Thursday 29 November 2007

Trichur & Elephant


Trichur is a district in Kerala,India.As I said earlier Kerala has 700 elephants in captivity. Most of them are tuskers. Unlike the African elephants, Asian elephants has tusks only in male.
In Trichur there are 250 elephants in captivity and they are a part of the day to day life. People of Trichur has a unique tradition of appreciating the beauty of elephants. It was prestigious to keep an elephant. Many people still keep elephants. They are used for religious ceremonies in and around the temples. Only a few elephants work at timber yards.
Trichur has roughly 500 temples around. Each temple has 2 - 3 festivals in a year. There would be 1 / 3 / 7 / 15 / 45 / 75 / 105 decorated elephants at these temple festivals.Every day from November to March there would be a number of temple festivals around.Many temples also keep elephants. Most of them are donated by devotees. Guruvayoor temple (1 hour drive from Trichur) has 57 elephants. All of them donated by devotees.In Trichur Venkitadri family makes ornaments for elephants for three generations.They make gold plated caparisons, umbrellas, Alavattom, Venchamaram, necklace etc. They distribute 150 elephants with ornaments for temple festivals.Will collect and write more on thrichur,its my place....land of elephant lovers !We have the most famous festival called "POORAM"where elephants are having a high importance...will write later.

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