|
|
After my stay in Chennai, I travelled further south for a couple of days to Mahabalipuram, a small fishing village by the side of the Indian Ocean. Mahabalipuram is the home to some amazing carvings from the 7th and 8th centuries when it was the port city of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas and has been designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. I'm afraid that once again, I got rather bewildered by the accompanying stories of the “gods”, their various forms and their vehicles or chariots as represented in the carvings but they were certainly impressive as pieces of art made with limited tools in an age so long ago. Often the very large and intricate carvings had been completed from a single piece of rock. A large rock which was seemingly ready to tip over (known as Krishna's Butterball) had also been incorporated into the folklore. I struck lucky when booking accommodation in Mahabs (as it is known) through AirBnB – finding a wonderful host in Saravanan at the Blue Moon Guest House (bluemoonindia.wixsite.com/bluemoonmamallapuram/home) (appropriately named for a fan of Manchester City FC!!) – just a few steps from the beach. If you’re ever in the area, I can certainly recommend staying with Saravanan (pictured above with me and an elephant!) – him and his nephew Akash looked after me very well. I enjoyed their simply cooked evening meals of freshly caught white snapper from the nearby ocean; the roof terrace with views towards the sea was a lovely place to relax and I was grateful that Saravanan was able to take me to visit the various carvings located around the town – as ever on the back of a motorbike – and arrange an English speaking guide to give me a small hope of making sense of what I was looking at! I also saw my first rain for seven weeks whilst in Mahabalipuram as Cyclone Nada made landfall whilst I was in town. Thankfully, its strength was weakening by the time it arrived although it still rained torrentially for about 10 hours non-stop! Some of the roads were quite heavily flooded by the time I was driven back to Chennai – although I was told that this was nothing compared to the floods of a year ago which caused severe damage (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-34830452) and loss of life. Those of you following the England cricket team's current tour of India will also have seen that another cyclonic storm hit the area a few days ago, threatening whether the match in Chennai could go ahead for a while. If the rest of the tour is anything to go by, a better result may have been obtained if the match had had to be cancelled!
By the time I arrived back in Chennai, it was almost my last day in India, and time to return to Nagpur to bid a fond farewell to my friends at Slum Soccer before leaving for the UK.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJonathan. Chartered Accountant from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Spending a couple of months as an AfID volunteer working with Slum Soccer in Nagpur, India. Saved by grace through faith to do good works. ArchivesCategories |