Eid Holiday in Tamil Nadu – Angie and Adam

We had an amazing time hanging out with our friends Chris & Gretchen!

This year for Eid our school had a bit more than a week off, so we decided to head over to India. We’d been meaning to visit for years, but with the pandemic we put it off. Our old friends Chris and Gretchen live in Chennai, and so we decided this was the year to visit them, and for Angie to finally return to India.

We all squished into an autorickshaw to get around Chennai

We love visiting friends and catching up with them while seeing where they are living. We had a blast exploring Chennai with Chris and Gretchen, and getting to see where they live and how their boys have grown up in the years since we last saw them.

Our first taste of dosas in Tamil Nadu, at a local chain in Chennai with Gretchen & Chris

Our first day there we explored Chennai a bit and they took us to a temple and then shopping. We went to a cool place that publishes handmade books, as well as Angie’s old favorite clothing store, Anokhi. Angie and Gretchen had a great time trying on clothes, and Angie ended up with some pieces to add to her wardrobe. The second day in Chennai we all loaded into their car and headed down the coast to Mahabalipuram. This seaside town has stone temples and monuments that date from the 7-8th century. The stone carving was impressive, and the seaside location makes this a very picturesque spot.

Carved stone cows at the Mahabalipuram Shore Temple

In front of the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram

A highlight of Mahabalipuram is this carved scene of the descent of the Ganga and Arjuna’s penance.

Adam, Chris, and Gretchen in front of Krishna’s Butter Ball, a massive stone balanced on the edge of a hill.

After an amazing weekend with Chris and Gretchen, Adam and I took off for Madurai on the overnight train. Madurai is known as the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, and we were excited to explore the city.

While in India we were excited to take the train. Here we are enjoying our 1st class AC bunks.

The Heritage hotel in Madurai welcomes its guests with a flower mandala each morning.

Our first night we decided to get an introduction to Madurai via its food. We signed up for a Foodies Day Out tour, and it was fantastic! Our guide Soundarya introduced us to a huge variety of Tamil Nadu’s finest delicacies. We absolutely loved the tour, and it was awesome to do it on the first night so we knew a bit about the city and its food to try later in our stay.

Our guide Soundarya from Foodies Day Out was fantastic!

This thirunelveli halwa from Prema Vilas Halwa shop was a delicious way to start the tour

The Prema Vilas Halwa shop also had tasty crispy snacks for us to try.

String hoppers are one of the many expressions of rice found in South Indian cuisine. The guy in the pink shirt has a little device that expresses the rice batter into spaghetti-like strings, and then the small piles of rice noodles are steamed. The woman on the other side of the pan of string hoppers is mixing the cooked noodles with coconut milk and gur (raw sugar) making a tasty treat!

We loved the flavor of the string hoppers, but they were a little tricky to eat!

Pouring ghee to fry up these delicious flat breads

This street vendor is making a special kind of puri that has spinach in the batter.

The spinach puris were one of our favorites!

Loving the puris!

This place had another type of slightly sweet bread product that we enjoyed with a cup of South Indian coffee. The little breads were so good they were already gone by the time we took this photo!

One of the restaurants we went to had a huge idli-making operation going in the kitchen.

The selection of dosas we tried here were amazing!

We finished off the night with jigarthandas, a sweet treat special to Madurai.

In addition to sampling all the food Madurai had to offer, we also checked out the sights. Meenakshi Amman Temple is an important site in Hinduism, and is a spectacular example of Hindu architecture. The temple complex is huge, and no cameras or phones are allowed in, so you have to just keep your memories in your head. We enjoyed walking around the temple and seeing its beautiful art without having to think about what photo to take next.

One of the gates to the Meenakshi Amman Temple. No cameras or phones are allowed inside.

One of the crowded lanes around Meenakshi Amman temple. You can see part of the temple in the background. It was being worked on so it is covered in green scaffolding.

After seeing the temple we decided to walk through some of the crowded market streets in the area and head over to the Thirumalai Nayakkar Palace. We loved browsing all the spices and chilis on offer as we made our way there.

It was hot on the street, and Ang was happy to put one of her old dupattas to use as a head covering.

At Thirumalai Nayakkar Palace. It was quiet and a bit cooler inside than out on the hot streets!

The cool air-conditioned movie theater was a great retreat from the heat.

On our last day in Madurai we went to the movies! We managed to find an air-conditioned theater that was playing a Tamil move with English subtitles. It was especially fun to hear the audience’s reaction every time the hero started to do something exciting. They cheered and whistled – great fun!

Finally, we headed out on the overnight train back to Chennai. After the night on the train we did a little more shopping at Anokhi and then hung out with Chris, Gretchen, and their boys for the evening before going to the airport to fly home. We absolutely loved our trip to Tamil Nadu. It was lovely to catch up with our old friends, it was a successful first foray into India for Adam, and for Angie it was amazing to see a new part of India but still felt like coming home to the place she first started her international teaching journey.