Travelling from Madurai to Bengaluru on a Sleeper Bus

This is an account of a journey by sleeper bus from the Tamil Nadu city of Madurai to the mega city of Bengaluru in Karnataka and occurred in February 2017.

It was early evening when we got back to the Residency in the centre of Madurai, time had moved on quite quickly if truth be told, it hadn’t been such a drag after all, my fears of it being an unmitigated bore fest had turned out to be unfounded. After all we were not due to catch our sleeper bus to Bengaluru until 9.45 pm and yet we had officially checked out of the Residency at 1 pm, leaving our bags there behind the reception leaving us with over 8 hours to fill.

In fact it was not long after I had settled back down in one of the comfy chairs in the lobby, stomach still full from the meal we’d eaten, that our man from the travel desk came over and advised us that we take the taxi ride over to the Maduthavani bus stand sooner rather than later, due to the fact that some parts of Madurai were likely to disrupted because of the thunderstorms from earlier on. This kind of made sense to the both of us, me and Anita, as there was simply no point in hanging around the lobby anymore if truth be told, we might just as well get on with it, and thus avoid any last minute hiccups. We had agreed a price of 500 IR with the man from the travel desk earlier on in the day for the ride over to the Maduthavani which, although well above what we could have got a ride for if we had stepped outside to negotiate with one of the numerous street taxis, was OK for us. This was mainly due to the fact that we had been able to hang around the lobby and safely store our cases behind the reception until it was time to go.

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Ramana Mandiram, Madurai

This is an account of my visits to the Ramana Mandiram in Madurai in 2017 when I was travelling with a friend through Tamil Nadu, South India. It was in this building that Sri Ramana realised The Self in 1896. We had first stayed in the Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai before making our way to Madurai to visit both the Ramana Mandiram there and the Ramana Maharshi Sundaram in Tiruchuzhi. The visit described below was made on the evening of the day we had gone to Tiruchuzhi. I was feeling tired from a day on the road in South India and we had just walked in to the building after an end of day thunderstorm, a common occurrence in that part of South India when the weather is hot.

First Day

At around 5 O’Clock Anita and I headed out of the Madurai Residency and onto the busy streets in the centre of a city which was dominated by the ancient Meenakshi Amman Temple, abode of the triple breasted warrior goddess Meenakshi. In fact it is not so much a temple as a complex of buildings on a site covering 6 hectares and dating back hundreds of years, being without doubt one of the top pilgrimage destinations in the whole of south India for devotees and tourists, both Indian and foreign. First of all however, before we ventured into the world of the Meenakshi Temple, we planned to go to the house where Ramana Maharshi lived whilst he had been studying in Madurai as a student in the last decade of the 19^th century. It had belonged to his uncle and it was in one of its rooms that Ramana Maharshi had attained Enlightenment of the Self. A short time after this event, he made the journey to Tiruvannamalai and the holy hill of Arunachala where once he had arrived he never left, living in the bliss of self-realization from 1896 to 1950, radiating a presence which drew seekers to him from all corners of the world. The house in Madurai was now called the Ramana Mandiram and I had got its address after a visit to the Ramanasramam offices earlier on in the week. It had been written out for me plain and simple –

Ramana Mandiram
17/21 Chockkappan Street
Madurai – 1
(opp: To Meenakshi Temple South Tower)

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Ramana Sundaram,Tiruchuzhi

This is an account of a trip I made with a friend in 2017 to Tiruchuzhi, birth place of Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1879. In the 1940s the Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai bought the house in which Sri Ramana was born and where he grew up with his family. It is called the Ramana Maharshi Sundaram and is open to visitors. I was travelling with a friend of mine and we had based ourselves in the city of Madurai which was about 45 minutes away by car. In Madurai we had first visited the Ramana Mandarim on Chockkappan Street, close to the south tower of the Meenakshi Temple, the place where Sri Ramana realised The Self in 1896 before making his way a few weeks later to Tiruvannamalai, where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

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