Flowers and a shower in Madurai

So we eventually made it to the flower market - wonderful scents and sounds. The vast majority of Indian flowers are heads only and used to make garlands for weddings or to take to the temple. The usual extreme hustle and bustle:

The garlands are made from individual petals bunched so tightly they almost look like Christmas decorations:

Then weaving through the traffic to a major temple, no photos allowed inside but check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meenakshi_Temple,_Madurai. Here’s what it looked like from outside:

Inside there was a temple elephant; if you put some money in her trunk the mahout would get his pachyderm to breath over your face, which was apparently good luck. Well, although Sue was not keen, I thought you don’t get an opportunity like this every day. I duly inserted about $2 into the trunk, which close up looked unsettlingly like one of the giant worms from Dune. The mahout extracted said amount and as he wiped copious amounts of elephant mucus off it, I began to wonder about the wisdom of my plan. But like the pig in bacon and eggs (as opposed to the chicken which is merely involved); I was by this stage, committed and had paid $2. I was relieved to see the elephant flush her trunk with some cleanish looking water but then this anaconda like organ was suddenly six inches away from my face. As well as the elephants breath, a good portion of watery elephant mucus gave me a damn good dunking. Vowing never to trust an elephant again I soggily completed the temple tour. 

Outside the elephant was the star of a small parade. As you know elephants never forget, but I didn’t know they could snicker at you too.