Mamallapuram
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2008
1
18
24
Trip End
Feb 01, 2009
Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
It is a cool, laid back little town, surrounding a whole bunch of boulders which hold religous significance. Our guesthouse was immaculate - thank you Lord - with a TV, and even hot water. However, for both of these things to work, electricity was needed, and as I've already hinted, the weather was already not being kind to us, and that was when Cyclone Nisha came along, and the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board thought it best if they turn the power off. For three days. Perhaps I exaggerate a little, we had brief interludes of power, and managed to grab one hot shower whilst we were there, and in fact just before we left, things had returned to normal as Nisha moved on, but reading and generally moving around by candle light after the batteries ran out in the torch was far from ideal.
One restauarant had a generator, and so they were the only people with light on the evenings and as a result their place was very busy indeed! The culinary offerings of Mamallapuram are kind of Goa-esque, various forms of seafood along with the usual interpratations of Western dishes and of course being in South India, a couple of 'meals' places. We generally plumped for the latter, as once you get used to paying 60p for lunch, its a hard habit to break, and spicy food is addictive, anything else just begins to seem bland by comparison.
Our intention was to stay for a couple of days, and so we set off to show ourselves the sights. The beach was pretty diserted, unsurprising given the weather, as we walked along to see the pretty Shore Temple. A fair name given it is a temple on the shore, but the 500R's ticket price was very steep for what it was, that bloody foreigner rate again. I'm sure if Britain imposed a different rate for foreigners, there would be accusation of xenophobia or racism, but there you go, perhaps we should let them off as they are a 'developing country'.
More interesting were the aforementioned boulders, some of which were carved out into temples, others with bas reliefs of various religious scened carved into them. Our first visit there, a young lad of about 13 tagged himself along with us, and he decided to show us around, for free! His English was excellent, and he said he liked to do it, as it is a way to help him improve his English. It transpired he was studying rock carving, a trade that Mamallapuram is famed for, and was in his third year. After our little tour he took us to his house - well a room really - where his mother was sleeping and he made her get up so we could sit down, which was a little awkward, especially as she didn't speak English and so my attempts to make ammends seemed to go unheard. As the boy went off to get his sketchings, she, through the power of hands and head, explained she had a headache which is why she was sleeping. So I gave her some paracetamol I had in my bag, and international relations were restored once more. Anyway, lo and behold there happened to be a shop next door which sold his and his fathers carving - the true reason for his keenness to show us around was now apparant - but given he had made us tea and gone to get cookies as well, the least we could do was have a look around.
I'm not actually sure whether he was a carving student in his third year at all, as we were to hear that story told a couple of times more, and besides which, the carvings were much the same as every other shop. I did fall in love with a rather cool lump of an Elephant, weighing about 6 kilos, not the most appropriate thing to like when your whole existence has to fit in a backpack, but they would not meet my price, which I had purposely made almost insultingly low, on the assumption they wouldn't accept, but that if they did, the bargain would be worth the aggrevation of either carrying or posting the thing home. I was to later get a guy to agree to the same price for an even better piece - he wanted 8000R's, I got it for 3,000 - so the aggrevation was to come, and there was no post office in Mammalapuram, so I had to carry the thing all the way to Kolkata.
Where was I, oh yes, the boulders. We learned of serious flooding in Chennai - the subway to the airprt was 3' under water - and so even though we were without power, we decided we may as well just stay in Mamallapuram and go to the airport from there, and therefore had an extra day on our hands, so we decided to explore the boulders on our own. Our boy from the day before had actually neglected to show us a fair bit of it, and its a fun and interesting place to have a mooch about in. It was pretty much right in the heart of the things, however, that the heavens opened. We saught shelter in one of the temples for a while, but rather foolishly, Sumi trusted my judgement when I said that it had eased and we should probably get out of the place or else be stuck there all day. It hadn't in fact, something I only realised when exposed to its full force, and yet again, we got a drenching.
The paths became rivers that we had to wade through, and when I eventually found another temple to shelter in - we'd also walked the wrong way, going deeper into the complex rather than away from it - it had no roof! It was to the amusement of the local shopkeepers that we trudged back to the guesthouse in our 'drowned rat' state when we eventually found our way out.
I'm a little nervous about flying. Well in fact I'm always nervous about flying, but what with the weather and all that, my fear is perhaps a little more rational. The winds have died down, so I'm hopeful we'll make it! Its sad to think this our last time in South India, as we're off to the North again, to Kolkata, a two hour flight up the coast, which will also round up our India trip, as its the jumping off point to get to South East Asia. The monsoon season is long over there at least, so maybe we'll get some sunshine back!
