Mahabalipuram – You Rock!

16th January, 2019 – Pondicherry to Mahabalipuram

Not much to report on today. We travelled north to our new hotel, Chariot Beach, at Mahabalipuram aka Mamallapuram (have fun trying to pronounce these – they are not so bad once you get the hang of them. I may have misspelt it in my last post, so you can see how tricky it can be!) We had the afternoon off, so we settled into our room first, as is our wont.

We explored the hotel a bit and lo and behold, it had table tennis – and snooker, so we had a game or two of both. The former went fine, but the latter is considerably more difficult than it looks on the TV! I remember at uni they had tables and you could only play by paying for the lights and it was always a race to see if we could finish a game before they went out. We usually didn’t.

We took a stroll down to the beach….

We had dinner at the hotel and that was that, except that it transpires that the air-conditioner in our room must have been made out of old jet engine parts as it was the noisiest I have ever experienced. It would not have been so bad if it had stayed on continuously, but it had the bad habit of going off and then bursting into life – just as you had dropped off again. If you have ever seen the bit in the film ’10’ with Dudley Moore waking up with the Tijuana Brass band just outside his window, it was something like that. (Note: must watch that film again – it was very funny in places).

17th January, 2019 – Kanchipuram (aka Kanchi)

The delights of Mahabalipuram were going to have to wait for tomorrow, not least because Pongal was in full swing and literally hundreds of thousands of people were going to descend on the decidedly small town. So instead we set off early to Kanchipuram another temple town 70km to the east. It is not only temples for which it is famous, but also silk saris, shrines and saints – in that order. It is one of the 7 holiest sites in the Subcontinent, sacred to both Shaivites (followers of Shiva) and Vaishnavites (followers of Vishnu) as well as being among the few remaining centres of goddess worship in the south.

Kanchipuram was established by the Pallava kings as their capital from the 4th century AD for 500 years and continued to flourish during the Chola, Pandya and Vijayanagar eras. The town is nothing much as such (lots of silk sari shops), but the temple we visited, the Ekambareshvara Temple, was suitably atmospheric. It is an important Shiva shrine, has colossal gopuras, which rise to almost 60 metres and the remains of a 3,500 year-old mango tree.

Shiva is in the form of Kameshvara (he and all the gods, I think, can take many different forms), or ‘Lord of Desire’. Legend connects the temple with the goddess Kamakshi (Shiva’s consort ‘Wanton-Eyed’ (!)), who angered Shiva by playfully covering his eyes and plunging the world into darkness. Shiva reprimanded her by sending her to fashion a lingam from the earth in his honour. However, once completed Kamakshi found she could not move it. Local myths tell of a great flood that swept over Kanchipuram and destroyed all the temples, but did not move the lingam, to which Kamakshi clung so fiercely that marks of her breasts and bangles were imprinted on it. This lingam is in one of the sanctuaries in the temple, but not on display to non-Hindus.

The mango tree which I mentioned earlier is in a courtyard and represents the tree under which Shiva and Kamakshi were married. Not surprisingly, it is a popular spot for couples to tie the knot. The four branches are supposed to yield different-tasting fruit, believed to symbolise the four vedas and are given to women petitioning for fertility.

Lots of carving, dark halls and interesting people as ever…..

Now it is a phenomenon of travelling in India that the locals love having their photos taken with you. I could probably have paid for a good deal of the holiday if I had been able to charge for it and, not too surprisingly, there are no photos of me with my new Indian chums as I am in their photo and also have our camera. What has been fun, though, is to see the reaction to Val by the locals as they have some difficulty working her out. She looks sort of Indian, but her hair is different to virtually all Indian women (very few have short hair and not many leave it to go grey). She is also dressed differently and sounds very un-Indian. Not everyone gets up the courage to ask for a selfie but we found a fun crowd at the temple, who took a shine to Val’s hat as well…

Some last carvings…..

That was not the end of our trip to Kanchipuram as it is almost statutory to visit some silk-weaving and, of course, a silk sari shop (ie a shop for silk saris, not a silk shop for saris!). Lots of lovely colours and people working away on the loom in a very traditional domestic working method, based around cooperatives. Apparently Kanchipuram silk saris are renowned as the best all over India. The sales woman in the shop was VERY persuasive!!!

And then it was back for a longish trip back to Mahabalipuram, long not least because of the queues to get down the rather narrow road to the town that was proving a bit unequal to the task. Pandi was up for it though and delivered us safely back to our hotel. Time for a bit of table tennis and snooker, followed by a swim, but on no account, according to our guide for the day, Stanley (I am pretty sure that is what he called himself), must we go into town or along the beach as it was party time in Mahabalipuram and there was no telling what might ensue. To be honest, that only attracted me more to it, but we remained sensible (boring?) and spent a bit of time watching the entertainment the hotel had put on in celebration of Pongal. It was not the finest display I have ever witnessed, but quite good fun.

And so to bed…….