Well, a change in tempo as we arrived in our first city, the ancient city of Madurai.  It is a bustling, busy, noisy, dirty and chaotic city like lots of others in India but this city has had the most extraordinary temple at its heart for over 1000 years.  It is probably the biggest temple in the country covering an astonishing 16 acres and contains, we are told, over 33 million sculptures.  The sight of the 4 main towers or gopuras at 49 metres high is quite breathtaking.  Even the children were stunned into silence.  The place became a sanctuary for us over a couple of days, as people were too busy with worship to bother a strange looking, pale family wandering about.  We were desperate to see into the busier inner shrines but they are for Hindus only. As well as shrines, sculptures, ancient artefacts and a temple tank are temple cows, two temple camels and an elephant which stands and blesses people with its trunk.  Outside the temple was a different story as we received huge amounts of attention, probably due to the fact that western children are not a usual sight.

After Madurai we travelled just 40 minutes south to the boys town at Tirumangalam, via the taxi drivers home.  He invited us into his house for Pongal – the four day harvest festival.  We were given sweet rice pudding in exchange for lots of pictures.  The hospitality and kindness of the complete strangers we have met never ceases to amaze us.  We arrived at the boys town in time for their Pongal celebrations that involved a big sports day for all the girls and boys, where we were asked to hoist flags and hand out prizes.  We felt very honoured.  The celebrations continued with more sweet rice pudding served on banana leaves and great long sticks of sugar cane to munch. Then the children all did very impressive pieces on stage – plays, dancing and even yoga!  The Joe Homan charity runs a collection of children’s villages for 5 – 10 year olds and boys and girls towns for older kids.  The children all come from difficult backgrounds, being either very poor or orphans.  They stay and are looked after by ‘foster mothers’ and go to local schools, but are very much guided and encouraged by the Joe Homan staff.  We spent some time visiting the children after Pongal.  We had such a wonderful time with them.  They all wanted to hold our hands and show us were they live.  The older girls took Ellie and Jazz off to do their hair.  They even got Nigel and Ellie dancing.  And we were really lucky to meet our new family member, Rahimanisha, an 8 year old girl who we have sponsored. We are proud to call ourselves ‘uncle and aunty’.  It was very difficult leaving. The whole experience was so emotional but that alone was worth coming to India for.

After all our excitement in Tamil Nadu we got on an overnight bus (more like a fairground ride because it was so bumpy) to Bangalore in Karnataka were we are being extremely well looked after by our new friends – the daughter of a man a friend met on a train from Edinburgh to London!