Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu (Feb 4-6)

Well getting to India itself turned out to be an adventure! We bought a couple of tickets on Air India Express over the internet a couple of days before the flight. So it turned out they thought it was kind of suspicious that someone from Canada would be buying flights from Kuala Lumpur to Trichy in India so they sent some email asking for a scanned copy of the credit card. Well of course since we don't see the internet everyday, we dutifully showed up at the airport only to be told our ticket had been cancelled!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to show up at an airport and say...hey we could go anywhere today where should we go? Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. That's what it was like. Since we had no hotels or anything booked we could choose anything! Luckily there was a flight to Chennai in an hour that still had seats available so off we went and on the flight read our Lonely Planet guide for India to decide what to do once we got there.

There didn't seem to be a lot about Chennai that really stood out so instead we headed straight from the airport to a small town on the coast 1.5 hrs to the south...called Mamallapuram. We got there in cab which looked like it was out of the 1950's and got a sampling of the crazy driving and crowds so typical of India on the way out of the big town.

At about 15,000 people Mamallapuram is pretty small by Indian standards....perhaps a good place for us to get our feet wet. There's a nice wide and long (2-3km) beach here, crowded with fishing boats (not western sunbathers). Nets and garbage are everywhere with a good dose of cows, dogs and goats wandering around too.... Here is a view looking down the beach...sorry the fishing boats aren't too clear but if you 'click' on the picture you'll get the bigger version which might give a better view).

Here we have a photo of Lori, having her Muesli, fruit and yogurt in a place by the beach. (You can see how excited she is in having yet another photo).



The main draw of this place is 7th century Hindu temples carved out of huge blocks of granite. One of them is built on a point out into the ocean and it's towers significantly broken down as the ocean was beginning to lap around it. So a few decades ago the gov't built a breakwater to protect it. Then 4 yrs ago the Tsunami washed a whole pile of sand away and it was discovered there was a lot more around than people had known.



This is also the case for another set of granite temples from the 7th c, carved out of large hill/boulder of granite...the 5 Rathas (or chariots). These are in really good shape because somehow they had been covered in sand and forgotten about for who knows how long, until the Tsunami revealed their presence....One of the 5 Ratha's below:




There are also some other temples/shrines carved out of the granite rock further inland...these had always been known.

While touring the temples, this monkey came up and sat beside us and we were told he was interested in our bottle of water. So we drank it down and then handed the rest over to him and he quickly grabbed it in his hands and started to quaff it back. Amazing to have a monkey literally sitting patiently right beside you!


The town has a couple of blocks which are backpacker havens (cafes, small guesthouses, travel agencies, etc) and the rest is pretty grubby looking compared to what we've been used to in SE Asia. Garbage everywhere, garbage being burned along city streets, cows wandering, beggars, the odd Sadhu (holy man) wandering around 1/2 naked, beggars, and people harassing you to no end to buy trinkets. After a few hours you feel like you need to retreat to your hotel room to recover. Lori is finding the garbagi-ness of everything and the begging a bit tough. Here we have the view looking down the street from our hotel (with Holy Cow, helping himself to the ample supply of garbage)...Note...not all the streets are this bad!




Well, we'll have to see how this is going to go for us....and we haven't even hit a big city or tried to navigate any form of bus/train adventures yet.

This is India.

PS, I should also add that Lori is a big hit with the Indian boys. They keep asking if they can have their picture taken with her....so she is getting a taste of what it might feel like to be a star!