Chitharal, getting there...

Chitharal, a thousand year old Jain temple standing alone in a myriad of churches and temples of Southern Tamil Nadu. Better yet, this ancient monument have been carved inside a rock, and thus making it a beautiful,err... rock temple.

 For a longtime I've been hearing about this place from different people, who have never seen the place, but have seen the people who've seen the place. How odd is that? I think the problem was that, this rock temple is near Kanyakumari, one of the famous tourist attractions of India, being the southernmost tip of the country and all, has stolen the thunder of this place. So all the tourists go to Kanyakumari, making this place less known to all. And the result, no firsthand information about the place, known to locals as malaikovil.

White stones, all the way...

So me and Renjith, a fellow adventurer and a close friend, set out to find this place, aided only by the information from wikipedia, googlemaps, and tidbits from some blogs, here and there. We took the public transport and took the ticket to Marthandam, a place 7km from the temple. But we ended up in a place 3km from Marthandam bus station and had to board another bus again. But it was a cool, cloudy morning and we were just getting started.


Finally, after one more bus ride and a 15 minute walk we finally reached the place. Or atleast, the base of the temple. From there it was a steep walk of 900 meters or so, to the top of the hillock, where the temple lie. The journey thus far was very interesting, as we would get from one place to another by doing it in the old fashioned way- by asking people for directions. To the bystanders, the fruit vendors or the passing commuters ,we would ask in our broken tamil, the way, and most of the time, their answer would be- "Malayalathil paranjal mathi." Seems like that there are malayalis everywhere. We mallus rock...

A view from the top

Now, as I said earlier, it was a cool and cloudy day. That was the best thing about that day. Even though the path towards the temple was paved with white stones, there was no trees casting their shadows to the path, the place being rocky and all. So in the case of a sunny day, one would be scorched dry and tired, as I would learn in a second trip to Chitharal with my college friends.

Anyway, we made it to the top in our own time, soaking in all the scenery and the relaxing beauty of nature. The most interesting thing about this place is that, it is almost deserted. We've seen only ten to twenty people during our total time spent there. So we got the place entirely to ourselves, and we wasted no time in clicking pictures and capturing the moment. And thus begun my day at Chitharal.

How to get to Chitharal: My journey to Chitharal was by bus. I boarded the Nagercoil bus from Trivandrum and took the ticket to Marthandam. You can ask anybody there, where the bus stop for going to Chitharal is. From that bus stop I took the bus to Arumana and got off at Chitharal, which is the next stop from Nesamani Palam. From the junction there was a 1.5 km walk to the base of the hillock. Then, a 900m trek to the top of the Chitharal hills. And then I was there, and the place I saw was Chitharal. And one tip: take some food supplies with you, as there are only a few stores around Chitharal.