Kanchipuram

This past Saturday we visited the temple city of Kanchipuram. The city is located about an hour and a half northwest of the college. Dr. Jay's nephews Pradeep had arranged for us to see as much as we could in this city. Our first stop in the village was a temple out of the entire city they had chosen one for us to go to. We walked up to the gates of the Ekambareswarar Temple and it was bigger than any of the temples that we had seen so far. We walked through the gates and made our way to the main temple within. Once we got to that point we walked around the inner temple since we are not Hindu so we cannot go in to the inner parts. Walking around the it was still amazing there are many statues of gods all around. I was also fascinated by the stone work as all of the pillars where almost but all carved from stone. We were hoping to find an elephant somewhere inside but there was not one there that day. So we asked our guides if they knew of a temple that would have an elephant so we could get blessed. We jumped back in the cars and soon arrived at another temple that we ran into and there was our elephant. We each took 2 rupees and gave it to him in his trunk and then he proceeded to "bop" us on the head. There was a challenge of getting a picture because the elephant man said no pics so we had to hide behind one another and try to get the picture.

After our temple visits next on the list was the silk saree factories. We drove down many back streets to get to the place. We arrived at a house and just thought that we were lost but they told us to get out and come in. To our surprise there were four big looms that they use to make the sarees. They started to show us what they do and how they do it, that's when the next surprise came. This factory was making gold sarees and doing it all by hand, the shuttles were thrown across by hand and everything was done by hand. It takes them about 10 days to complete on saree, depending how fast the maker wants to work. But in the end they come out looking beautiful.

To finalize our trip in Kanchipuram we did a little shopping. Our first stop was a saree store to buy some scarves and other things. They had so many to choose from it was very hard but we were all able to pick a few out to bring home as presents. After that we just had to get some food at a super market and then go back to the college.