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The small suburban town of THRIPUNITRA,12km southeast of Ernakulam, is worth a visit for its dilapidated colonial-style Hill Palace (Tues-Sun 9am-12.30pm & 2-4.30pm), now an eclectic museum a short auto-rickshaw ride from the busy bus stand. The royal family of Cochin ("Honor is our family treasure") at one time maintained around forty palaces. This one was confiscated by the state government after Independence, and has slipped into dusty decline over the past decade. One of the museum's finest exhibits is an early-seventeenth-century wooden mandapa removed from a temple in Pathanamthitta, featuring excellent carvings of the coronation of the monkey king Sugriva and other themes from the Ramayana. Of interest too are the silver filigree jewel boxes, gold and silver ornaments, and ritual objects associated with grand ceremonies. The epigraphy gallery contains an eighth-century Jewish Torah, and Keralan stone and copperplate inscriptions. Sculpture, ornaments and weapons in the bronze gallery include a kingini katti knife, whose decorative bells belie the fact that it was used for beheading, and a body-shaped cage in which condemned prisoners would be hanged while birds pecked them to death.
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Providing the place isn't crowded with noisy school groups here to see the nearby deer park, the garden behind the palace is a peaceful spot to picnic beneath the cashew trees. Performances of theatre, classical music and dance, including consecutive all-night Kathakali performances, are held over a period of several days during the annual festival (Oct/Nov) at the Shri Purnatrayisa temple,on the way to the palace. Inside the temple compound, both in the morning and at night, massed drum orchestras perform chenda melam in procession with fifteen caparisoned elephants. At night, the outside walls of the sanctuary are covered with thousands of tiny oil lamps. Although the temple is normally closed to non-Hindus, admittance to appropriately dressed visitors is usually allowed at this time. |
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