Family Trip to south of TN Day 2 nd 3

Day 2

After tiring day 1, the second day was pretty slow we started around 10 after our breakfast. Our destination was Padmanabhapuram Palace. This palace is located in Thuckalay in Kerala it is a two hour journey from Tirunalveli. The entrance ticket to this palace is 20 Rs per head. I think 15 for still camera and Rs. 1500!! for video cam. The palace is famous for its magnificent wooden works. I have to admit the fact that it is one amazing place worth spending some time admiring the works, knowing the way the king led his life. We spent about 3 hours in this palace and the museum which is also in the same place.

Ok here is the entrance to the palace and that’s my pops .

You will see this huge chair and bed kind of stuff as soon as you enter. Wooww that chair is so huge that me and my pops can fit in at the same time (oh ya and don’t try to touch any of the exhibits cause you don’t want to end up paying fine).



After this you will see a small staircase (really small) and you will have to bend yourself a lot to enter the top room. You will see the place where the king and his fellow minister will be addressing the cases and issues in this hall and that’s where the king sits . The wood work in this hall is made in such a fashion that the place will get maximum light. After this you will take an exit from this place through another small staircase (don’t worry this is a very normal kind of one) and then you will find a dinning hall kind of place. You will be actually standing in the first floor of the hall and there is another hall right below it. Guess what is capacity of the whole hall, 300 nope, 500 nope, 1000 nope, 1500!! Nope, 2000!!!! Bingo. Yup the total is capacity is 2000!! The king used to give Anna Dhanam (it’s a Tamil word ‘Anna’ means ‘Food’ and Dhanam means ‘Free offering’) .

Check out the large pots where the pickle was stored.

The kings durbar has a black shinning flooring, the flooring is a special one, want to know why ? Well the floor is made of the following INGREDIENTS ! Egg white, jaggery lime, burnt coconut, charcoal and river sand, granite tubs to cool curd and buttermilk !!! When the guide inside the hall was telling this I was dumbstruck (Obviously everyone will) No wonder the palace is still holding good. There was one place where the ceiling had a very distinguishing wood work, there were 32 Lotus designs of which the middle one will be a little different from the others. We walked through some more steps, rooms and ended up in the kings bedroom.

The wooden bed is made up of rose wood along with different herbal tree woods which are know for its medical purposes.

Check out the ceiling .


Hmmm no wonder he had a healthy life. Well that’s not all, guess how the kings recruits men for his army, the person should lift a stone of 38 KGs above his head and he has to repeat this for nearly 100 times ( I am not sure about count) .

Yup that’s me holding the stone with one hand ;)

There is a granite dance hall, it was classic!!. There is one guest room, specially designed for French people. What’s special about this room?













The room has a ceiling which is a lot more higher than others rooms, completely designed in French architecture manner – doors, windows, etc.

I have just mentioned a very few things about the palace, there is also a queens mother room, etc, etc. And then there is this small museum.

The museum is also good, one of the displays was iron bar cage in the form of human - hand, legs, body and one for head. So everything is connected to each other by small chains. I thought it was used to hang people but I was wondering how it would kill someone because there was no such mechanism of strangling or stuff like that. Then the guide near me explained how people were executed (horrific). The person who is sentenced to death will be put in this human shaped iron bar cage. The person won’t be able to bend his legs, hands or any part of his body; basically he can’t do anything if he is put inside this. After which the cage will be hung in a high altitude place where the vultures prey on him when he is still alive and he is left to death!!! Yup painful till the last beat of your heart. I couldn’t take a snap of that cause battery in my cam was drained, and it was a little dark so I couldn’t use my sisters mobile either. Anyways I wanted to show how it would look like so here is the work I did it in paint, hope you get the pic

That’s day two, Day 3 was a big disappointment when we went to kutralam, a place where tons and tons of water falls didn’t even have a single drop. So we ended up seeing big rocks. Anyways that didn’t spoil our thirst for water. We set off to Palaru which is in Gods own place Kerala. There was not much water but still we enjoyed the beautiful nature. The giant trees, greenery, fresh air.

Here are some of the snaps.

Next post will be about a special drink called Padhani which we had throughout the journey. Check it after out two days. Have a great week …