Pilgrimage Tour to South India:- This tour was conducted by Shikhar Travels for our FTO from London, all the delegates were from USA and other areas, there were total of 16 members in which two members were Priests (Fathers).
The main purpose of this group was to come to India to do volunteer and social work at the Merry House (Mother Teresa house) Kolkata. The also organize an english mass at all the churches they visited.
Tour detail start and endup with Kolkata.
1) Chennai
2) Madurai
3) Tanjore
4) Velankanni
5) Pondicherry
6) Kolkata
The tour starts from Chennai where we stayed for two nights in Chennai and visited St. Thomas Cathedral Church. They conducted an English mass at the church for the members of the group and also for the local people. It was a fun experience as the locals enjoyed interacting with the members of our group after the mass.
Thomas Cathedral Church
Then later we visited the Church with our local guide are proceed to see longest beach in Chennai called Marina Beach.
Madurai was our next destination for sightseeing, here we visited the famous Meenakshi Temple and enjoyed some local shopping. We also visited the local church.
We then proceeded to Tanjore where we spent .Overnight in Tanjore and next day Tanjore sightseeing. We visited a very old church of Tanjore called Schwartz Church for English mass and also explored the church.
We saw the famous Brihadeeswara Temple, is known as Rajarajesvaram, which is temple of Hinduism.
Next we proceed to very old and small village of Tamil Nadu Velankanni it lies on the Coromandel coast of bay of Bengal.
This village is very small, clean and the famous Church is The town is home to one of the most visited Roman Catholic Latin Rite shrines called the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health. our group wants to do english mass in this Church.
In this church on daily basis local people and father do mass in Telugu language not in English. The priest of our group and I met the authority of the church and explained to them that we are a Pilgrimage group from USA and wanted to do social services and mass in all church of Tamil Nadu and visit the Merry House.
Yes they gave us permission to conduct the English mass at so an so time.
Next we proceeded to Pondicherry - Here we visited French colony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, rock beach including the famous Bech road and the local Market.
We finally traveled to Kolkata. This was the last destination of our tour. The group spent 5 days at the Kolkata Merry House (Mother Teresa). Our 5 days program in Kolkata was mainly for social work and to help the poor people and orphanage. People come from all over the world to the Merry House to give self service and to attend the mass with the sisters. Did the group give a mass here as well?
Yes, when all members reached merry house we started our day with a English mass.