The slowly eroding Shore Temple
Howard and I finally boarded the bus south from Chennai to the temple beach town of Mamallapuram (previously known as Mahabalipuram, another bloody name change in a land that is confusing enough without dithering about what to call things). Mamallapuram is best known for its rock temples and pretty little beach, but these days it's as popular for its travellers' scene as anything else.
The bus was incredibly packed. I had a little kid sitting on my feet (and eventually falling asleep there) while I hung onto a handrail for dear life. Luckily it was a short one-and-a-half hour journey, and the clean sea breeze of Mamallapuram was heaven as we stumbled out of the bus. We found ourselves a nice cheap hotel, and sauntered off to the World Heritage Shore Temple on the beach.
The carvings of Arjuna's Penance
It's another quite beautiful example of intricate rock carving, and even though most of the detail has been sandblasted away by the coastal weather, it manages to retain an air of mystery, even when the coach loads of Indian tourists are scrambling over the walls and picnicking under the signs declaring, 'It is forbidden to bring eatables into this site.' Dating from the Pallava period of the late seventh century, it's a highly photogenic place, as long as you don't take any shots looking south down the beach, where a huge nuclear power station churns out goodness knows what into the Bay of Bengal. Not surprisingly I didn't swim in Mamallapuram, lest I be bitten by a gently glowing three-headed tuna with a PhD in Astrophysics.
The view inland from Mamallapuram
Tucked away behind the town, away from the beach, is the most wonderful collection of rock-hewn caves and stand-alone temples. Palm trees soar from cracks in the huge boulders strewn around the area, and wandering round in the blistering heat, you come across tiny, inviting shrines with their cool interiors, huge spires of ancient places of worship, and mounds of steps cut into the rock. It's quite beautiful, a wonderful example of Hindu rock art, and uniquely different to the temples in Konark and Hyderabad; they also have a different flavour to the stunning rock temples of Ellora, though without a doubt Ellora has the edge.
The Siva Temple is just one of Mamallapuram's many rock temples
But Mamallapuram must have been designed for relaxation. Beer was relatively expensive, but still affordable: take Marco Polo Beer, at 8.75 per cent one of the strongest available in India, which came complete with the warning 'Liquor ruins country, family, life' emblazoned on the label1. The seafood was glorious and some of the safest in India, having been irradiated even before it was caught. And on returning to our hotel at some god-awful hour, we came across a huge family gathering – argument or party, we couldn't tell which – and ended up in conversation with this astoundingly stoned old Indian, whose eyes bled red and whose sentences weren't remotely in the right order. It would have freaked me out if I hadn't been struggling through a haze of country, family and life myself, and that night, drifting off to the sounds of Indian insanity down the corridor, I thought to myself once again, 'This is India!'
And with the Rose Garden Restaurant offering a Breake Fast of Scrumbled Egg on bread, of which you could have one slice, two silces or three sileces, I felt right at home in sunny Mamallapuram.
1 Surprisingly, it didn't say, 'Liquor ruins country, family, life and the whole of the next day.' It should have done.
