Mamallapuram Photos
More Mamallapuram Photos
Final India Photos
Our airport experience getting to South India was intense and stressful. We make it to Mumbai without any issue, but once there it turns disastrous. Anthony briefly loses his wallet at the airport and we have five minutes of panic as credit cards and ATM cards go missing. As our panic rises, he gets paged over the loudspeaker and we are relieved to know they’ve found it. But then, just as we recover from that fiasco, we realize we’ve checked into the wrong terminal. They take our boarding passes and destroy them and we have to walk twenty minutes outside the airport to another terminal to check in. As luck, fate, or God would have it – our flight has been delayed and we manage to make it. We leave two hours late, arriving in Mamallapuram well after our scheduled arrival both stressed and grouchy.
Our driver, Sanjay, is waiting for us still outside the bustling Chennai airport. He has a big smile and a warm demeanor, and we are instantly relieved. We depart along the East Coast Road for the nearly two hour drive to the village of Mamallapuram, arriving in the dark near eleven.
Even arriving so late, we recognize that this is a huge change from the first two legs of our trip. We enter the town on dirt roads, everything is eerily close. There are still plenty of people walking the road, but most of the shops are closed and it is quiet and relatively dark. Few street lights here, the road only lit by the light that pours out of the shops. It is a rural town and we are eager to see it by daylight.
We check in to our hotel, the only hotel we’ve chosen during our entire stay in India. Modern amenities, a pool, and a sense of privacy and anonymity that we are grateful for at this point in our journey. We ask about food since we are both starving. We have been traveling for nearly twelve hours. The concierge knows of a roadside place up the street that is still cooking food, so we walk a couple of blocks to the little shop and order some fried rice and masala fried chicken. The bellhop takes us there and then brings us back and sets up a dinner table in our room so we can eat. The chicken is slightly undercooked, so I opt to eat only the rice. Anthony wolfs everything down. He will regret it later.
After eating, we unpack a little and prepare to settle into bed. Anthony glances out the window and yells for me to come and look. There is a herd of cattle walking down the road just outside our hotel window. Must be over a dozen of them, just slowly walking toward the other end of town. We are really excited… and we realize just how rural this town might be.
The next morning, we wake up refreshed and thrilled to set off on our own. Mamallapuram is a small village of about twelve thousand people. Everything in close and small, and we could walk the entire town in under half a day. The people here are beautiful and ethnically very different from the people in the north. They are darker skinned and smaller in build. We notice right away that the language is different, Hindi is not really spoken here, but Tamil. The writing on the signs is very different. Because it is a tourist town, frequented mostly by Europeans and particularly Frensch tourists, English is spoken here by most of the shop keepers.
Everywhere, men wear the lungi. It is a checked wrap around skirt or various colors or patterns. Most wear it high up above their knees, but when meeting strangers will unfold it so that it hangs to the ankles so as not to offend. We hear the “chink chink chink” of the local stonecutters working on the stone carvings that Mamallapuram is so known for. We see many of their studios dotting the roads and the sculptures are exquisite – statues of the various Hindu deities, Buddha, animals. A giant shrine to Hanuman stands a block from the hotel.
The shops cater to tourists and in all places we are stopped by shop keeps who want us to come in a look at their wares. The invitations become a bit relentless over time, but we learn to defer and beg off gently (sometimes not so gently) as we try to walk a couple of blocks and their attention slows us down.
We walk to the far end of the road to find a giant stone frieze carved into giant rocks on the roadside. These carvings date from the seventh century. The are scattered throughout the town which was a seventh century port town under the Pallava dynasty. We discover that the town, in fact, predates the dynasty and may be much older indeed.
Mamallapuram was hit hard by the tsunami in 2004. After the waters receded, a new temple complex was discovered that was uncovered by the water. It may prove the myth of the Seven Pagodas which some believed may have been located here. The newly discovered carvings and complexes may date back as much as twenty five hundred years.
We take a side road and realize that we are heading straight for once of Mamallapuram’s most cherished carvings – the Shore Temple. We see it silhouetted against the water – sticking up out of the beach along the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Along the way, the touts become aggressive but we simply move through them on our way to the structure.
Standing before the Shore Temple is a breathtaking experience. I have never seen anything so old in my life. It is constructed of granite and dates from around the eight century A.D. As we wander among the stones, we can see how the sea air and sun have eroded all but the shapes and primary structure. The details have long been washed away, but you can easily imagine what it must have looked like when it was built. Hindu gods are carved along the face and a menagerie of animals stand guard around it. We see a statue of the goddess Durga riding on a lion. There are two shrines to Shiva. One for Vishnu. It stands about 60 feet high with five stories. It is one of the earliest temple structures in South India. We wander the grounds, touching the rock face, and I imagine those who built it. Did they know that so many years later folks would come to marvel at it? What were their stories? Who were they?
We spend a little time walking down to the beach, past small craft stands and little shacks cooking and selling deep fried masala fish freshly caught. Along the shore, you can see the men and their fishing boasts dotting the beach. The air is hot but so fresh off of the water. The sand is burning hot. Anthony finds and buys a nice pair of sandals. I keep my eyes out for the statue of Hanuman – the monkey god – that I intend to find here if it is the last thing I do. It turns out that it is – in fact – the last thing I do in India!
The rest of the day is spent walking through town, swimming in the pool, and having the best vegetarian food we’ve had in India. At the hotel restaurant which is renowned for its vegetarian cuisine, we order a traditional thali. It comes served on a banana leaf – ten small dishes with ten distinct flavors – surrounding a mound of steamed rice. It is delightful.
Around the hotel, we discover a tailoring shop where Selvam – the handsome sales boy – will make us custom tailored shirts over the next days; one for me, one for Anthony, and a choli for Mom’s sari that we bought in Jodhpur. I find several more dhotis that have the beautiful zari border. One cream, one golden, and one brown. We discover several shops that sell stonework and other local craft work peculiar to South India. It is somewhat different from the craft work of Rajasthan – the embroidery is much more elaborate.
We are determined to take out time here, relax, and enjoy unwinding after the rest of our trip. The only agenda we have is to drive to Kanchipuram tomorrow – a place known for its temples and its hand-loomed silk saris which are famous throughout India. We have arranged a driver for tomorrow to take us there. It is two hours inland, so we know it will be a long day. Today we relax. We end the day with a nice nap and then dinner out on the beach at a small restaurant on the shore.
Sitting in the evening on the Bay of Bengal is like a dream. The breeze blows in softly, the heat of the day has melted away. Along the beach, fishermen roll up their nets into giant balls and lay down beside them to keep the wind off. The restaurant is quiet – it is still a month before their tourist season starts in earnest – and so we are largely alone but for two other couples. The smell of the salt air combined with fresh seafood cooking in the back is mouth-watering. The shore is dark, lit only by the ambient light cast from the few restaurants along this shore. A peace drifts over the two of us as we eat and chat, talk about they day and begin to reminisce about our trip so far – knowing that too soon it will end. We also talk about home, our friends, our little Sancho and Grace, and somehow know that we miss home and will be ready to return once our trip ends.
We take our time walking back to the hotel. Through small dirt roads where the kids run playing while women chatter in groups and the small shops sit quietly, we meander along little alleys imagining the daily life of those who live here. We contemplate how disastrous the tsunami must have been this close to shore. We pass a woman shoeing a cow away from her produce stand – seems he’s gotten a little too bold. We feel the sand between our toes. We are grateful for this peace and quiet.
Kanchipuram
Our driver picks us up at 9:30 and we begin the trip into Kanchipuram. Only a short distance as the crow flies, it is a two hour drive through rural Tamil Nadu, down winding roads and the occasional small town. The sights along the way are deeply moving for me. Ox drawn carts abound and in many places the cows horns are painted with gold bands with one horn painted bright red and the other a deep green. They are the deep spirit of India.
We drive through Thirukazhukundram where the famous Eagle Temple sits upon the mountain top. It is said that, every day, two eagles arrive their from the sacred city of Varanasi on the Ganges and are fed by the priest here. The town is small and lovely. Women abound on the roadside in their saris, working, chatting, gathering. We see many children too, playing and laughing.
We pass through a fairly large city along the way and the congestion of city life again becomes apparent before we pass through into the countryside again. Urban life in India is hard in all places. The city is dusty and hard looking, the roads are choked and bustling with people, cars, and ox drawn carts.
Upon arriving in Kanchipuram, our driver wastes no time in taking us to the first of the five temples we will visit. We arrive at Devarajaswami Temple first, dedicated to the Lord Vishnu. It is massive, and the entire edifice is covered with a scaffolding of grass and wooden poles. They are restoring the face. We remove our shoes in the car and head inside. We are met immediately by a Hindu priest who insists on showing us the only part of the temple complex that is open to non-Hindus – the marriage hall. It is huge and extraordinary. It is often called the hall of a thousand pillars, although there were only 100 and only 96 now remain standing. Each pillar is carved with a horse ridden by one or another deity. Along the bottoms, on each face, is another character from Hindu mythology. Deities and demons abound, as do consorts and children. It is a deep and dark place that opens up onto the ghats on the backside. In this temple there is a giant statue of Vishnu that lives under the water in the ghat pool. Every forty years, there is a festival where the water is drained and the statue revealed for reverence. The next time is in 2019.
We head out after our brief tour and head to our next location after grabbing a brief cup of tea and some fried dosas in the lot outside. The next stop is Kailasanatha Temple and will be the major highlight of our trip here.
Kailasanatha is a magnificent eighth century temple. It is empty when we get there but for an elder gentleman who gives us a tour of the temple. Along the inner walls there are nearly one hundred small shrines surrounding the main shrine. In many, there still remain frescoes painted on the inner walls. The colors are still vivid and we can only imagine what it must have looked like when first constructed.
We take our time wandering through the complex with our guide, taking in each scene and each carving, lost in the abundance of gods represented here and the stories of each.
Anthony is inspired by the colors and I can see he is already planning for a new series of paintings when we return home. Along the outer wall, the lingams stand in their shrines, deep black stones with the simple carving standing out in white. It is so quiet here. It is so peaceful.
The next stop is Sri Ekambaranathar, the largest temple in all of South India. It is immense! Again, only Hindus are allowed into the innser sanctum, but we wander the great echoing halls which surround it and are breathless at the size. We find brightly painted statues all around, reminiscent of painted ponies at a carnival. Hindu priests sit in little nooks along the side, praying or napping. In the center stands a sacred mango tree. A priest there beckons us to come and see, but we are too captivated by the long hall where the Shiva lingams stand in rows behind the giant stone pillars. The sounds of worship from the sanctum echo, the smell of incense fills the air. Candles burn in small shrines. Men and women drop to their knees in front of a major shrine in the hall, piled with dung and flowers, pools of fragrant oil and incense, the sense of sacred India is at its most powerful in this place.
We walk lightly and quietly, feeling slightly irreverent as we snap photos and stand with our mouths agape. Outside, there are little stands that sell supplies needed for worshipers to make their offerings inside. The entrance towers above us with doors so large they confound the mind. When we leave, a woman comes up to us and pours coconut milk into our hands which we are to rink before it falls to the ground. This is our blessing.
The final two temples are Kamakshi Amman, dedicated to the goddess Parvati, and Vaikuntha Perumal. The first is also off limits to non-Hindus and there are many people coming in and out of the sanctuary. We stay only a short time. The last is another aged temple and there is music being piped through speakers when we enter. We can see straight into the sanctuary as the temple priest offers blessings to worshipers inside. The ghats here are long empty of water, but it seems to be an active temple – more so than the others we have visited. There is a sense of liveliness about it in spite of its age and size. It is much smaller than the others we have seen today.
The drive back to Mamallapuram is slow, but another fascinating glimpse of rural Indian life. We pass a fish market on the roadside, swarming with flies as one man sells and two women clean fish. We get stuck there for a time as two trains pass on the crossroad just ahead of us. Piles of crabs sit in the heat covered with flies and every once in a while the man pulls a dead one out and tosses it to the side. We are morbidly fascinated.
Once back in Mamallapuram, we settle in for a quiet night. We order room service for lunch and prepare for a nap. We take another dip in the pool. We are content to be quiet here, not to rush. We are no longer shopping for much since we have bought so much in Jodhpur and because things here are expensive – geared as they are to tourists. Here, you never pay what folks ask for without haggling first. Generally, expect to pay a third of what they originally ask for. We are not used to that and find it exhausting.
During our final days in India, our wedding anniversary comes along. We buy ourselves a beautiful hand embroidered tapestry to hang on the wall at home as a gift to ourselves for our special day. We celebrate with another dinner on the beach and simply enjoying one another’s company. We can’t believe it has already been a year since our wedding and we chat about our trip to India – such a beautiful gift from our family and friends.
The last couple of days, it becomes apparent that Anthony is sick. Nausea and bad bowels. It hits him like a brick and he is exhausted. It will turn out to be the chicken he ate on our first night here. I knew it was under cooked. We spend most of our time resting. I finally find my Hanuman statue in a small shop off the main road. The man brings me into his shop and hears that I am a fan of the monkey god. He pulls out two. One of them is the most beautiful I’ve seen. I buy it on the spot.
On the last day, I know that there is still one more monument I want to see… the Five Rathas. This sculpture dates from the seventh century. Each giant ratha or “chariot” is carved from a single piece of stone. Anthony feels well enough to go with, so we walk to the other end of town where the monument sits. We are glad we did.
The Rathas are beautiful! A giant elephant stands among them, as though waiting to draw one of these chariots through the sand. Lions grace the pillars of one, gazing out as if to protect them. We wander among them lost in time.
On the way back, we find another mandapam or monument. A temple sits upon a rock hill. Beneath, in the hill, a beautiful shrines has been carved out with frescoes of scenes from the Mahabharata carved in relief on the walls. We can’t fathom the age. We explore it before heading up to the top to the temple and there we catch a glimpse of Mamallapuram stretched out below us. The ocean sits placidly in the distance, inlets carving up the land around us. There is a lighthouse up here that we have seen at night breaking its light into the distance. It is such a small town and so graceful. There is a light breeze in the midst of the heat of the day. We know, as we look out, that we are saying goodbye to India.
The rest of the day is spent picking up a shirt that Anthony had made, saying our goodbyes to the local shop keeps that we have gotten to know, and packing our things for the trip home. We have to leave at around midnight tonight for a four A.M. flight in the morning.
We have a nap and dinner on the rooftop restaurant upstairs. Small lights twinkly around us, the lighthouse we saw today is brightly shining. We laugh and chatter and realize that we are excited to be going home.
India has been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I have dreamed about it for so many years. The reality of India and the dream are very close in some ways – and in others so very different.
It is a land of contradictions. Chaos in the midst of spiritual peace. Modernity in the midst of the ancient. The culture is so different from our own, and yet the similarities are striking. The people share the same aspirations, the same dreams, and the same frustrations as any people would. But the route to personal fulfillment and the means are worlds apart. Cultural norms are much more rigid than ours, and yet remain unquestioned for the most part.
We have experienced riches here that are unexpectedly different from our own, and deeply meaningful. There is a peace here that transcends circumstances that we would find unbearable in the west… the poverty, the crowds, separation of genders. And yet, the people are gentle and giving, hospitable and lovely. I will keep a part of my spirit here, and hope to come and gather it back another time.
Anthony and I have experienced something together here that few people will. Those that do, we know, will share a special bond with us. We have deepened our own bonds with one another here as we’ve navigated the strange and exotic culture together. We are glad to be going home. And we hope one day to return here and experience more. We are so grateful.
India Journey: Final – Mamallapuram and Kanchipuram
Mamallapuram Photos
More Mamallapuram Photos
Final India Photos
Our airport experience getting to South India was intense and stressful. We make it to Mumbai without any issue, but once there it turns disastrous. Anthony briefly loses his wallet at the airport and we have five minutes of panic as credit cards and ATM cards go missing. As our panic rises, he gets paged over the loudspeaker and we are relieved to know they’ve found it. But then, just as we recover from that fiasco, we realize we’ve checked into the wrong terminal. They take our boarding passes and destroy them and we have to walk twenty minutes outside the airport to another terminal to check in. As luck, fate, or God would have it – our flight has been delayed and we manage to make it. We leave two hours late, arriving in Mamallapuram well after our scheduled arrival both stressed and grouchy.
Our driver, Sanjay, is waiting for us still outside the bustling Chennai airport. He has a big smile and a warm demeanor, and we are instantly relieved. We depart along the East Coast Road for the nearly two hour drive to the village of Mamallapuram, arriving in the dark near eleven.
Even arriving so late, we recognize that this is a huge change from the first two legs of our trip. We enter the town on dirt roads, everything is eerily close. There are still plenty of people walking the road, but most of the shops are closed and it is quiet and relatively dark. Few street lights here, the road only lit by the light that pours out of the shops. It is a rural town and we are eager to see it by daylight.
We check in to our hotel, the only hotel we’ve chosen during our entire stay in India. Modern amenities, a pool, and a sense of privacy and anonymity that we are grateful for at this point in our journey. We ask about food since we are both starving. We have been traveling for nearly twelve hours. The concierge knows of a roadside place up the street that is still cooking food, so we walk a couple of blocks to the little shop and order some fried rice and masala fried chicken. The bellhop takes us there and then brings us back and sets up a dinner table in our room so we can eat. The chicken is slightly undercooked, so I opt to eat only the rice. Anthony wolfs everything down. He will regret it later.
After eating, we unpack a little and prepare to settle into bed. Anthony glances out the window and yells for me to come and look. There is a herd of cattle walking down the road just outside our hotel window. Must be over a dozen of them, just slowly walking toward the other end of town. We are really excited… and we realize just how rural this town might be.
The next morning, we wake up refreshed and thrilled to set off on our own. Mamallapuram is a small village of about twelve thousand people. Everything in close and small, and we could walk the entire town in under half a day. The people here are beautiful and ethnically very different from the people in the north. They are darker skinned and smaller in build. We notice right away that the language is different, Hindi is not really spoken here, but Tamil. The writing on the signs is very different. Because it is a tourist town, frequented mostly by Europeans and particularly Frensch tourists, English is spoken here by most of the shop keepers.
Everywhere, men wear the lungi. It is a checked wrap around skirt or various colors or patterns. Most wear it high up above their knees, but when meeting strangers will unfold it so that it hangs to the ankles so as not to offend. We hear the “chink chink chink” of the local stonecutters working on the stone carvings that Mamallapuram is so known for. We see many of their studios dotting the roads and the sculptures are exquisite – statues of the various Hindu deities, Buddha, animals. A giant shrine to Hanuman stands a block from the hotel.
The shops cater to tourists and in all places we are stopped by shop keeps who want us to come in a look at their wares. The invitations become a bit relentless over time, but we learn to defer and beg off gently (sometimes not so gently) as we try to walk a couple of blocks and their attention slows us down.
We walk to the far end of the road to find a giant stone frieze carved into giant rocks on the roadside. These carvings date from the seventh century. The are scattered throughout the town which was a seventh century port town under the Pallava dynasty. We discover that the town, in fact, predates the dynasty and may be much older indeed.
Mamallapuram was hit hard by the tsunami in 2004. After the waters receded, a new temple complex was discovered that was uncovered by the water. It may prove the myth of the Seven Pagodas which some believed may have been located here. The newly discovered carvings and complexes may date back as much as twenty five hundred years.
We take a side road and realize that we are heading straight for once of Mamallapuram’s most cherished carvings – the Shore Temple. We see it silhouetted against the water – sticking up out of the beach along the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Along the way, the touts become aggressive but we simply move through them on our way to the structure.
Standing before the Shore Temple is a breathtaking experience. I have never seen anything so old in my life. It is constructed of granite and dates from around the eight century A.D. As we wander among the stones, we can see how the sea air and sun have eroded all but the shapes and primary structure. The details have long been washed away, but you can easily imagine what it must have looked like when it was built. Hindu gods are carved along the face and a menagerie of animals stand guard around it. We see a statue of the goddess Durga riding on a lion. There are two shrines to Shiva. One for Vishnu. It stands about 60 feet high with five stories. It is one of the earliest temple structures in South India. We wander the grounds, touching the rock face, and I imagine those who built it. Did they know that so many years later folks would come to marvel at it? What were their stories? Who were they?
We spend a little time walking down to the beach, past small craft stands and little shacks cooking and selling deep fried masala fish freshly caught. Along the shore, you can see the men and their fishing boasts dotting the beach. The air is hot but so fresh off of the water. The sand is burning hot. Anthony finds and buys a nice pair of sandals. I keep my eyes out for the statue of Hanuman – the monkey god – that I intend to find here if it is the last thing I do. It turns out that it is – in fact – the last thing I do in India!
The rest of the day is spent walking through town, swimming in the pool, and having the best vegetarian food we’ve had in India. At the hotel restaurant which is renowned for its vegetarian cuisine, we order a traditional thali. It comes served on a banana leaf – ten small dishes with ten distinct flavors – surrounding a mound of steamed rice. It is delightful.
Around the hotel, we discover a tailoring shop where Selvam – the handsome sales boy – will make us custom tailored shirts over the next days; one for me, one for Anthony, and a choli for Mom’s sari that we bought in Jodhpur. I find several more dhotis that have the beautiful zari border. One cream, one golden, and one brown. We discover several shops that sell stonework and other local craft work peculiar to South India. It is somewhat different from the craft work of Rajasthan – the embroidery is much more elaborate.
We are determined to take out time here, relax, and enjoy unwinding after the rest of our trip. The only agenda we have is to drive to Kanchipuram tomorrow – a place known for its temples and its hand-loomed silk saris which are famous throughout India. We have arranged a driver for tomorrow to take us there. It is two hours inland, so we know it will be a long day. Today we relax. We end the day with a nice nap and then dinner out on the beach at a small restaurant on the shore.
Sitting in the evening on the Bay of Bengal is like a dream. The breeze blows in softly, the heat of the day has melted away. Along the beach, fishermen roll up their nets into giant balls and lay down beside them to keep the wind off. The restaurant is quiet – it is still a month before their tourist season starts in earnest – and so we are largely alone but for two other couples. The smell of the salt air combined with fresh seafood cooking in the back is mouth-watering. The shore is dark, lit only by the ambient light cast from the few restaurants along this shore. A peace drifts over the two of us as we eat and chat, talk about they day and begin to reminisce about our trip so far – knowing that too soon it will end. We also talk about home, our friends, our little Sancho and Grace, and somehow know that we miss home and will be ready to return once our trip ends.
We take our time walking back to the hotel. Through small dirt roads where the kids run playing while women chatter in groups and the small shops sit quietly, we meander along little alleys imagining the daily life of those who live here. We contemplate how disastrous the tsunami must have been this close to shore. We pass a woman shoeing a cow away from her produce stand – seems he’s gotten a little too bold. We feel the sand between our toes. We are grateful for this peace and quiet.
Kanchipuram
Our driver picks us up at 9:30 and we begin the trip into Kanchipuram. Only a short distance as the crow flies, it is a two hour drive through rural Tamil Nadu, down winding roads and the occasional small town. The sights along the way are deeply moving for me. Ox drawn carts abound and in many places the cows horns are painted with gold bands with one horn painted bright red and the other a deep green. They are the deep spirit of India.
We drive through Thirukazhukundram where the famous Eagle Temple sits upon the mountain top. It is said that, every day, two eagles arrive their from the sacred city of Varanasi on the Ganges and are fed by the priest here. The town is small and lovely. Women abound on the roadside in their saris, working, chatting, gathering. We see many children too, playing and laughing.
We pass through a fairly large city along the way and the congestion of city life again becomes apparent before we pass through into the countryside again. Urban life in India is hard in all places. The city is dusty and hard looking, the roads are choked and bustling with people, cars, and ox drawn carts.
Upon arriving in Kanchipuram, our driver wastes no time in taking us to the first of the five temples we will visit. We arrive at Devarajaswami Temple first, dedicated to the Lord Vishnu. It is massive, and the entire edifice is covered with a scaffolding of grass and wooden poles. They are restoring the face. We remove our shoes in the car and head inside. We are met immediately by a Hindu priest who insists on showing us the only part of the temple complex that is open to non-Hindus – the marriage hall. It is huge and extraordinary. It is often called the hall of a thousand pillars, although there were only 100 and only 96 now remain standing. Each pillar is carved with a horse ridden by one or another deity. Along the bottoms, on each face, is another character from Hindu mythology. Deities and demons abound, as do consorts and children. It is a deep and dark place that opens up onto the ghats on the backside. In this temple there is a giant statue of Vishnu that lives under the water in the ghat pool. Every forty years, there is a festival where the water is drained and the statue revealed for reverence. The next time is in 2019.
We head out after our brief tour and head to our next location after grabbing a brief cup of tea and some fried dosas in the lot outside. The next stop is Kailasanatha Temple and will be the major highlight of our trip here.
Kailasanatha is a magnificent eighth century temple. It is empty when we get there but for an elder gentleman who gives us a tour of the temple. Along the inner walls there are nearly one hundred small shrines surrounding the main shrine. In many, there still remain frescoes painted on the inner walls. The colors are still vivid and we can only imagine what it must have looked like when first constructed.
We take our time wandering through the complex with our guide, taking in each scene and each carving, lost in the abundance of gods represented here and the stories of each.
Anthony is inspired by the colors and I can see he is already planning for a new series of paintings when we return home. Along the outer wall, the lingams stand in their shrines, deep black stones with the simple carving standing out in white. It is so quiet here. It is so peaceful.
The next stop is Sri Ekambaranathar, the largest temple in all of South India. It is immense! Again, only Hindus are allowed into the innser sanctum, but we wander the great echoing halls which surround it and are breathless at the size. We find brightly painted statues all around, reminiscent of painted ponies at a carnival. Hindu priests sit in little nooks along the side, praying or napping. In the center stands a sacred mango tree. A priest there beckons us to come and see, but we are too captivated by the long hall where the Shiva lingams stand in rows behind the giant stone pillars. The sounds of worship from the sanctum echo, the smell of incense fills the air. Candles burn in small shrines. Men and women drop to their knees in front of a major shrine in the hall, piled with dung and flowers, pools of fragrant oil and incense, the sense of sacred India is at its most powerful in this place.
We walk lightly and quietly, feeling slightly irreverent as we snap photos and stand with our mouths agape. Outside, there are little stands that sell supplies needed for worshipers to make their offerings inside. The entrance towers above us with doors so large they confound the mind. When we leave, a woman comes up to us and pours coconut milk into our hands which we are to rink before it falls to the ground. This is our blessing.
The final two temples are Kamakshi Amman, dedicated to the goddess Parvati, and Vaikuntha Perumal. The first is also off limits to non-Hindus and there are many people coming in and out of the sanctuary. We stay only a short time. The last is another aged temple and there is music being piped through speakers when we enter. We can see straight into the sanctuary as the temple priest offers blessings to worshipers inside. The ghats here are long empty of water, but it seems to be an active temple – more so than the others we have visited. There is a sense of liveliness about it in spite of its age and size. It is much smaller than the others we have seen today.
The drive back to Mamallapuram is slow, but another fascinating glimpse of rural Indian life. We pass a fish market on the roadside, swarming with flies as one man sells and two women clean fish. We get stuck there for a time as two trains pass on the crossroad just ahead of us. Piles of crabs sit in the heat covered with flies and every once in a while the man pulls a dead one out and tosses it to the side. We are morbidly fascinated.
Once back in Mamallapuram, we settle in for a quiet night. We order room service for lunch and prepare for a nap. We take another dip in the pool. We are content to be quiet here, not to rush. We are no longer shopping for much since we have bought so much in Jodhpur and because things here are expensive – geared as they are to tourists. Here, you never pay what folks ask for without haggling first. Generally, expect to pay a third of what they originally ask for. We are not used to that and find it exhausting.
During our final days in India, our wedding anniversary comes along. We buy ourselves a beautiful hand embroidered tapestry to hang on the wall at home as a gift to ourselves for our special day. We celebrate with another dinner on the beach and simply enjoying one another’s company. We can’t believe it has already been a year since our wedding and we chat about our trip to India – such a beautiful gift from our family and friends.
The last couple of days, it becomes apparent that Anthony is sick. Nausea and bad bowels. It hits him like a brick and he is exhausted. It will turn out to be the chicken he ate on our first night here. I knew it was under cooked. We spend most of our time resting. I finally find my Hanuman statue in a small shop off the main road. The man brings me into his shop and hears that I am a fan of the monkey god. He pulls out two. One of them is the most beautiful I’ve seen. I buy it on the spot.
On the last day, I know that there is still one more monument I want to see… the Five Rathas. This sculpture dates from the seventh century. Each giant ratha or “chariot” is carved from a single piece of stone. Anthony feels well enough to go with, so we walk to the other end of town where the monument sits. We are glad we did.
The Rathas are beautiful! A giant elephant stands among them, as though waiting to draw one of these chariots through the sand. Lions grace the pillars of one, gazing out as if to protect them. We wander among them lost in time.
On the way back, we find another mandapam or monument. A temple sits upon a rock hill. Beneath, in the hill, a beautiful shrines has been carved out with frescoes of scenes from the Mahabharata carved in relief on the walls. We can’t fathom the age. We explore it before heading up to the top to the temple and there we catch a glimpse of Mamallapuram stretched out below us. The ocean sits placidly in the distance, inlets carving up the land around us. There is a lighthouse up here that we have seen at night breaking its light into the distance. It is such a small town and so graceful. There is a light breeze in the midst of the heat of the day. We know, as we look out, that we are saying goodbye to India.
The rest of the day is spent picking up a shirt that Anthony had made, saying our goodbyes to the local shop keeps that we have gotten to know, and packing our things for the trip home. We have to leave at around midnight tonight for a four A.M. flight in the morning.
We have a nap and dinner on the rooftop restaurant upstairs. Small lights twinkly around us, the lighthouse we saw today is brightly shining. We laugh and chatter and realize that we are excited to be going home.
India has been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I have dreamed about it for so many years. The reality of India and the dream are very close in some ways – and in others so very different.
It is a land of contradictions. Chaos in the midst of spiritual peace. Modernity in the midst of the ancient. The culture is so different from our own, and yet the similarities are striking. The people share the same aspirations, the same dreams, and the same frustrations as any people would. But the route to personal fulfillment and the means are worlds apart. Cultural norms are much more rigid than ours, and yet remain unquestioned for the most part.
We have experienced riches here that are unexpectedly different from our own, and deeply meaningful. There is a peace here that transcends circumstances that we would find unbearable in the west… the poverty, the crowds, separation of genders. And yet, the people are gentle and giving, hospitable and lovely. I will keep a part of my spirit here, and hope to come and gather it back another time.
Anthony and I have experienced something together here that few people will. Those that do, we know, will share a special bond with us. We have deepened our own bonds with one another here as we’ve navigated the strange and exotic culture together. We are glad to be going home. And we hope one day to return here and experience more. We are so grateful.