23 to 25 Day Sunday, January 24, 2016 Madurai

Namaste,

It sounds exotic, but at first glance, it's not.

Madurai in Tamil Nadu, in the southern part of India. My arrival in this city seems to be quite problem-free. I already know the procedure at the train station by now, as the big cities in India differ the least. A horde of tuk-tuk drivers still believes they can make big money with me, the clueless foreigner. But since I've become smarter from past mistakes, I don't engage in discussions anymore, even if the Indians seem to enjoy it.

So the tuk-tuk is quickly found, not directly at the train station, but a little further down the road. When I arrived at the hotel, I thought, "Ola, what a small luxury for the little money, it makes quite an impression." Unfortunately, this joy quickly disappeared, as it was overbooked, much to my surprise. But, well, what can you expect from hotel providers like Vista Rooms, Zo Rooms, and, in this case, Oyo Rooms. I should have known, because I've had a few problems like this in the past few weeks. This time, however, one thing was clear: I won't be booking through these three anymore, and the one booking that was still pending was canceled immediately. But, as I mentioned a few times before, everyone here is so nice and quickly takes care of such problems. So, after an hour, we arrived at the lobby of the next hotel. The only drawback was that it was further outside the city center, so you were always dependent on transportation.

The next day, the usual routine, exploring what the city has to offer. And, of course, at the top of the list is the Sri Meenakshi Sundareshwarar Temple, which stands impressively and almost unimaginably large in the center of the city. It is surrounded by narrow, winding alleys that almost resemble a bazaar, bustling with activity. Furthermore, you can find countless small shrines here, seemingly in every street and on every corner.

Another topic that needed to be resolved today was the fact that taking tuk-tuks was still too expensive in the long run. I took the first city bus and realized that they cost almost nothing anymore, and once you have an overview, it's quite a pleasure.

I heard that the buses run 23 hours a day, and I wanted to take advantage of this by heading to the airport at 4 am the next morning. The price range there was also from outrageous to laughable.

First, I asked at a taxi stand and was told it would cost 700 rupees (10 €). Then, I asked at the hotel, where I was immediately waved off, and he also laughed because here it would apparently cost 1500 rupees (20 €). In the guidebook, which also seemed to match the information from the tourist office, it said about 300 rupees (5 €), and the bus would cost about 25 rupees (35 cents). Unfortunately, when I arrived at the bus station around 3:30 am, where several buses were departing, I couldn't see the line I was waiting for. And since I didn't have time to waste, to my luck, a tuk-tuk driver was immediately available. He said the bus didn't leave until 6:30 am, which was not an option for me because it was too late. He quoted me a price of 300 rupees, and I said 250 rupees, and he agreed. ;-)

Now, of course, I arrived at the airport faster than planned, before 5 am. And it turned out that it was still closed, which I have never experienced before. So, I had to wait outside for another hour. Fortunately, it was warm. Around 6 am, the two soldiers with machine guns (here they are everywhere) woke up from their nap and turned on the lights, and slowly the entire airport began to wake up from its night's rest.