Monday
Today didn’t start out so well. The production van was supposed to be at the hotel at 9am. At 9:15 I called Parthi and he said it was running late and would be here at 9:30. At 10 I called again. He said the driver went to the wrong hotel. At 10:24, when I called again, I asked if we should just hire cars. He said yes and that he didn’t know where the driver was. Kinda typical!
After getting the cars sorted out we headed south to Mahabalipuram. It is a large area with various shrines and temples dating back over 1400 years.
Our first stop was Tiger Cave Rock. It had some shrines carved out of gigantic, single rocks.
We then continued down the road to a larger temple complex. The temples and shrines were spread out over many acres.
The first thing we saw was this crazy balanced rock.
We then went to another temple/shrine carved out of solid rock. It had some great bas relief sculpture in it.
We then headed to another part of the complex where there was this carved from solid rock too.
We then headed down to the Shore Temple.
We had a really good guide, Loganathan. Here’s a pic of us with him.
On the way back Bruce, Kan and I stopped at a local restaurant for some authentic food, not the hotel good we’ve been eating so far. It was pretty cool….only had about six table. They laid down trimmed bananas leaves which served as our plates. We had rice, a few chutneys, pickled lemon, some different chicken curries, a fish curry, a type of vegetable soup and I ended with rice and kurd (yoghurt). It was really good. Our driver, Madhan, ate with us. For all four the bill came to only Rs415, about $9.
From there we just headed back to the hotel to relax a bit. It was super hot today and kinda wore us out. Once back the concierge told us the driver this morning showed up at 11:30….two hours late and an hour after we had left! To top it off, he came back around 7pm….like that would make up for it!
Found out that the crates are in now so tomorrow we’ll be heading in to do some work…finally!