Mamallapuram and around

From Tirupati we took a bus to Kanchipuram, and from there to Mamallapuram. The bus took over 3 hours to travel 60km and as it got dark the bus got more and more packed. About a dozen young guys were hanging from the front and back doors, dropping off and running at every stop and start to give their arms a rest. Amazing that no-one got injured or left behind as they jostled for space. The bus diverted due to some religious float thing blocking its usual route, and the potholed mud tracks it took didn't seem to be going the way the driver wanted.



Haggling for the cheapest room at a decent price at 'Ramakrishna' got us a cheap room but after that the owner basically refused to speak to me, which was a bit awkward. After two nights we moved next door to a much friendlier place with less mosquitoes and - a real rarity in India - free WiFi.

Nearby were a bunch of famous sites.'Krishna's butter-ball', looked always on the verge of rolling down-slope but reputedly unmoveable even with a team of elephants. 'Arjuna's Penance' is a massive bas-relief carved from the rock face, telling the story of a hunter named Arjuna who did 12 years penance, nearly got killed by a playful Shiva and finally got an arrow for the effort. An ancient lighthouse and numerous cave temples and carvings rounded out the site.

The Shore temple is a very famous site, but quite disappointing with its small scale and eroded surfaces. The broken phallic symbol is a linga.

Much more impressive, and included on the same ticket, were the Pancha Pandova Rathas. Not temples, as they lack the linga and final touches to become holy sites, and with some of the ground level unfinished. They were all carved whole from top to bottom out of pink granite, with all the finest and most delicate carvings done first, and the project abandoned just before completion due to war.

We rented a scooter and pootled up the road to check out the 'Tiger Cave', 'Crocodile Bank' and 'Dakshinachitra', stopping for coconuts on the way. The Crocodile Bank was good fun, with tons of fresh-water crocodiles lazing on top of each other and a few solitary, silent and elusive salt-water crocodiles living up to their deadly reputation. Dakshinachitra was an outdoor architecture and culture museum of sorts. The highlight was seeing a hand loom in operation, with a true professional taking ages to weave a centimetre of silk.