My trip to Tanjore – Part 1

This January (2012) for a co-workers wedding I visited Thanjavur (Tanjore) along with my good friend E.Ravi.  We travelled from Chennai to Thanjavur by Rock Fort Express night train leaving Chennai Egmore at 22:30 and reaching Thanjavur the next day morning around 6:30.

Since we had booked for this nearly 70 days back we could get berths in First AC, which was comfortable with wide berths and clean toilets – there were indicators in the coupe for occupancy of toilets (seen below).

The coupe even had a sign listing of items and services provided in First AC Coaches (seen below).

It is always fun to get down when the train does an unscheduled stop for a few minutes in some tiny railway station or fields, like this one in Alakkudi.

I even got a chance to take this photo during the Alakkudi stop in front of a rice field (Thanjavur is called the Rice granary of Tamil Nadu).

This is the first part of my series on my visit to Tanjore in January 2012 – Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4. In 2016, I visited Tanjore again and wrote about that trip here.