Indian Pacific: Checking In at Perth West

A three part account of a journey with my father undertaken on the Indian Pacific from Perth in Western Australia to Adelaide in South Australia visiting places along the way such as Kalgoorlie, Cook and the awe inspiring Nullarbor Plain.

Wednesday morning was another fine day and after breakfast we got our stuff together and made our way down to the foyer where we checked out of the Esplanade in Freemantle. We said goodbye to the friendly concierge girl who proceeded to call a taxi for us as Dad pressed another couple of Aussie bucks into her open hand which then clasped tightly shut. We had to get to Perth West train station in order to catch the Indian-Pacific which departed at 11.55 in the morning and which we would be travelling on for the next couple of days, all the way to the city of Adelaide in South Australia.

Continue reading →

Heart of the Country

A piece from a longer work which goes by the name of Snapshot Log. This one, Heart of the Country, describes a car journey through the heart of Wales which saw me drive from Penarth, South Wales to Snowdonia, North Wales and back again in one day, 12 hours behind the wheel.

Earlier this week we were in Wales and on the Tuesday Nov 21^st,took a ride up through more or less the heart of Wales and then back again in a single day. The ride up and down was great, since I was born in Wales and am now 55 years of age, it was probably long overdue for me to get out and finally make that journey from the south to the north going straight through the heart of the country.

Continue reading →

On the Shatabdi Express

This is an account from 2016 of a journey I made on the Shatabdi Express from the city of Mysore in Karnataka to Chennai, state capital of Tamil Nadu.

The Shatabdi Express from Mysore to Chennai was due to depart Mysore at 2.30 pm so I got to the ticket office at around 12.45. As soon as I saw the queue that had already formed at the reservations counter for the departure that afternoon I had a bad feeling. This was confirmed when 20 minutes later, after I had gone to the trouble of filling out the obligatory reservation form, I was told in no uncertain terms by the man behind the counter that I would only be able to travel as far as Bangalore, just a couple of hours down the line. I would not be able to go the whole way to Chennai as the leg of the journey between Bangalore and Chennai was already fully booked.

Continue reading →

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)

Continue reading “Ramana Mandiram, Madurai” →

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.

Continue reading “Ramana Sundaram,Tiruchuzhi” →