Day 48: Madurai

This morning, I woke up feeling absolutely awful. I wasn't sure exactly why, so I pushed on through the afternoon. We started off with a rickshaw tour of the city. We drove all through the city into the poorer areas. I will say, it was a little uncomfortable, I felt like I was on a poverty parade, but all the locals were excited to see us. We first visited a local dry cleaners; very different from the ones back home. Drying off the clothes by beating them over stones and ironing them with a coal feed iron.

Afterwards, we visited the Sri Meenakshi Temple. The temple is very large, sporting 14 towers, the tallest one being 170ft Unfortunately, we were not able to bring our cameras inside. I really don't like that some of the nicest things you can see in India you can't bring your camera inside. The temple was absolutely beautiful, with various statues and a color wheel of paint spread among the whole place. They keep up the temple by doing necessary restorations and reprinting every 12 years. It also has over 33,000 sculptures in the temple and was nominated to be a part of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Once we exited the temple, we walked over to the tailor market. It was pretty interesting to see all the MEN behind all the sewing machines.

Afterwards, we visited the Thirumalai Naicker Palace. Here, like many others, don't allow cameras inside. It was built in 1636 by King Thirumalai Nayak. The part that is left still standing is where the king lived, while the original was four times the size of what is left. The palace floors was covered in pigeon poop. Everywhere you walked, you had to be careful not to get some on your head. It was disgusting seeing the large piles of poop scooped over to the side; just put some damn nets up to keep them out. I did manage to sneak a photo inside though!

To wrap up the afternoon, we visited the local banana wholesale market. It was amazing to see just how many different types of bananas there are.

We finally went back to the hotel to wrap up the afternoon where I was able to take a nap. When I woke, I had a burning fever and felt terrible. I walked over to the clinic next door to get checked out. Needless to say, I was a little nervous about visiting an Indian doctor, only because I felt like death did I make the trek. I personally thought that I had malaria, he assured me that it was just food poisoning, coming from something I ate the day before. To think, I have swam in the Ganges, eaten street food in every country I have been in, and the hotel I am staying in is the place to serve me bad food. He had to give me a shot in the butt to help subdue the fever, which I was also nervous about. However, the needle was in a one time use sealed bad and the medicine was in a break-off one time use small bottle. Jab away doc.

As you can imagine, that night was awful; constant vomiting and an upset stomach, accompanied by a 103F (39.4C) fever, all I could think about was going home.

The random picture is of a little girl trying to sell me stickers outside the Sri Meenakshi Temple

The last one is of my wheelchair in the Indian clinic.