Another great day in terms of scenery today. Lots of open countryside, and our first glimpses of hills and rocky outcrops.

Much of our route today was on main roads lined with thousands upon thousands of red and black flags. There were also police officers stationed every few hundred metres. Apparently they were expecting a high-ranking member of the local DMK party to be driving though. Unfortunately we eventually turned off the main roads and didn't get to see the motorcade go past.

During a snack stop near a village we met a web developer who was tying up his “pet” bull in a field. He said he had trained in the UK and then come back here to teach others, as well as working on SAP integration projects remotely.

Our lunch stop was samosas once again, at a cafe by the side of the road, but I forgot to take a picture this time.

A lot of the day was spent on main roads which thankfully were relatively quiet. We also had some good stretches on more interesting smaller roads between villages. It was probably during one of these stretches that I managed to pick up three thorns in my front tyre. The punctures we're quite slow, so we got away with pumping the tyre up again and fixing it in the hotel room in the evening.

Coming into Madurai have us our busiest stretches of traffic yet, with multi-lane roads full of buses, cars, motorbikes and mopeds, all jostling for space. Luckily, our route was quite simple and we could concentrate on making our way through the traffic rather than looking down at our map constantly.

Once we'd showered we headed out to check out Madurai’s big temple. We initially visited the wrong temple, but realised pretty quickly and took a tuk tuk over to the main one. The temple complex was large and very active, with processions, drumming, and long queues for those wanting to visit the inner part of the temple. This was quite a contrast to the temples we've visited so far, which have felt more like archaeological sites at times, even though they're still used for active worship. We had to leave our phones at the entrance as no photos or videos are allowed inside the temple grounds. Unfortunately the large towers at the entrances to the temple were covered in wooden scaffolding, so most of the impact of their size and colourful paintwork was lost.