Gokarna - with Safarnama

**********************************************************************************

Disclaimer: This blog shares personal travel experiences and tips for general informational use. Travel conditions, prices, and regulations may change, and I do not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of all content. I am not responsible for any issues, losses, or inconveniences arising from reliance on this information.

**********************************************************************************

 I was yearning to travel Karnataka since the day I moved to Bengaluru, and Gokarna seemed to be the best goto place for a first trip. I checked out available options and travel agencies, and got in touch with Safarnama through Thrillophillia.

Safarnama, formed by a group of travel enthusiasts, who themselves have huge travel experience in there repertoire. Although the group is new, however the leaders have good experience before hand.


We started from Bengaluru at around 9 pm on Friday Night, had our dinner on the way and reached Gokarna bus stand overnight at round  8 am. We per put into a small tempo traveler from the bus stand which took us to Gokarna Beach public point where we walked into our rooms pre-booked for us in a beach side shack. That early morning beach walk from the Main Road to the beach shack gave us an idea what's ahead in store.

After refreshing up and having our breakfast, all sun-screened up and having lightened up our back packs, we started to our first beach boarding the same small bus and reached Belekan, a rocky beach which had a small promenade alongside the beach. This beach had nothing much for a person looking for some exotic water experience.

Paradise beach was just something I have never seen before, only on Instagram pics. This ones at par with Seychelles, Maldives. The beach has few rocks and Sandy areas in between, which makes it a perfect spot for rock diving.

The hike to Paradise beach starts from belekan beach, a cement pathway takes you to the spot where we ascend a hillock. In the month of February you'll still find some shade on the way, you'll need it since it's a decent 45 degree up hill climb after a distance. The view from the top is, well, top class, exquisite being a sophisticated word.

You descend at the very spot you star getting the view of the sea, and another steep descend takes you straight at the Rocky spot on the shore. We had a nice half an hour dip, which wasn't sufficient to quench our thirst for more sea vitamin. The shore has a slight incline which causes waves to break with heavy load of water, so make sure to protect your eye glasses. It's like a mini wave-pool, and chances are it will fill your pockets with lot of sand.

This accompanied by some games and a nice group activities, and we bid adieu to Paradise beach until next time. The next spot was Half moon beach, which honestly is a nice cozy idyllic spot to relax but not in the noon, the time we reached, which is true for any other beach, unless you have a canopy of trees shadowing the sand like the om beach, our next destination. At half moon we just relaxed at a shack, freshened up, replenished our water stock and started towards om beach.

The trail towards Om Beach is slightly different from the previous hillock based, since this had a nice route from dried up fields and some In-habitation, a rural backdrop. At the top we paused for some songs and dance, which dual-ed up as exercise. I personally had a stiff back and thanks to the trip leaders I got that sorted out during the break. The leaders Pranshu and Devanshi upped our enthusiasm after the tough climb, tough mostly because of the heat that had as much climbed up in degrees.

We reached Om beach at about 1 pm and headed straight to Namaste Cafe, which is the typical shiv Sagar type hotel for having a decent meal and not too costly. There were other restaurants catering to foreign tourists which served sea food and "Continental" dishes. Om beach due to it's shape of an om Is divided in two sections, the southern section is occupied mostly by foreigners. You'll see them well equipped with beach gear and enjoying the environment just


like any other tropical island. The northern section is where the Indian crowd predominates. There are plenty of water sport activities as well, kayaking jet ski. We had food and took rest below the shadow canopy.

By sunset, we moved forward to Kudle beach, and it was another hike for few kilometers. Kudle is the typical commercialized beach, there was crowd and shacks and restaurants, lot of buzz. The sea is perfect for swimming without the roughness of the Rocky beaches. Sunset was as usual, ever orange hues, the way we are used to seeing on the Arabian Sea. After a dip there we started back to Gokarna town, which is a 4 km walk from kudle, it takes you through the town market place, the Mahabaleshwar temple, gokarna bus stand. The Mahabaleshwar temple is the one that comes up in Ramayan, where Ravan had given his hard earned shivling ( as a boon by Shiva vardan ravan, which when placed at any location would circulate provide power) to Ganpati who came in disguise of a local kid. To perform his evening ritual, entrusted the local boy to hold the ling, however Ganpati kept the ling here at gokarn. Once the ling touched the ground it could not be lifted, which made Ravan enraged and he decimated the ling. The fragments of the ling emerged as as many temples around gokarn, however the original place of the ling is at the Mahabaleshwar temple.

After reaching the shack on Gokarna Beach, we again freshened up, having a nice cold bath and dinner. They had arranged camp fire outside the shack where our group sat till early morning 2 am, our group leader Pranshu gera anchored the camp fire with his voice and guitar, while we chilled around the bonfire with our beers. We ended up in our tents for the day with all the blissful experience of the different exotic beaches we had seen.


The next day morning we had simple breakfast and then someone demoed their skill of rope walking.
Playing beach volleyball was like what Sagar mentioned cherry on the cake.


On the way back to beanglurur, we visited the Mirzan fort another picturesque old monument.

It was a amazing experience, and although it seems hectic, the time spent is nicely spaced out so you enjoy each and every point during the trail to the fullest.


Gokarna beach trek provides you that opportunity where you sweat and enjoy the sweat smell (success) of reaching another beautiful beach.  Special thanks to team safarnama, Leaders, Pranshu and devanshi for making this trip a memorable one.

For More such Pictures of the trip:
Subscribe:
https://www.instagram.com/gnaroot/

Also subscribe to My youtube just like that:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eyenandu

TCP Active open, Passive open, Active close, Passive close

**********************************************************************************
Disclaimer: The information shared on this blog is for general informational purposes only and reflects personal views or experiences in technology. While I strive for accuracy, I cannot guarantee that all content is current or error-free. I am not liable for any loss or damage resulting from the use of this information. Please verify independently before acting on any advice.
**********************************************************************

 The parameter: tcp_max_syn_backlog is used to decide how many passive open connections a socket can have, before further connection requests are dropped.

Passive open is established via the listen() syscall and usually has a backlog parameter.

       The backlog argument defines the maximum length to which the queue of
       pending connections for sockfd may grow.  If a connection request
       arrives when the queue is full, the client may receive an error with
       an indication of ECONNREFUSED or, if the underlying protocol supports
       retransmission, the request may be ignored so that a later reattempt
       at connection succeeds.

How this queue of incoming connection requests are maintained is a matter of library and kernel implementation.



Because of the 3-way handshake used by TCP, an incoming connection goes through an intermediate state SYN RECEIVED before it reaches the ESTABLISHED state and can be returned by the accept syscall to the application (see the part of the TCP state diagram reproduced above). This means that a TCP/IP stack has two options to implement the backlog queue for a socket in LISTEN state:

1. The implementation uses a single queue, the size of which is determined by the backlog argument of the listen syscall. When a SYN packet is received, it sends back a SYN/ACK packet and adds the connection to the queue. When the corresponding ACK is received, the connection changes its state to ESTABLISHED and becomes eligible for handover to the application. This means that the queue can contain connections in two different state: SYN RECEIVED and ESTABLISHED. Only connections in the latter state can be returned to the application by the accept syscall.
   
2. The implementation uses two queues, a SYN queue (or incomplete connection queue) and an accept queue (or complete connection queue). Connections in state SYN RECEIVED are added to the SYN queue and later moved to the accept queue when their state changes to ESTABLISHED, i.e. when the ACK packet in the 3-way handshake is received. As the name implies, the accept call is then implemented simply to consume connections from the accept queue. In this case, the backlog argument of the listen syscall determines the size of the accept queue.
   

Historically, BSD derived TCP implementations use the first approach. That choice implies that when the maximum backlog is reached, the system will no longer send back SYN/ACK packets in response to SYN packets. Usually the TCP implementation will simply drop the SYN packet (instead of responding with a RST packet) so that the client will retry. This is what is described in section 14.5, listen Backlog Queue in W. Richard Stevens’ classic textbook TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3.
Note that Stevens actually explains that the BSD implementation does use two separate queues, but they behave as a single queue with a fixed maximum size determined by (but not necessary exactly equal to) the backlog argument, i.e. BSD logically behaves as described in option 1:

The queue limit applies to the sum of […] the number of entries on the incomplete connection queue […] and […] the number of entries on the completed connection queue […].

On Linux, things are different, as mentioned in the man page of the listen syscall:

The behavior of the backlog argument on TCP sockets changed with Linux 2.2. Now it specifies the queue length for completely established sockets waiting to be accepted, instead of the number of incomplete connection requests. The maximum length of the queue for incomplete sockets can be set using /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_max_syn_backlog.

This means that current Linux versions use the second option with two distinct queues: a SYN queue with a size specified by a system wide setting and an accept queue with a size specified by the application.

The interesting question is now how such an implementation behaves if the accept queue is full and a connection needs to be moved from the SYN queue to the accept queue, i.e. when the ACK packet of the 3-way handshake is received. This case is handled by the tcp_check_req function in net/ipv4/tcp_minisocks.c. The relevant code reads:

To summarize, if the TCP implementation in Linux receives the ACK packet of the 3-way handshake and the accept queue is full, it will basically ignore that packet. At first, this sounds strange, but remember that there is a timer associated with the SYN RECEIVED state: if the ACK packet is not received (or if it is ignored, as in the case considered here), then the TCP implementation will resend the SYN/ACK packet (with a certain number of retries specified by /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_synack_retries and using an exponential backoff algorithm).

Since the TCP implementation on the client side gets multiple SYN/ACK packets, it will assume that the ACK packet was lost and resend it (see the lines with TCP Dup ACK in the above trace). If the application on the server side reduces the backlog (i.e. consumes an entry from the accept queue) before the maximum number of SYN/ACK retries has been reached, then the TCP implementation will eventually process one of the duplicate ACKs, transition the state of the connection from SYN RECEIVED to ESTABLISHED and add it to the accept queue. Otherwise, the client will eventually get a RST packet (as in the sample shown above).


The packet trace also shows another interesting aspect of this behavior. From the point of view of the client, the connection will be in state ESTABLISHED after reception of the first SYN/ACK. If it sends data (without waiting for data from the server first), then that data will be retransmitted as well. Fortunately TCP slow-start should limit the number of segments sent during this phase.
On the other hand, if the client first waits for data from the server and the server never reduces the backlog, then the end result is that on the client side, the connection is in state ESTABLISHED, while on the server side, the connection is considered CLOSED. This means that we end up with a half-open connection!
There is one other aspect that we didn’t discuss yet. The quote from the listen man page suggests that every SYN packet would result in the addition of a connection to the SYN queue (unless that queue is full). That is not exactly how things work. The reason is the following code in the tcp_v4_conn_request function (which does the processing of SYN packets) in net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c

/* Accept backlog is full. If we have already queued enough * of warm entries in syn queue, drop request. It is better than * clogging syn queue with openreqs with exponentially increasing * timeout. */

What this means is that if the accept queue is full, then the kernel will impose a limit on the rate at which SYN packets are accepted. If too many SYN packets are received, some of them will be dropped. In this case, it is up to the client to retry sending the SYN packet and we end up with the same behavior as in BSD derived implementations.
To conclude, let’s try to see why the design choice made by Linux would be superior to the traditional BSD implementation. Stevens makes the following interesting point:

The backlog can be reached if the completed connection queue fills (i.e., the server process or the server host is so busy that the process cannot call accept fast enough to take the completed entries off the queue) or if the incomplete connection queue fills. The latter is the problem that HTTP servers face, when the round-trip time between the client and server is long, compared to the arrival rate of new connection requests, because a new SYN occupies an entry on this queue for one round-trip time. […]
The completed connection queue is almost always empty because when an entry is placed on this queue, the server’s call to accept returns, and the server takes the completed connection off the queue.

The solution suggested by Stevens is simply to increase the backlog. The problem with this is that it assumes that an application is expected to tune the backlog not only taking into account how it intents to process newly established incoming connections, but also in function of traffic characteristics such as the round-trip time. The implementation in Linux effectively separates these two concerns: the application is only responsible for tuning the backlog such that it can call accept fast enough to avoid filling the accept queue); a system administrator can then tune /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_max_syn_backlog based on traffic characteristics.

ACTIVE CLOSE:








As You can see The side that does an Active Close is the one sending the FIN packet.

It immediately goes into the FIN_WAIT1 state, where it is waiting for the ACK from the peer.

After receiving an ACK, it moves to the FIN_WAIT2 state where it is expecting a FIN from a similar active close by the peer. It then sends an ACK to the peer and moves to TIME_WAIT state.

Both the peers enter the TIME-WAIT state, which is basically a fail safe for future connections to not accept packets from a previous connection still floating in the network.

The peer doing a passive close enters a CLOSE_WAIT state before going to a active close. When you write a program communicating over TCP, you should detect when the connection was closed by the remote host and close the socket appropriately. If you fail to do this the socket will stay in the CLOSE_WAIT until the process itself disappears.

CLOSE_WAIT means the operating system knows that the remote application has closed the connection and waits for the local application to also do so. So you shouldn’t try and tune the TCP parameters to solve this but check the application owning the connection on the local host. Since there is no CLOSE_WAIT timeout, a connection can stay in this state forever (or at least until the program does eventually close the connection or the process exists or is killed).

If you cannot fix the application or have it fixed, the solution is to kill the process holding the connection open. Of course, there is still a risk of losing data since the local end-point may still send data it has in a buffer. Also, if many applications run in the same process (as it is the case for Java Enterprise applications), killing the owning process is not always an option.
I haven’t ever tried to force closing of a CLOSE_WAIT connection using tcpkill, killcx or cutter but if you can’t kill or restart the process holding the connection, it might be an option.





 

Resolver order in library linking

**********************************************************************************
Disclaimer: The information shared on this blog is for general informational purposes only and reflects personal views or experiences in technology. While I strive for accuracy, I cannot guarantee that all content is current or error-free. I am not liable for any loss or damage resulting from the use of this information. Please verify independently before acting on any advice.
********************************************************************** This situation pops up every now and then, when we want to link an external shared library to our program.

A sample cc: command is "g++ -std=c++0x -L/usr/lib/ -laio -Wall -O2 -g aio.cpp -o aio"

THis will throw an error:
/tmp/ccFbxgDn.o: In function `main':
/home/gnayan/quick-and-dirty-libaio-example/aio.cpp:91: undefined reference to `io_queue_init'
/home/gnayan/quick-and-dirty-libaio-example/aio.cpp:99: undefined reference to `io_submit'
/home/gnayan/quick-and-dirty-libaio-example/aio.cpp:103: undefined reference to `io_getevents'
/home/gnayan/quick-and-dirty-libaio-example/aio.cpp:109: undefined reference to `io_destroy'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

You will check that the library is installed in its standard path /usr/lib/ or /usr/local/lib....or in x86_64 system.

/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

But still the compilation fails..or rather the linking fails.

So whats the problem:

What if we do: "g++ -std=c++0x -L/usr/lib/ -Wall -O2 -g aio.cpp -o aio -laio"

This will compile and link succesfully, so whats the trick:

The trick here is to put the library AFTER the module you are compiling. The problem is a reference thing. The linker resolves references in order, so when the library is BEFORE the module being compiled, the linker gets confused and does not think that any of the functions in the library are needed. By putting the library AFTER the module, the references to the library in the module are resolved by the linker.

Colours of Southern India

 **********************************************************************************

Disclaimer: This blog shares personal travel experiences and tips for general informational use. Travel conditions, prices, and regulations may change, and I do not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of all content. I am not responsible for any issues, losses, or inconveniences arising from reliance on this information.

**********************************************************************************

       In southern India, a few kilometers from Tiruchirapalli (Trichi ), a vast span of land, dedicated to hindu dharma where rituals dated back to 12^th century AD or even before, are practiced with unrelenting devotion, that has been instilled in the minds of the people by the great chola kings.

A temple can be seen soaring above the surrounding countryside, every few miles, covered with emerald green rice fields and vast palm forest. With the Kaveri river supplying resources to support the beings, this place has nothing to demand.

As for the cities like phom-phe, the temples of Angkor wat and the lost forbidden city of china, the city of thanjavur and its nearby local towns have not been forbidden by its dwellers. I first read about thanjavur in the book, Nine Lives by William Darrylmple, he had portrayed the life in such brilliance. It was thrilling to learn the eye opening ceremony of statues and many other customs which remained buried into history books. So I decided to visit this enchanting place.

It was in December, 2010 that I started researching on the city and neighborhood towns. I stumped upon a treasure of 21 temples of the glorious chola period which still stand tall. It is said that the deities in these temples were hidden under white sands on the banks of the river kaveri to avoid there destruction in the hands of mogul invaders. The most popular deit is lord shiva, his lingams in every temple. I had to include all the 21 temples during my 6 days visit, and definitely it was going to be hectic. So to minimize the redundant time in reaching trichi from Mumbai and back to trichi, we booked plane tickets. Google earth comes handy when you are traveling into the unknown. So i took a few printouts of maps.

We reached Mumbai airport by 4 eve, new constructional features were clearly evident, I hadn’t seen Mumbai airport for 4 years. The last time being nagpur trip. We boarded the boeing 707 by 6 and had booked aisle seats. I have some kind of paranoia, and as we were airborne the usual feeling cropped up. For an hour time passed reading glitz and Chennai landing was announced. One hour later was trichi flight, it was an ATR plane, those with the fans attached to there wings and by 11 we finally were in our hotel rooms.

The next day, the  beginning of the visit, I woke up early and and had the traditional ubiquitous breakfast of idli, sambar, pongal, coconut chutney. But wait there was something way ahead of the ubiquity of these dishes prepared in northern states. Firstly the sambar tasted simply brilliant. It had a new mixture of spices, imli being the predominant one. No wonder India’s called the land of spices. Grape juice to end, and then I took a stroll near the hotel.

Everybody here wears lungi, whether you are on a bike or horse or cycle or simply walking its lungi, and then anything extra if needed. Its less crowded in trichy, might be coz its morning time. Sunrises at 6 in trichy and most people do not follow signals as it is a small town but I could be wrong. Everybody is computer literate. The hotel had a person operating some inventory management software on each floor. 80% people know English. They may not be fluent but speak understandable English. you may be lucky to find marathi speaking residents here, trichy and thanjavur have enjoyed the shelter of maratha rulers.

TVS bikes are more comman. TV sundaram Iyengar and sons has its hometown trichy.

I left at 9 for the first temple of the day, gurushilam temple, 12 kms from trichi. On the way we crossed the kaaveri river and went past sri rangam temple. Emrald green rice fields with the backdrop of palm trees and banana plantation decorated the canvas.

Banana is the chief fruit in the diet of trichy and mostly southern India. In southern India rice is the predominant meal. Items like chappati are nowhere to find. A variety of rice preparations can be relished, increasing the rice intake. This can lead to constipation and hence the banana diet as supplementary. Its like having paan after lunch or dinner, and infact u will find banana’s at any grocery shop and even paanvalas. It is also, coz of the heavy rice intake, people have a protruding belly.  

Every temple has an entry fee, and if you are traveling by car then a necessary parking ticket. Gurushilam temple is decorated completely with flower patterns carved on granite base. Huge pillars support the temple top, fortunately I met a senior citizen who recognized I was marashtrian and shared few details and history of temples near trichy.

On the way, there were hoardings of some tamil superstar turned politician. We reached Sri Rangam by 12. the person I met had described Sri Rangam as “The Temple” of south India. And it surely makes up for the expectation. It’s the biggest temple in India. It has a rectangular wall perimeter surrounding the main dome or Gabhara which is complete gold. Four huge gates called Gopuras welcome devotees from four directions NSEW. The largest and tallest being the Raj Gopuram on the Southern Gate. The ceiling is supported by huge pillars soaring 40 feet. The ceiling and the pillars and almost everything is made of beautifully carved granite, one of the toughest stones. Pillars have granite idols of men and women in welcome posture of “Nmaskar”. Sri Rangam is the abode of Lord Vishnu, and the temples ownership has been passed from Vishnu-brahma-shiva-dasharatha-rama-vibhishana.

One set of people wore red clothing and the other black. The Red ones were followers of Vishnu while the black ones, ayyappa of the Sabarimalla Shrine. These are the two sects in southern India. It took an hour to explore the temple and yet I had seen only 25 % of it.

The temples of south India have not enjoyed much tourist patronage. The british rulers preferred the mogul architecture as it was close to their style, and hence admired it. The temples have been lost for 300 yrs in thick palm jungles. Although local inhabitants carried on the rituals, these temples were not open to the outside world for many years.

We had lunch by 1 pm in a typical southy restaurant. The only menu was rice plate, with a variety of vegetable and pulse preparations to eat, with. Meal was served on a banana leaf, no plates.

I went to the rokfort temple which is situated on a huge rock or hill which resembles the lingam of shiva. On top, is the ganesh temple. The view above is mesmerizing, a 360 degree panoramic splendor. The day started and ended with ganesh temples.

On striking feature of these temples, every temple has a shiva temple as its main deity and then the devgraha of the god to whom the temple is dedicated. The entrance of  dome is covered with gold decorations  and gold plated statues. This is a good sign, as it brings into memory the golden age India  enjoyed once.

Finding good vegetarian hotels is a problem in trichy, especially if your staying on the outskirts. And if you get one there’s no guarantee that they will serve the thali type meal.

So I had to satisfy with the same junk items we usually “relish” in cities.

On 3^rd, I visited the Brihadeeshwara temple In thanjavur. The trichi thanjavur highway is 4 lane and our taxi zoomed at average 80 kph. Brihadeeshwar is the largest temple projects conducted by rajraja chola in 1000AD and completed in 1110AD. Its made of 100% granite and took 3 generations of the chola empire to complete. The top gopur is made from a single granite slab weighing more than 50 tons. The thanjavur Chola descendent lives in thanjavur palace. The myths and secrets passed on from generation to generation. It is said that the slab was brought to its place on top of the temple using a ramp, 8 kms to the west, behind the temple and having a gentle 6 degree slope. The temple is declared as UNESCO heritage site. Trained elephants welcome tourist at some temples. These are trained to give ashirwad to people who drop some money in their trunk.

Tamil nadu is the only state where the NavGraha’s have dedicated temples. Elsewhere Navgraha temple is included in the threshold of some other deity. These are spread over a 80 km radius with there  centre being Kumbakonam. So my 3^rd and 4^th went visiting the navgraha temple. The architecture is no different than other thnajavur or trich temples, and it can become quite boring unless you have made it customary or ritualistic to visit all the navgraha’s. it was forecasted that unseasonal rains would interrupt my visit to Nagapattinam, the tsunami affected caost. However I managed poompuhar, another beach 20 kms from Nagapattinam. It has been dilapidated since the tsunami with sparse population.

Swami malai is an important town in the history of chola period. It is famous for its bronze casting workshops. I knew Mr.Srikanda Stpathy (courtesy :- Nine Lives) and his workshop in Swami Malai. When I entered his workshop he was sitting in a brightly sunlit hall with few employees giving finishing touches to an idol wax model. The idol was in its first stage. I insisted if he could guide us through the procedure of idol making and he was kind enough to do so. The statues are made of five metal Copper, Iron, Gold, silver and bronze. Out of the five gold and silver are provided b the ordering party. The first stage is to create a wax model of the statue. Then it is covered with clay from the sacred Kaaveri River. The next stage is letting the clay dry creating a tough mould. The wax is melted by heating the mould and removed, giving a hollow mould. Then comes the hot metal casting, where the molten metal is poured into the mould giving the idol. Finishing touches are given by Mr. Stpathy and his employees. The largest idol manufactured by his workshop weighed 3 tons. The idols are solid and not hollow. This procedure of idol making has not changed since 2000 years. He is afraid, however, that this art form may diminish due to lack of interest, and urgent and quicker methods available such as plaster of paris moulds. His is the 23^rd generation of bronze casters and he hopes even his children will follow suite.

40 kms from Kumbakonam, in Gangaikondan Cholapuram is an architectural splendor, but quite a copy of the temple at thanjavur. It is also called the Brihadeeshwara temple and its construction conducted by Rajendra Cholan, son of Rajraja Chola. Its contruction started around the same time as the thanjavur temple . Green lawns are maintained in the temple campus, providing much green background. The off-white granite Nandi is the only difference from the black rock nandi of the thanjavur temple.

The name GangaiKondam is a sobriquet of rajendra chola, since he extended the empire upto the banks of river ganga.

In thanjavur temples traditional musicians play the enchanting ragas in front of deities. They are paid by the temple trust. Most common instruments being the veena, shehnai, and the Mrudangam. There syllables echo throughout the temple walls and produce an enlightening effect on body and soul. Some 50 kms from Kumbakonam is the Abhirami Mata temple. Its famous for couple coming specially on their 61^st marriage anniversary. A procession of such couples is carried with the traditional music providing the background score.

I returned to trichy on 5^th to experience some city life. The city centre is near the rockfort temple, with buzzing night market place and sweet shops. Mobile networks are the sturdiest in the country here. Regular repeater towers appear on the way.