This was our first day trip out of Chennai. We visited the Yogi Ramsuratkuma Ashram but waited until the following morning to visit the Arunachala temple. It was festival time where fires burn at the top of the sacred mountain and the city was bursting with people visiting the temple. The next morning we learned that heavy rains during the night had flooded the streets at the main temple gate. There were rumors that sewage drains had overflowed so we took our first auto rickshaw ride to a less crowded side gate and joined the festival throngs in the temple.