Private tour of Madurai city with guide for a cultural immersion

We visit the Madurai Meenakshi Temple, one of the largest Temples of the World and an Architectural marvel. Over the last 2500 years Madurai Meenakshi Temple has been the lifeline of the City of Madurai. Madurai Meenakshi Temple has played a crucial role in promoting Tamil Art, Music, Dance & Culture. In fact, Madurai Meenakshi Temple is supposed to have been the host of the third assembly of Tamil Sangam, the ancient Literature Meet. As many as 30000 sculptures can be found in the Madurai Meenakshi Note that the following items are not allowed inside the Meenakshi temple. You can leave these either in the hotel itself or in the car. Mobiles, sharp metallic objects, perfume/sprays and lip sticks.

We visit the magnificent Thirumala Nayakar Palace. This was build by the Nayak Kings in 1636. The building we see today was the main Palace where the King lived. The original Palace Complex was four times bigger than the present structure and had a royal residence, theatre, shrine, apartments, armoury, palanquin place, royal bandstand, quarters, ponds and gardens. Its architecture inspired a whole genre of Indo-Saracenic style of buildings during British India.

Gandhi Museum is located the old palace of Rani Mangammal. The museum brings alive the freedom struggle. The Gandhian movement is well depicted as a picture gallery. Madurai was chosen for this museum as Gandhiji took important decisions during his visits to Madurai. in 1921 he decided to give up his rich dressing pattern when he was visiting Madurai. The doors of Meenakshi Amman temple were thrown open to Harijans in Madurai and the battle against untouchability had a win. Gandhiji visited the temple in 1946 along with the Harijans and that was a defining moment in this struggle.

Vilachery is a potters village near Madurai. Over 200 families live here and most are into pottery. They make dolls for scores of festivals round the year. The paper mache dolls made here adorn South Indian homes during the 9 day festival of Navratri.

We end the Madurai tour with a bazaar walk. Madurai has a famous wholesale market for bananas. We will walk past many different varieties of Bananas. The tour ends with a sip of Jigarthanda , the most famous local cold beverage of Madurai!