Marudamalai

On our drive back from Aanaikattu resorts near Coimbatore we saw the board Marudamalai .

we remembered the famous tamil song marudamalai maamaniye murugaya .

We heard we could drive up the 600 ft hillock where the  temple was ,as we werent looking forwards to a climb in the very hot sun .

So we drove towards marudamalai .

We bought the vehicle ticket drove up,road was quite good and plenty of traffic including some buses .
Only nearing top the bends were bit sharp .
Parking was good crowds were reasonable
We still had to climb around 50 to 75 steps but there was a roof to provide shade and a gentle breeze
And then we were at the  top gazing at the 12 th century temple.
It had a majestic gopura
We got into line
In a short time we were in front of altar .

The place was so called because of abundance of Marudha trees .

There was also a saint called paambaaty sidfhar or snake yogi who lived long back in the hills .

Hes said to have a tunnel ftom his cave to Sanctum sanctorum of temple directly and was supposed to have used it to pray .

Murugan was very handsome and glowing
We particularly were grateful for this unexpected oppurtnity to visit the temple .

After some photos and buying prasadam we were on our way to palghat for  a stopover in premilas uncles house meeting her cousins and back to cochin .

The highway from coimbatore to cochin was perfect but for short stretches

Remarkable change indeed .