One of life's simpler pastures is being able to let off a silent fart without being caught - this can usually be accomplished at, say, an Indian wedding, a curry-house full of locals, or in my case, a flight to India. Unfortunately, after the evening meal of chicken curry had been served, everyone else had the same idea. And my seat was next to the toilet. Still, at least I was getting acclimatised to my destination! After touring the north of India about 5-6 years ago, the time had come to finish the job and I had a month's trip planned touring the south, starting with a 2 week organised tour from Chennai (from this point forward, I will start using the older "English" names for cities, in this case Madras) to Goa with tour company "Explore".
Mon 6 Feb
My Oman Air flight from Heathrow stopped over at Muscat which meant the second leg of my trip was largely full of migrant workers and on reaching Madras, the foreigner's Visa desk was empty and I breezed through Customs. The official start time of the tour was 7pm and we wouldn't be spending any time in Madras, instead heading straight to our next destination, so I had to wait a few hours for the rest to the tour group to arrive. It turned out to be a small group with only five others - John, 69, from England (who seems to have kitted himself out with one set of clothes based on vintage photographs of British officers during the Indian Raj), Tom and Frances from Devon, and Keith and Dawn from Wales. Our tour leader was Cresbin (an Indian Catholic, hence the strange first name).
After everyone arrived we set out on a 2 hour drive that evening to our first destination, Mahabalipuram (or Mahabs for short). Indian roads are infamous as some of the most dangerous in the world. However, since we were driving along a relatively new dual carriageway and it was dark, we didn't get to experience the full horrors of Indian roads. There were still vehicles with no headlights or more usually, full beam. There was plenty of weaving in and out of traffic with inches to spare. Use of the horn every 5 seconds was compulsory.
We were staying at the Hotel Mamalla Heritage, which was much better then I expected since our accommodation was described in the trip notes as "Simple" - clean, no roaches, en-suite with a "proper" toilet, A/C, Wifi. During my evening meal, I asked got a beer but would only be served one if I drank it in my room, which seemed pretty pointless. Little did I know that this would be a rare treat! There are alcohol restrictions in many States of India due to Indian men not being able to hold their liquor. In other States, you have to buy alcohol from Government-run outlets. Also, individual restaurants and hotels may not have an alcohol licence, further compounding matters. I may not want to have a drink every day of my holiday, but I WOULD like to have the choice!
Tues 7 Feb
Mahabs was the major seaport of the Pallava kingdom, which was established in the region in the 7th century. The Pallavers are renowned for their rock-cut temples and carvings in the area. We spent today visiting the UNESCO World Heritage-listed "Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram". The temples here include some of the earliest - rock-cut cave temples/shrines dating from the 7th century. Free-standing temples started to appear in the 8th century. Many of the temples contain fine carvings depicting Indian deities and mythical figures. Some of the temples contain a "lingam", a central pillar which represents the Hindu god, Lord Shiva. Now, to me, the "lingam" looks like a big cock, and indeed, if you google it, many other people more scholarly than me believe the same thing! Buddhist temples actually contain a central figure of Buddha, so why do these Hindu temples dedicated to Shiva not contain an actual figure rather than a "lingam"? Of the temples we visited, the "Five Ratha's" was especially impressive as it comprised five large temples carved out of a massive SINGLE piece of rock (a monolithic structure). They were hidden in sand until excavated by the British ~200 years ago. The "Shore Temple" as its name suggests overlooks the sea. During the tsunami of 2004, the sea retracted from the beach for a few minutes exposing other temples, suggesting the Shore Temple was the last remaining unsubmerged temple of the so-called "Seven Pagodas". Entry to the temples was mostly free, apart from the Shore Temple/Five Ratha's, which combined cost Rs30 for Indians and a hefty Rs500 (~£6) for foreigners(!) - India's got a good racket going with this sort of massive discrepancy between entrance fees for locals and foreigners for their major sites.
Mahabs is a typical tourist town with the usual array of restaurants and handicraft shops. There are also many sculpture shops, with stonemasons outside chipping away at granite sculptures as they may have done a thousand years ago. The large sculptures would end up in temples, the smaller ones for tourists. There is a beach of sorts but it seemed to be largely the preserve of fishing boats with their nets, and cows and dogs lazing about during the heat of the day. There are a lot of backpackers and hippies wearing colourful kafkans and baggy trousers and riding scooters. Asking Cresbin who they are, it appears they are from Auroville, more on that later.
We had lunch in a seafront restaurant. Fish caught that morning were laid out at the front of the restaurant and you could choose what you wanted to eat and how it would be cooked. Whether you wanted seafood that had been sitting out in the Indian heat with no ice for maybe hours was another matter. I didn't.
Rather than the usual tour problems such as climate, food and transport, I then encountered one of the major problems in India at the moment - money! In late 2016, the Government replaced the Rs500 note and phased out the Rs1,000 note (~86% of cash in circulation) in an attempt to crack down on corruption, forgeries and black market cash. Those who wanted to use their now-redundant banknotes had to pay them into a bank account, and anyone depositing large amounts would soon come to the attention of the law and tax authorities. India is trying to get away from its largely cash economy and migrate to digital payments but this is not an option for the many poor or tourists (unless they use credit cards and incur fees). When you go to the cashpoint or money changer, you invariably get Rs2,000 notes (roughly equiv to £20 notes). The only smaller notes are now Rs500 (~£5) and Rs100 (~£1). However, Rs500 notes seem to be as scarce as £5 notes in the UK. Therefore, no-one likes accepting Rs2,000 notes when paying for anything as they don't enough Rs100 and Rs500 notes for change or don't want to part with the ones they have as they have the same problems getting change. If you do get some change, you usually have to give it away paying someone who doesn't have any change. A real mess, equivalent to the UK phasing out £10 notes!
After having a wander around Mahabs during the afternoon, the group met up for dinner in Moonrakers Bar/Restaurant. This contained the usual assortment of fish at end of table, which may or may not have been sitting out in the heat all day. I stuck to a boring chicken curry and rice. The waiter asked me if I wanted my meal "spicy" or "medium". Now, having eaten in Indian restaurants in the UK that cater to Indians (rather than pissed up English), the food is usually a lot spicier. I thought that since we were in India, the food would also be spicier so asked for "medium". However, what I got was very bland. What I figured out later was that the tourist restaurants and hotels we would be visiting would make their food "extra bland" as they thought Westerners couldn't handle it otherwise (cue the classic comedy sketch "Going for an English" from "Goodness Gracious Me").
Weds 8 Feb
Today we took an optional visit to Pondicherry and surrounding area. British, Dutch, Portuguese and French colonialists arrived in India in the 16th/17th centuries, striking deals with local rulers to set up trading colonies. The British set up at Madras and the French at Pondicherry. The British and French fought three Carnatic Wars in the 18th century for dominance which the British won. However, they allowed the French to retain their settlements until they were incorporated into the Indian Union in 1954.
On the way we paid a visit to the Hope Foundation School at Pudupattinam of which Explore is one of the sponsors. These sorts of visits (eg. visit to a local village, etc) can be a but cheesy but this one was actually very enjoyable. The school teaches children from three villages that were devastated by the 2004 tsunami. They are taught three languages - Tamil (the local language), Hindi (main language of India) and English, and also usual subjects such as maths, science, etc. They are all smartly dressed in colourful uniforms. The school also houses a health clinic for the villages, a village cleaning and waste management program, a community hall and computer training centre.
We then went to visit Auroville, the "City of Dawn". This is an experimental township founded in 1968 by a French-born woman known as "the Mother" and is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, politics and nationalities. It houses ~2,500 people and employs many local workers in projects ranging from schools and IT to organic farming, renewable energy and producing handicrafts. We were due to spend an hour or so here but everyone else was adamant they wanted to visit the supposed Gallic charm of Pondicherry and not "waste time" here so that was that! We only went to see the Matrimandir, a golden dome that houses a large crystal that diffuses sunlight into a meditation chamber. It would have been interesting to find out more about Auroville and decide if it was in fact just full of a load of hippies and backpackers "discovering themselves".
The town of Pondicherry contains many French colonial-era buildings, churches, temples and statues which, combined with the systematic town planning and French-style avenues, transports you away from India into supposed Gallic charm. However, it all seemed a bit dull to me and left some of the others who were so keen earlier a bit disappointed. Maybe if they built a replica of the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame it would have been more interesting (or tacky I suspect). A few of us had dinner in a local vegetarian restaurant which served a couple of favourite Indian foods of mine - masala dosa (a thin pancake made from rice/lentil batter with spicy potato filling) and pani puri (a round, hollow, fried puri bread filled with a mixture of flavoured water, tamarind chutney, spicy potatoes and chickpeas). We all met up that evening to drive back to Chengalpattu (the nearest train station to Mahabs) where everyone was "excited" to be catching our first Indian train of the tour, an overnighter to Madurai.
Temples in Mahabs and Gallic Pondicherry
Monday, February 06, 2017
Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India
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