The southern road from Gangai Konda Cholapuram crosses the Kollidam river at a place called Anaikarai. The bridge here is not actually a bridge but is a dam - referred as Keelanai or the Lower Anaicut. Built by the legendary Sir Arthur Cotton - Keelanai is the last of the dams along the Kollidam/Cauvery river basin area. After here, the river runs freely till it reaches the sea.
The challenges of building a dam in the plains - where the land does not support a large reservoir of water naturally can be seen here. The Lower Anaicut - which is suppose to be a replica of the Kallanai or the Upper Anaicut, lies almost at the ground level with tall, narrow structure which can support only one lane of traffic. Since there was water coming into the dam there were crowds along watching the water.
The northern road along the Kollidam hugs the river more closely but is bad. The southern road is a state highway which goes directly into Kumbakonam and has a bypass which goes close to the river bunds all along and the road goes into Trichy almost in parallel to the river and through Kallanai. This is the road we chose to follow. The road is a narrow one-lane road with moderate traffic but is usually pleasant to drive on.
As we negotiated the traffic in the Lower Anaicut - which is built across a narrow island, it was close to noon and we still wanted to reach Trichy for the lunch. Hence the number of breaks we can take need to be smaller.
The road from Kudanthai to Trichy is about 100Kms and passes a lot of places of significant temples and the day was Aadi Ammavasai and so there were crowds in all the temple towns.
The river (and the road) travels pretty much in a straight line from Trichy till the Lower Anaicut area where it fans out into multiple branches creating the river basin. I've traversed this interesting landscape multiple times - mostly in mofussil buses and in car. It still amazes me to see the fertility of the land when the river is in spate.
The road from Lower Anaicut to Trichy is one of the thickly populated areas in the state and is full of villages, temples and people. Crossing the Thirupananthal Aadheenam, the road goes till Kumbakonam and the bypass climbs north to traverse between the Kollidam and Cauvery on both sides. In addition a numerous canals and tributaries flow around and the entire area looks to be in the middle of a water park.
The next major town along the way is Thiruvaiyaaru and the iconic Iyarappar temple. Reaching there, I was thinking of taking the road across the river again to Thirumaanur to go to the Thirumazhapadi temple on the northern bank of the river. The vista point across the temple has a beautiful view of the Kollidam river bending across.
In the interest of time - and the fact that the complete traffic breakdown of Thiruvaiyaaru town due to the crowds in the temple area for the ammavasai (New moon) festival had me keep to the original plan.
That decision was soon tested as the entire single lane traffic ground to a halt once we crossed the town due to an accident. The river is on one side and the village on the other with two lanes of traffic leaving no space to negotiate any alternate road. It took a while for someone to find the village bus stop which had a small area for stopping buses and then the drive became agonizingly slow with the stop and go traffic along that one lane.
We took another break at a river bund to watch the river and a few guys who were frolicking there along with a few with a fishing rod. We decided not to get into the water as it looked ferocious and really huge.
The weather was getting better with a lot of clouds and it started drizzling as the Grand Upper Anaicut and so the drive was getting better.
The Grand Anaicut was full with water and hence the crowd was huge as well. The road itself takes you into the dam and so there is no option to avoid the traffic here. The dam was brimming with water (the dam was opened on Aug 18) and crowd.
As in the lower anaicut, the traffic on the dam was heavy and had to be negotiated slow. As the drive along was coming to an end, we were trying to decide whether to go to Srirangam or continue with the drive to Srivilliputhur. Decided to go visit Andal and skip Raja mannar for the time being.
The challenges of building a dam in the plains - where the land does not support a large reservoir of water naturally can be seen here. The Lower Anaicut - which is suppose to be a replica of the Kallanai or the Upper Anaicut, lies almost at the ground level with tall, narrow structure which can support only one lane of traffic. Since there was water coming into the dam there were crowds along watching the water.
The northern road along the Kollidam hugs the river more closely but is bad. The southern road is a state highway which goes directly into Kumbakonam and has a bypass which goes close to the river bunds all along and the road goes into Trichy almost in parallel to the river and through Kallanai. This is the road we chose to follow. The road is a narrow one-lane road with moderate traffic but is usually pleasant to drive on.
As we negotiated the traffic in the Lower Anaicut - which is built across a narrow island, it was close to noon and we still wanted to reach Trichy for the lunch. Hence the number of breaks we can take need to be smaller.
The river (and the road) travels pretty much in a straight line from Trichy till the Lower Anaicut area where it fans out into multiple branches creating the river basin. I've traversed this interesting landscape multiple times - mostly in mofussil buses and in car. It still amazes me to see the fertility of the land when the river is in spate.
The road from Lower Anaicut to Trichy is one of the thickly populated areas in the state and is full of villages, temples and people. Crossing the Thirupananthal Aadheenam, the road goes till Kumbakonam and the bypass climbs north to traverse between the Kollidam and Cauvery on both sides. In addition a numerous canals and tributaries flow around and the entire area looks to be in the middle of a water park.
In the interest of time - and the fact that the complete traffic breakdown of Thiruvaiyaaru town due to the crowds in the temple area for the ammavasai (New moon) festival had me keep to the original plan.
The weather was getting better with a lot of clouds and it started drizzling as the Grand Upper Anaicut and so the drive was getting better.
The Grand Anaicut was full with water and hence the crowd was huge as well. The road itself takes you into the dam and so there is no option to avoid the traffic here. The dam was brimming with water (the dam was opened on Aug 18) and crowd.
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