconds before the train halting at the station – we jumped out from the share auto at the gate (NMJ platforms are split into two as the gate lies in between), ran to the counter to buy tickets (19 each, 95 total) only to find that all four unreserved coaches at the front at jampacked, being a Sunday. We didn’t have a choice but to board the first Sleeper coach before the train was dispatched. As expected, there was a squad roundup midway, but as we were going to Thanjavur, the next station enroute, we were spared.

Thanjavur:
After getting down at TJ at 1830, we had a full 90 minutes in front of us – Nishanth and I bullied the rest of the gang to catch a share auto and go to Thittai (Titte). This temple is famous for the sannidhi of Raja Guru – this temple is the gurusthalam even before Alangudi became famous for it. Sunday evening movies kept the usual crowd at bay, (at homes rather!) – so we were able to have crowd-free darshan here too. The auto-wala dropped us back at Saraswati Café near the junction. Some tiffin to munch and then we boarded Rockfort Exp at 2040. Now, my count of both Thevara kovils and Divyadesams are at 97.

Trip back:
Having a PTT buffer of more than 45 minutes, we were asked to halt at Golden Rock for 15 minutes and later at Tiruchi Home for close to 20 minutes. We rolled into pf 1 at TPJ at 2205 – DP2 15502 did the honours. Super monster 22391 took charge towards Madras. We met 2633* at Golden Rock, Tirukkural* at Kallakkudi, Anantapuri at Sillakkudi, Pearl City at Ariyalur, Pothigai at Ottakkovil, Nellai* at Mathur, shortly followed by Pandian* at Ichchangadu (* indicates video-ed). I decided to hit the berth at 125, just short of Vriddachalam. Having started 15 mins late at TPJ, we arrived 2 mins BT at Egmore. Took a local to SP and there ends the story.

-Aravi.