Coimbatore - Tamil Nadu

A city of over a million people not even mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide

A Large sprawling city famous for textiles we arrived by train and stayed at the WelcomHotel by ITC in the racecourse area. Airport-style security greeted us which we later found was related to a sectarian atrocity in the late 1990's and obviously still hadn't been forgotten. Coimbatore is also known as Kovai. Food in hotel very nice altogether a very nice hotel except for the heavy-duty security getting in and out.

Sightseeing

The bazaar with scores of stalls selling well - everything

Lulu Mall an upmarket European-style supermarket with among other things live tropical fighting fish in jam jars on sale in the Fish Department.

GD car museum the personal vehicle collection of GD Naidu a famous local industrialist and inventor and also another museum on the same site of technology bits and pieces. Outside in the road is an enormous flyover which is unfinished.

Sri Perur Pateeswarar Temple where we got totally lost in the one-way system much to our embarassment

The Adiyogi giant head sculpture of the Lord Shiva at the Isha Yoga centre. There is a light show projected on the statue every evening as the sun sets. It was really busy and TBH we couldn't really enjoy it because of the melee. Anyway Mr Murugan was channelling Lewis Hamilton and we got back to our hotel in record time

Marudhamalai Murugan Temple this is high up in the hills with a 500 step walkway however we took the bus up the hairpin bends as did most of the Indians. After getting in a muddle at the last Hindu Temple we asked our driver Mr Murugan to escort us and after buying the flower garland and tipping the priests we ended up at the inner sanctum by the correct route and received our blessings! The flagstones were incredibly hot and in our bare feet we were hopping about unless there was a mat or a puddle of water which the Indian thought very funny.

Coimbatore Botanic Garden this is run by the Tamil Nadu State University but unfortunately was very disappointing maybe because they had just had a big flower show and the remnants were all over the place.

The forest museum founded by Dr Gass. Here for the first time some tourists from Kerala wanted us in their family photo and this became a regular thing once we were out and about in Ooty.

A peculiar bird house in Mettapalayam called Exotic Bird Park Kookyland