Tanjor / Tanjavore -At the "Ideal Riverview Resort"

On Monday we drove for 4 hours to Tanjore and checked in at the Ideal River View Resort. It is also named Ideal Beach Resort. FYI: Don’t be jealous; there is no beach. 

I was trying to draw no conclusions and suspend judgements but basically, I hated it immediately. The whole place is made to look deluxe as if to welcome the maharaja or British royalty. But just below the surface everything is very India (which I love; I'm just not crazy about the faux deluxe memsahib vibe). 

Here is an example of the effort to paste together western ideas of deluxe with the Indian culture: there's an electric kettle in our room. This morning, trying to plug it in we realized that the plug was behind a massive piece of furniture and that this cheap kettle had been permanently locked into place and could not be moved to a better outlet. This means that when it burns out (which won't be long) they will have to saw through some wood that is part of the massive piece of furniture, to free the cord to remove the kettle. Or just let it sit there broken, which is most likely what will happen. 

Anyway, back to my complaining, I just was not happy about leaving Tiruvanamalai and the ashram and coming to an enclave for westerners. On top of that, all 3 of us were hot, tired and cranky. Everything got better. Read on.

On the evening of our arrival we went into town to a massive Siva temple (Brideswara). It was just a normal Monday night and yet hundreds and hundreds of people were thronging the temple to pray, celebrate, get blessings and hang out. Amazing! As we made our way through the huge temple complex, we received blessings from 3 brahmin priests, who blessed us with "God's love and long life".  These priests bless and do rituals all day long for thousands of people a day.

It's hard to describe my experience inside of these ancient sacred spaces but I will try. In this Shiva temple I felt as if the heat was turned up, like I was being challenged to clean up my act so to speak, turn up my discipline in terms of practice, stand steadier in the fire of difficult situations without losing kindness, generosity and compassion. This fiery feeling state was specific to the Shiva temple; distinct from the feeling states I've experienced in other temples dedicated to other deities. 

I was grateful to come back to the Ideal Riverview Beach-free Resort. It was a good respite, a place to digest and assimilate the intensity of the temple visit. And I was also finally able to SEE and be grateful for the beauty. 

The next morning, we went to the Ganesh temple (Swetha Vinayagar Temple). What a different Temple (of course). Ganesh is a playfully happy blessing force. As soon as we entered the temple, a family took us under their wing, taught us a Ganesh Yoga-like movement sequence to do to honor Ganesh and keep us happy and avoid having a huge belly (which by the way, Ganesh does have because he loves sweets). The women wanted to know our dietary habits that keep us from having a belly. All this talk about belly! It made me laugh. The whole temple visit was full of so much friendliness and happy delight. 

We are leaving in the morning for Ananda ashram. It will be a 6 hour drive to a train station and then an overnight train to Kahnangod. 

Yay India! Thanks for reading. 💕