My decent from the Hill Kingdom of Nepal was an awesome journey. As mentioned in my earlier posts, I did my 2 month summer internship at SNPL, Biratnagar Nepal in 2007. After my interns got completed, my co-students opted to go home directly the way we came, while I choose the more challenging path – a trip from Nepal to Darjeeling and Gangtok before a journey to Calcutta.

So one fine sunny day I set of from Biratnagar to Itahari. Itahari is a major junction on the H08 highway. In Nepal buses are no more than small vans run by private parties which ply from town to town. Mostly you change buses at every town. The Nepali way of life is something that can be told but must be felt to be understood. What ever be it is simple and makes one happy. After Itahari and after switching buses at two more places, I arrived at Birtamod. Birtamod lies close to the Nepali side of the East Nepal India Border. The next bus I took was to Illam.

Illam is proper hill country. The road winds through the hills mist-laden and smelling of tea and green all around. My SLR camera had run out of batteries so… sorry no photos. At Illam i found out I had come too far and need to go down a bit from where the road to Darjeeling branched off. The place was called Fickle (hope i got it right). So another trip down the mountain filled with more enthralling views saw me at Fickle. I now needed to travel to Pashupathinagar which met the Indian Border.

And this is where the trouble all started. By the time i reached Fickle, there was a slight drizzle. I managed to find a bus or rather a shared van (Maruthi Omni) to take me to Pashupathinagar. There were few passengers, old Nepalis mostly, that apart from a very nicely dressed Nepali girl. She seemed very urban in these surroundings. By the time we reached Pashupathinagar, the drizzle was more of an downpore. I had one huge wind breaker and a big backpack, and one small case with my laptop. There are basically two stops in Pashupathinagar one at the village centre and another at the border. All the passengers except the girl got down at the town center and the trip to the border was done in silence. Me, the girl and driver.

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About 2 weeks ago, I was in a real cranky mood. My scooter was off for a waxing session and its delivery delayed. After indulging in a bit of yelling around the house and ensuring everybody was as cranky as I was, I called my friend – Deeva to help me escape the negative environment in the domestics.

We went and had our Lunch at a restro near the pondy beach followed by a walk on the sea front. At around 3 we were totally bored of life and having nothing better to do decided to retreat to our residences. On the way back an idea struck. Deeva’s home village had an old Chola temple. And I as always had an eye out for architecture and History. The recent reading of “Ponniyan Selvan” by Kalki made me all the more excited. We were on his Gladiator bike and we had the whole sunny afternoon. So we filled the tank up and set out.

Our destination was Thirubhuvanai. It lies on the Podicherry-Villipuram Highway on the south west region of the town. On the way we crossed Villianur another small town of the Pondicherry UT. Then we halted at a railway crossing at Kandamangalam. In deeva’s word’s Kandamangalam was the last station under British India before the railway and the road passed into French Pondicherry. Customs offices were housed here and the place was famous for smuggling of rice from French Pondicherry to British India. As the slow passenger puffed away we were off again.

Thirubhuvanai lies in one of the south-westernmost or rather westernmost parts of Pondicherry. Its now famed for its industrial estates which houses a lot of electronic companies like TVS and Whirlpool. Historically Thirubhuvanai is related to Parantaka Chola I . He named the village Thirubhuvanamadevi Chaturvedimangalam. the temple was constructed by him and contains a lot of chola inscriptions depicting the social life in the village. the place abounds in the depictions of the Lion the emblem of Cholas. One sculpture shows the Chola lion killing a Chera elephant. The temple also houses sculptures depicting sceanes from the Gita and Ramyana. The temple is now maintained by the ASI.

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