Tiruvannamalai

Tiruvannamalai exists because of its hill. Arunachala, 814 metres of reddish granite, is the fire element among the five Pancha Bhoota Sthalams, and the legend has Shiva appearing here as an infinite column of light to settle an argument between Brahma and Vishnu. The Annamalaiyar Temple below covers about ten hectares, among the largest in India, with a 66-metre eastern rajagopuram raised under Krishnadevaraya in the sixteenth century, a thousand-pillar hall, and tanks where pilgrims bathe before the long walk.

That walk is girivalam: fourteen kilometres of road circling the hill anticlockwise, past eight lingams marking the directions, done barefoot through the night of every full moon by lakhs of people and by a steady trickle of walkers on any other evening. The city's other stream is meditative. Ramana Maharshi arrived here as a boy of sixteen in 1896 and never left; his ashram at the foot of the hill still holds silent sittings, and the climb above it to Virupaksha Cave and Skandashram, where he lived for years, takes about forty minutes and gives the best view of the temple's gopurams laid out across the plain.

At Karthigai Deepam, in November or December, a cauldron of ghee is lit on the summit and burns for days, visible for many kilometres.