We are on the beach!

Hey all, we have missed you :) We have been busy, though! We left Kodai and had a fabulous ride down the curvy mountain roads to the Tamil Nadu plains. Then we ripped it up on the flats to Madurai. We were going to do a day trip from Kodai to Madurai, if you remember, but we are glad we stayed there. We like Madurai a lot!

We arrived in the afternoon, found our hotel and ate an amazing thali (an eat all you like! :) then we set off for the temple (it doesn't open until 4pm). Wow, what a great walk, a great temple, a great experience! You have to wait for the photos. The two temples inside the temple complex were for Hindus only, but we saw plenty and we hung around until it started to get dark to see the changing light on the temple towers. The next morning we spent at the Ghandi museum in Madurai - we hopped on one bike and then came back to get the other bike and all the luggage. Again, a fantastic experience - the museum is very well done and very informative (if a bit biased against the British :). The trip to Tanjore was straightforward and we arrived in the late afternoon.

Tanjore is home of another great temple - the "Big Temple" they like to call it :) We found the hotel, dropped the bags and hopped on one bike to get to the temple in the fading light - well worth the rush! Where the Madurai temple was nearly all enclosed, the Tanjore temple was nearly all open space. And they let us in to the inner temple! We got to see the linga (it was a Shiva temple) and rush in with the hoarde for puja (giving the offering). They were into big rock carvings in Tanjore as well - the dome of the temple was a monster carved from a single block (80 tons?) and they had to build a 5km ramp to get it on top of the temple! There is also a 6m long Nandi (Nandi is the bull that Shiva uses for transport - sort of like Babe for Paul Bunyan :) carved from a single hunk of granite.

You should know that we saw (and smelled!) bats at both temples - when the sun went down, and the birds stopped flying madly about, the bats took to the skies! We saw some of the regular bats we have seen all along and at Madurai we saw one of the really tiny ones, we almost mistook it for a very fast butterfly it was that small.

From Tanjore it was an easy ride to Pondicherry. We were not thrilled as we rode in - there is a serious amount of industry just outside Pondicherry - and we just didn't like the feel, but once we were there and walking around it was great...and then we had croisannts in the French bakery the next morning? We were in heaven!!!! :) The best croisannts I have had in I can't remember how long (and no, it's not because it's been so long :). That said, we were unimpressed with the food in Pondicherry and ended up at Pizza Hut the second night - a paneer masala pan pizza :) We stayed 2 nights, did a lot of walking around and I am VERY happy to say that A bought some new shirts (woohoo!!! I was getting a bit tired of her wearing, and me washing, the same 2 shirts!!!!) She looks great!!! (photos coming :) It was an easy rip up the coast to Mamallapuram, just 100kms.

The ride to Mamallapuram was flat...very flat - we are missing the mountain roads! This is also the region that was hit by the tsunami in 2004 (below Pondicherry it was even worse). We saw lots of evidence of the destruction on the way up (and when we headed towards Madras on the day trip) and in town. This is a big fishing village - and it is a village - there is not a lot here but tourists and fisherman. All the boats are the same age (less than 2 years old) and are painted to identify the donor - Austria, Lichtenstein, Christian Relief Services, etc. We watched them bring in the catch the first morning we were here and they don't bring in much at all (compared to what we have seen them bringing in on the west coast). In the restaurants they have fresh tiger prawns (huge ones) and reguar prawns and a few fish, plus calimari. Back to the carvings :) The sculptors were very active in this whole area around 650-800 AD - any rock that was sticking it's head out of the sand (and they are huge rocks) was carved - bas-reliefs, caves, temples - and they are beautiful. It's also the center for temple statue carvings and they are for sale everywhere in town - so if you want your own Shiva, Durga, Ganesh, Hanuman or even a Buddha statue we can help you out (these guys are geared to ship all over the world, so they tell us :)

On our first morning here we took a day trip on the bike, our first stop was Tiger Cave. Not a cave like you would think, more like a combo of a bas-relief with some cells carved into it for the temple. I climbed on top of it :) Our second stop was for our good friend Christina - the Crocodile Bank - we were thinking of her the whole time we were there. Wow, what a great place!!!!! It's not a zoo - they are breeding crocs to return to the wild and to keep some of them alive on the planet (there are several endangered and highly endangered species there). We saw over 1000 crocs there!!! Many different varieties from all over the world (North, Central and South America and Asia) were represented (yes, we have tons of photos :). They even have one of those tanks so you can see them underwater :) And if that wasn't enough for one day, we went to the Dakina Chitra museum which is a cultural history museum of South India (with a lot of help from the Ford Foundation). There were homes (relocated or built in the style of) representative of different walks of life (weaver, potter, merchant, etc.) and from different regions (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh). There were also crafts and textile displays. It was very informative and it is no wonder that we got back into town, had a brief nap, went to get some food (2 fab FAB curries and the best food we have had since the boys at Rasoi in Kodai cooked for us :), had a brief walk and then collapsed in our beds :)

Today we walked all over town and looked at the carvings that take up the whole of the west side of town - it took us most of the day walking all over the rock area. Then we walked back along the beach and climbed the rocks around the shore temple and then went for a coffee :). Tomorrow we are off to Madras to see Fort St George. We had been hoping to see the Enfield factory but I can't reach them on either of the phone numbers from the guide books and the website no longer mentions that they do factory tours, they have an online tour. Oh well. We will let you know :)

Catch you all later!

P.S. the connection here is very fast, I might be able to get the video up - I have the Kathakali dancers and I have some feeding crocs :)