Temple Gopurams

In an 8 day trip to Chennai, I sure got to visit temples every day. This time I took the time to smell the roses.. err photograph the Gopurams without being in any rush. 

It is always good to go on a trip without a timetable..

The best part was the visits were after it had just stopped raining for a brief period or when it was still drizzling. So that made the colors vibrant. 

Visited 7 temples, some with big gopurams, some small.. here is a collection..

The Kapaleeshwar temple..

The Parthasarathy kovil, where my parents were engaged!!! I got to hear both my parents version of the story for the jillionth time on the visit.. I think San and me tell the story of how we met in Kapali temple as often to our kids.... we are slowly turning into a version of them..

Valleswarar kovil, which is my mothers favorite as they used to live in TSV Kovil street, literally 100 feet away..

There is a lot of detail on the big gopurams..

many stories told in these..

births, deaths, marriages..

There are small gopurams for each deity which have their own thing going..

Then there are these colored statues that deck the halls..it is possible that the entire thing was painted at one point.. 

Then there are these little statues at the corner of the roofs..be it conch blowing men or women or white bulls.. they add a little touch whenever you look up..

The rear entrance gopurams are not as grand, but still are interesting..

The decorations for the cowshed...

and a last picture of the temple main gopurams back facade after rains.

This time saw more people with Canon SLR's than Nikons.. Guess Canon is getting bigger in India.. not that it has anything to do with the post topic. Had not taken my 5D on this trip.. so all pictures you see from the India trip were taken on the iPhone 11 Max (some of them with the 0.5 or wide angle lens) and edited on Snapseed app on the phone. 

The best camera is the one you can get access to! 

I really wish they would dismantle all these sheds with the blue coverings in the temple that have been put up recently. spoils the beauty of it and makes for an eyesore. They also keep filling the gaps in the stones with cement which clogs up the natural drainage that was set up 100's of years ago.. the temple floods at the first hint of rain. Sometimes new technology when applied without understanding to ancient temples which already had been well thought out, backfires! 

I see 700 hundred year old stone walls and floors intact while the structures built with bricks and cement 30 years ago is crumbling.. better to leave the old temples the way they were.

They will outlast all of us... they should! Our kids and their kids deserve to play in the same halls and with the elephants the way we did..