Mamallapuram - Escape to the beach

We finally got off our arses after recovering from the New Years day hangover to go on a sightseeing tour around Pondi with the tourist centre. It was quite nice to be lazy and be carted around the town and told what to do, "Hello sirs, this is the Genesh temple and you have 20 minutes here, leave your shoes out side and there is no cameras allowed inside the temple". The highlight of the trip was the AuroVille city.

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."

To be honest all we saw was a 5 minute video and the outside of a giant golden golf ball. Inside the gold ball is a room that contains a white room with the world's (so they say) largest crystal, that has the sun beamed onto it by moving mirrors on the top of the building. Cool meditation chamber. The city is not owned by any country and on the opening day, a boy and girl from over 120 countries, came with soil from their countries to place in an urn at the centre of the city. I liked the idea that a city can exist in the world that is working towards a society that allows coexistence between all peoples of the world. Whether it is working in practice I don't know, but the Pondicherry folks are very proud of it and say that the Auroville people are doing a lot of good work in the local area. Someone told me that his father bought a piece of land there for the princely sum, of a thousand rupees, when it was being created, and this gives his descendants an automatic right to be Aurovillers... so far he has not taken them up on it, otherwise in order to live there you have to do a three - four year apprenticeship and then buy land in order to build your house... hardcore.

Yesterday we went to visit a company, Integra, that Eleanor has worked with in T&F. It was really nice to meet them, they were very friendly and gave us some advice on the north of India. It was great to have a look at the inside of a professional Indian company. They also took us to a lovely seafood restaurant called Rendezvous (thanks guys), which was a great way to say goodbye to Pondi... in style.

So we have given up our luxury hotel room in Pondicherry and took a bus two hours north up the coast to Mamallapuram, a travellers beach enclave similar to Varkala. We are booked into a hotel that screams traveller.. swinging chairs, waiters with Afros and the distinct smell of ganja hanging around, party...bonus.

We met a mad french lady, Anna, last night. She talked the hind leg off a donkey and three elephants that wandered by. We talked English, Indian and French politics of which I bullshitted my way through most of it and tried to sound like I know something :-).

Yes Andy G you have taught me well!

This place is well known for the local skills in carving and even last night looking at some of the figures they looked very impressive... I see a dent in the credit card coming. One of the guys said that they are doing four figures for the local temple and we could go there and have a look. He said that the figures were large bulls taking 6 people 6 months to do, so that might be cool.


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Random fact from the paper... in one village in order to marry, you have to work for the father of the bride for a year, collecting firewood, farming, even begging. At the end of the year the father can decide if you have worked hard enough to win the bride otherwise you have to work for another year: some men have been working for twenty years, in all this time they are not allowed to see the bride to be... I hope that the bride was worth it!!!

Also a village in India is filled up entirely from one family and all the children are sired from one man. They say it is the largest family in the world and he has over 50 wives, the 60-year-old man only just took a 26-year-old wife this year: she said that the family was built on love... a lot of it by the sounds of it. The head stud said that he was prepared to go to America to increase his count of wives!! I broached the subject with Eleanor about starting our own cult, but she said that she was not good at sharing.