Temple Trails Tamil Nadu : Rameswaram Temple

Rameswaram Temple

This was one of my briefest visits to the Rameswaram Temple and I consoled myself that I had been here on my earlier trips and had good darshan many times. We could find time to visit the temple only the day before the wedding for which we had been to Rameswaram. Hence this is more of a picture blog of the photos I was allowed to take in the temple more than actual description.

The size of the South Indian temples never fails to zap me and Rameswaram tops the list! We walked on the ever wet floor due to people having bath in the various theerthams at the temple and reached the Ganapathi sannidhi. It was very crowded as it was Vinayaga Chaturthi day. We then went inside and I was staring at the pillars and the huge nandhi like a village  bumpkin. 

 

 The main sannidhi was so crowded that we could just glimpse the Siva Lingam. – Ramanatha Swamy and Ambal Parvathavardhini sannidhi was very calm and less crowded and we could have a leisurely darshan there. We also prayed at the Kalyana Sundareswarar  sannidhi and came out to see the Anjaneyar. This Anjaneyar always fascinates me by the fact that the lower half of his body is always immersed in sea and only the upper half is visible for our darshan. This completed my shortest trip to this BIG temple. 

Evening though the wedding jaanavasam took place right here, there was no time to visit the sannidhis but only to click a few snaps!

Temple Trails Tamil Nadu : Kakalur Anjaneyar

Kakalur Anjaneyar

The next temple we visited was Kakalur Anjaneyar. This was not in our schedule, but somebody had suggested this temple to the van driver. My heartfelt thanks to this person as it was worth a visit. On first sight, I felt the temple looked quite small, but the Anjaneyar inside was quite another story. The temple is a small structure with just one huge Anjaneyar deity in the sanctum. Anjaneyar here is facing sideways that you can see only one side of his face. Another unusual thing is that Anjaneyar here is holding a lotus in one of his hands.

Being a Saturday, the temple was packed and as soon as we entered, we had the opportunity to see the deity decked with vadaimalai. There must have been atleast 1008 vadais in the maalai. A few of us had bought tulasi maalais for the deity, but the Bhattars there said that it will take more than 30-40 minutes for them to remove the vadai maalas and then do the next set of alangaram for the Anjaneyar. We decided not to wait as we may get delayed for the next temple in our schedule. We did a few pradakshinams and were fortunate to get prasadams of puliyodarai and thayir saadam. We prayed once again to the huge Anjaneyar and proceeded to the next temple.