Dec 28-30 - Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu

Kumbakonam is called the temple town for a reason, due to the sheer number of temples in area. Every single village irrespective of it's size has a Shiva, Vishnu and Devi temple, i.e. Shivan, Perumal & Amman Kovil as the Tamilians like to call. Since we got back earlier this week, I have been asked by at least 2-3 people on how to plan the Navagraha temples darshan, I thought it would be worthwhile to blog about it.

When we were planning the travel mid Oct, my enthusiastic plan was to do the Navagraha temples in and around Kumbakonam, temples in Thanjavur and temples in Tiruchirappalli & our family deity in Siruvachur in Perambular District. With back-to-back temple visit in the first 36 hours, my kids talked to me into knocking off Thanjavur & Tiruchirappalli from the itinerary. I reluctantly agreed as we had done a trip with the kids in May exclusively to cover Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur. If you are not the enthusiastic kind who likes driving hundreds of kilometres, I'd suggest you get to Kumbakonam by train. If you live in Bengaluru, you'd need to plan ahead and book tickets as Mayiladuturai Express is the only train and is always busy year-round. There is good train connectivity from Madras and other major cities in Tamil Nadu. The train from Bengaluru gets you to Kumbakonam first thing in the morning. The town is up and about really early, all TN towns for most part, and if you are a coffee person - you'd love the filter kappi there. There are plenty of hotels that you could choose from. We stayed at the Raya's Grand which is right across Mahamaham Tank and is decent, their restaurant (Rice n Spice) is decent and seemed very popular. I do not know if it was due to school holidays/Year end holiday or what, we had to wait for 15-20 minutes for a table every meal, it felt like the whole Kumbakonam town ate out. The hotel arranged for car, they have options depending on what you'd like. I'd highly recommend you ask for Mr Madhi, but he only drives the Innova. I'd recommend the Innova just so you have him driving you around. He is excellent, very knowledgable and enterprising. One other tip, temples in Tamil Nadu open really early and are closed between noon to 4 pm. It would be good to plan your movement keeping this in mind, we headed out at 7:30 am. Now onto perhaps the interesting part, the places that we visited (listed in the order we visited them, Navagraha temples are in italics).

Day 1

First half

Swaminatha Swamy Temple, Swamimalai. Deity: Murugan
Maha Ganapathi Temple, Ganapathiagraharam. Deity: Ganapati
Kailasanathar Temple, Thingalur. Deity: Shiva, Soma (Moon)
Apatsahayesvarar Temple, Alangudi. Deity: Shiva, Guru (Jupiter)
Anjaneya Temple, Alangudi
Tirunageswaran Naganathar Temple, Thirunageswaram. Deity: Shiva, Rahu. Try and time and visit the temple during Rahu Kaal 

Second Half

Suryanar temple, Suryanar Kovil. Deity: Shiva, Sun 
Agniswarar temple, Kanjanur. Deity: Shiva, Sukra (Venus) 
Vittal Rukmini Smasthan, Govindapuram. Beautifully built, houses a 1000 cows Goshala and Veda Patashala
Oppiliappan temple, outskirts of Kumbakonam. Deity: Vishnu
Sarangapani temple, Kumbakonam. Deity: Vishnu
Adi Kumbeswarar temple, Kumbakonam. Deity: Shiva
Ramaswamy temple, Kumbakonam Deity: Vishnu

Day 2

First half

Maha Saraswathi temple, Koothanur. Deity: Saraswathi 
Mehanadhar temple, Thirumeeyachur. Deity: Lalithambika
Sri Nalan Kali Theertha Vinayakar Temple. Deity: Ganesh
Tirunallar Shani Temple, Thirunallar. Deity: Shiva, Shani (Saturn)
Nagannathaswamy temple,  Keelaperumpallam. Deity: Shiva, Ketu
Swetharanyeswarar temple, Thiruvenkadu. Deity: Shiva, Budha (Mercury)
Vaitheeswaran temple,  Deity: Shiva, Angaragan (Mars)

Second Half

Nataraja temple, Chidambaram. Deity: Shiva & Vishnu

Day 3

First half

Kasi Viswanathar temple, Kumbhakonam. Deity: Shiva
Mathura Kaliamman temple, Siruvachur

The Navagraha temples can be visited in one and half days comfortably with lot of time to spare and covering many other temples in the area. Next on our list is to cover the 6 abodes of Lord Murugan in Tamil Nadu.


Swamimalai


Rahu Temple

Surya (Sun)

Sukran (Venus)

Vittal Rukmini Temple

Budha / Mercury

Vaitheeswaran Koil 

Vaitheeswaran Koil 

Madhurakali Amman Temple


Comments

  1. rajaramanJanuary 1, 2023 at 7:00 AM

    I like the style of your writing. Brief, to the point, no beating around the bush or bullshits.

    The accompanying photos are clear, attractive and precise.
    I think you should keep writing blogs regularly and more frequently . & I hope you are putting all these blogs together for posterity sake.

    Well done and keep it up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ravi srinivasanJanuary 10, 2023 at 8:38 AM

    Kalakku da .. Vittal Rukmini photo looks fab!

    ReplyDelete

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