We traveled to the East coast of India next, by train to Chennai and then south along the coast to Mahabalipuram.
The train trip was 7 hours long and fairly unremarkable, though we could actually see out of the windows this time. The journey was a bit like a plane flight in that we were served various bits of food by stewards (all included in the ticket price).
On the 90 minute drive south, in the dark, our driver managed to get more Indian in his driving, doing what I would class as crazy overtakes and randomly having to slam on the brakes. After a long and tiring train ride this was not appreciated by Grumpy Moo, but no-one was killed so it was all OK in the end.
I'd never heard of Mahabalipuram, but it turns out it is a UNESCO world heritage site. Who knew!
As it was bakingly hot and ridiculously humid on the East coast, we opted to do our tour of the monuments and temples early the following morning and basically have a lazy day after the long travel the day before. I did go out for a wander along the coast to see some bits and pieces, and also discovered there was an 'endless raid passes' day for Pokemon, so wandered about doing what raids I could.
I walked along the coast around the Shore Temple. There was a collection of statues broken by the 2004 tsunami that hit the town. It caused a lot of damage to the town, but luckily none to the Shore Temple. It did actually expose some new archaeological finds as when the water receded before the tsunami, the remains of several other temples were seen on the shore, confirming early reports (from Marco Polo no less) that there were 7 temples here rather than just the one that remains.
Further round the shore I came to a proper local Indian beach. Loads of locals all having fun. Ladies in their beautiful saris splashing about in the water.
In my wandering I found what seemed to be a Royal Enfield graveyard. This isn't a bike you see much of in the UK any more, but I've seen quite a lot of them here in very good condition and some Royal Enfield shops too.
Next morning we were out at 6:30 to try to miss the heat (we failed) to see what we could see. First stop, Krishna's Butter Ball. A huge boulder that looks very out of place. Lots of people have tried to move it, including the English who tried an elephant, but it's not shifting. That doesn't mean it doesn't look precarious. There doesn't seem to be any good understanding of how it came to be there. It looks to me like a glacial erratic, but the rest of the landscape is wrong for that!
I did see a very picturesque group of four ladies in their saris at the Butter Ball, and asked if I could take their picture. They readily agreed, and then suddenly everyone wanted in on the act! :)
There were also some kids there using old flattened plastic bottles as a slide and they seemed to be having good fun. I did of course have a go and got a good laugh from everyone.
Butter ball seems like an odd term for it, but just round the corner was a carved cave temple with a deep carved pit outside. Inside the middle cave was Krishna's Lingham (phallus), and Krishna was one of the incarnations of Vishnu who had 1000 mistresses. This pit was used to make butter in, which was then used to anoint the various statues in the area.
We did see some un-finished work, this row of holes were carved to act as a fault line to split the rock. You can see the grand scale of the rock splitting, which was much more difficult in India than the UK. In the UK, for this sort of rock splitting the masons would cut holes, fill them with water, and wait for a cold night to freeze the water. The expansion then splits the rock. In India they don't have the weather to use freezing, so they instead put dried wood in the holes and added water to make the wood expand.
Next up, the Ganesha Ratha. This was carved out of a monolithic lump of bedrock in the 7th century. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it before, the closest is probably the Treasury in Wadi Rum in Jordan, but that isn't free-standing like this.
Another cave temple, again carved out of monolithic bedrock ...
..and then down to see the Descent of the Ganges bas-relief. This enormous carving has one of the few full sized carvings of Elephants in the world, another being at Angkor Watt.
Another cave temple, another bas-relief, yea, you're getting bored with them now aren't you. They were all incredible though, all carved out of bedrock, and around 1300 years old.
In order to blow the amazingness of those structures out of the water we had to drive for at least 5 minutes to another site where there are 5 Rathas and 3 free standing statues (elephant, lion and bull) all carved out of the same single monolithic chunk of bedrock.
Really amazing workmanship.
Finally it was down to have a proper look at the Shore Temple, this one actually built from blocks of stone rather than carved from monolithic bedrock. Still very impressive, and apparently the 2004 tsunami wave completely submerged this temple, but no significant damage was done.
One final thing of note in the town were these decorative patterns drawn in rice flour or chalk outside peoples front doors. This is a traditional warding against ants and/or evil spirits that is still used today. Whether the ants just find the rice flour on the doorstep and eat that instead of exploring into the house or the patterns have significance, I really couldn't say.
And as a last final thing, a Drongo, spotted at the Shore Temple.
The train trip was 7 hours long and fairly unremarkable, though we could actually see out of the windows this time. The journey was a bit like a plane flight in that we were served various bits of food by stewards (all included in the ticket price).
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| Scenery from the train |
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| Chennai train station |
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| Chennai train station |
On the 90 minute drive south, in the dark, our driver managed to get more Indian in his driving, doing what I would class as crazy overtakes and randomly having to slam on the brakes. After a long and tiring train ride this was not appreciated by Grumpy Moo, but no-one was killed so it was all OK in the end.
I'd never heard of Mahabalipuram, but it turns out it is a UNESCO world heritage site. Who knew!
As it was bakingly hot and ridiculously humid on the East coast, we opted to do our tour of the monuments and temples early the following morning and basically have a lazy day after the long travel the day before. I did go out for a wander along the coast to see some bits and pieces, and also discovered there was an 'endless raid passes' day for Pokemon, so wandered about doing what raids I could.
I walked along the coast around the Shore Temple. There was a collection of statues broken by the 2004 tsunami that hit the town. It caused a lot of damage to the town, but luckily none to the Shore Temple. It did actually expose some new archaeological finds as when the water receded before the tsunami, the remains of several other temples were seen on the shore, confirming early reports (from Marco Polo no less) that there were 7 temples here rather than just the one that remains.
 |
| Carvings in the rocks - more and better to come |
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| The Shore Temple |
Further round the shore I came to a proper local Indian beach. Loads of locals all having fun. Ladies in their beautiful saris splashing about in the water.
In my wandering I found what seemed to be a Royal Enfield graveyard. This isn't a bike you see much of in the UK any more, but I've seen quite a lot of them here in very good condition and some Royal Enfield shops too.
 |
| Saw this nice one at the Tea Factory |
Next morning we were out at 6:30 to try to miss the heat (we failed) to see what we could see. First stop, Krishna's Butter Ball. A huge boulder that looks very out of place. Lots of people have tried to move it, including the English who tried an elephant, but it's not shifting. That doesn't mean it doesn't look precarious. There doesn't seem to be any good understanding of how it came to be there. It looks to me like a glacial erratic, but the rest of the landscape is wrong for that!
I did see a very picturesque group of four ladies in their saris at the Butter Ball, and asked if I could take their picture. They readily agreed, and then suddenly everyone wanted in on the act! :)
There were also some kids there using old flattened plastic bottles as a slide and they seemed to be having good fun. I did of course have a go and got a good laugh from everyone.
Butter ball seems like an odd term for it, but just round the corner was a carved cave temple with a deep carved pit outside. Inside the middle cave was Krishna's Lingham (phallus), and Krishna was one of the incarnations of Vishnu who had 1000 mistresses. This pit was used to make butter in, which was then used to anoint the various statues in the area.
We did see some un-finished work, this row of holes were carved to act as a fault line to split the rock. You can see the grand scale of the rock splitting, which was much more difficult in India than the UK. In the UK, for this sort of rock splitting the masons would cut holes, fill them with water, and wait for a cold night to freeze the water. The expansion then splits the rock. In India they don't have the weather to use freezing, so they instead put dried wood in the holes and added water to make the wood expand.
Next up, the Ganesha Ratha. This was carved out of a monolithic lump of bedrock in the 7th century. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it before, the closest is probably the Treasury in Wadi Rum in Jordan, but that isn't free-standing like this.
Another cave temple, again carved out of monolithic bedrock ...
..and then down to see the Descent of the Ganges bas-relief. This enormous carving has one of the few full sized carvings of Elephants in the world, another being at Angkor Watt.
Another cave temple, another bas-relief, yea, you're getting bored with them now aren't you. They were all incredible though, all carved out of bedrock, and around 1300 years old.
In order to blow the amazingness of those structures out of the water we had to drive for at least 5 minutes to another site where there are 5 Rathas and 3 free standing statues (elephant, lion and bull) all carved out of the same single monolithic chunk of bedrock.
 |
| Yes - this entire thing carved from a single chunk of bedrock |
Really amazing workmanship.
Finally it was down to have a proper look at the Shore Temple, this one actually built from blocks of stone rather than carved from monolithic bedrock. Still very impressive, and apparently the 2004 tsunami wave completely submerged this temple, but no significant damage was done.
One final thing of note in the town were these decorative patterns drawn in rice flour or chalk outside peoples front doors. This is a traditional warding against ants and/or evil spirits that is still used today. Whether the ants just find the rice flour on the doorstep and eat that instead of exploring into the house or the patterns have significance, I really couldn't say.
And as a last final thing, a Drongo, spotted at the Shore Temple.
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| This bloke really didn't want sunburn, or even the slightest tan. |
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