A Chettinad Village, South India
We continue our coverage of our recent spiritual adventure though it concluded a few days ago. Here are photos from the last night in the village of Kanadukathan in the Chettinad district in South…
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Spiritual Adventures
Every teaching, story, and reflection filed under Spiritual Adventures.
In the Madurai Airport
Madurai has a brand new state-of-the-art airport. But there are still some traditional Indian touches...
Rice, food of the south
The harvest festival, Thai Pongal, takes place on the 14th of January and is celebrated predominantly in Tamil Nadu, South India. The festival is dedicated to the sun god, Surya, and marks the…
Smashing the Ego
At a small Shiva temple in the countryside of the Chettinad region, we stopped to participate in a Hindu custom in which a coconut is smashed on the ground in front of the temple to symbolize the…
A gorgeous sunset in Chettinad
A flashback to yesterday evening, about an hour or so after we arrived in Chettinad and checked into the mansion, Markley and I went for a walk and we were blessed with an extremely gorgeous sunset…
At the Ayyanar temple
Ayyanar is a village god, loosely affiliated with Hinduism, but emerging from a folk tradition of protective deities that keep disease and misfortune away from small rural villages. In one area of…
Fire ceremony at Pillayarpatti
Today we went to the small town of Pillayarpatti in the heartland of Chettinad to an ancient Ganesha temple. The priests in the temple come from the best priest training school in South India and the…
Learning Chettinad Cooking
Our spiritual and culinary adventure is coming to a conclusion and today we had our last cooking class. It was on two Chettinad style dishes. The first was "Mint Chutney" and the second "Kola Urundai…
Bathing the Elephant
Driving down the road to Thanjavur, we crossed a river where a temple elephant was about to get one of her two daily baths.
Thanjavur's great temple
This morning on the way to the heart of the Chetinad region we stopped in Thanjavur to visit the temple built by the great south Indian king Raja Raja Chola. The temple's name is Brihadeeswarar and…
Visiting the home of a Sari Weaver
After our ceremony at the Airateswar Temple in the village of Darasuram we visited one of the local sari weavers. The town is famous for sari weaving and most of these weavers supply the larger…
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