Transition from Chennai.
The tournament was over and we said farewell to the rest of Team Canada on Sunday night. They were flying back to Canada starting in the wee hours of Monday morning. The L-Cs headed in the opposite direction onto phase two of our Indian adventure as we moved south out of Chennai towards the bottom of India.
The travel magazines and other literature say that this is the land of temples and beaches. We were ready for both. We met with our driver (Perumal) at 8 am and headed on the way. The first 1.5 hours were more of Chennai traffic; congested, noisy and the typical slow traffic as we moved thru the city. If you picture the 401 or 417 full of bikes, scooters, cars and tuktuks and packed into 2 lanes and all honking their horn you are close to the chaos and noise and smell.
We gradually reached the shore road called the ECR. This is a 1.5 lane toll road which runs along the Bay of Bengal and as the traffic thinned out we began to get a taste of rural India. The first thing is more cows and goats and open fields.
This area of India is a real mixture of savannah, dry tropical forest, sand dunes and rice paddies where there is water for irrigation. In the trees along the road are lots of small villages. Closest to the coast were the fishing villages. The homes are either cement (new government-built to replace the homes lost during the tsunami) or thatched. The thatched roofs are made of coconut palm fronds (leaves) and are very water tight. It is also an efficient use of the old leaves from the trees.
We were in a nice car; a Toyota van. The other forms of transportation were similar to Chennai. Lots of scooters and some tuk tuks and rural buses that own the road because they and the trucks are the biggest vehicles on the road!
It took about 2 hours to get ~40km to Mamapuram where we were headed to see the rock carvings for which this area is famous. This is a 1400 year old (~ 700AD) UNESCO world heritage site so it has a big reputation. First we saw the tiger caves, then the ‘ganges’ rock carving (Arjuna’s Penance & other reliefs) and then the Pancha Pandava Rathas and the Shore Temple. These are spectacular. For any of you who have tried to cut granite (like Jack and Sam who gave up making a simple straight line cut with a power diamond bladed rock saw) this is an impressive chisel job.

The detail in Arjuna’s Penance carving is beautiful. For Jack this was the highlight of the day and perhaps the trip. In the picture below you can see the Hindu deities, the animals and the scenes from Indian life. The middle has a cut in the rock that we are told is full of falling water in the wet season. It was dry today and there is a family of cobra snakes in the cleft. The elephant family is beautiful too and many of the scenes show life from 1400 years ago. Clearly this carving culture was well developed.

The Rathas are fun because they are individual batholiths (the whole carving is done from a single piece of granite) rocks that have been carved into ‘chariots’ which we interpret to be elaborate hand-held carriages that are symbolic of what would be used to carry a king or queen in a royal procession. The Rathas were especially fun because we were there at the same time as a whole group of school children. Like all of the others that we have met so far, these girls (and a few boys) were eager to test out their knowledge of English, and said “hello” and “how are you?” many, many times. Conversation got a little difficult after that because they didn’t know much more English and we didn’t know any Hindi, but we got along with gestures and random words that they knew. Shaking hands and waving was a big thing. I think Alex, Sam & Jan shook hands with about 15 girls each by the end of it, and they kept coming back to say hi one more time. Some of the younger ones especially liked Sam’s arm-henna that she had done in Chennai on our last day there.


The day just got better since we were able to see the modern day rock carvers at work and to buy some of their simple designs. Jack liked the animals and the sun etc rather than the elaborate deities and Shivas that were the focus of many of the carvings. It takes about 1.5 hours to make a simple pendant; days for bigger creations.
To cap off a great day we arrived at our ‘hotel’ which turned out to be a 5 star waterfront resort complete with multiple pools. There is a picture below here and Sam swam a couple of lengths of the ~150m pool that comes complete with fountains and bridges and a waterfall; a wonderful way to cool off. The ocean was right out front too and the waves were crashing on the shore so Jack headed for the beach. Unfortunately the shore is still in rough shape from the Tsunami and there is a very strong rip current that wanted to wash swimmers back to Chennai. It was still great to jump into the waves and cool off in the 38C heat.
As you can see from the description we loved the change from Chennai and we are looking forward to the rest of our tour across southern India.