Let us travel somewhere - Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu

Hi, let me introduce myself - I am Preethi -Keerthi's sister. Keerthi has most graciously let me use her blog to chronicle some of my travels. While cooking appeals to Keerthi, travelling appeals to me.This is my first attempt at blogging, so bear with my discoveries.

One of my favourite hobbies is travelling. Lucky for me my husband M is also into travelling and our dream is to be able to visit all the continents. While our travel list is very long and money very short for the kind we want to do, we also realized that there is so much to discover in India. Now that we live in the US, we miss travelling within India and enjoying the earthiness that India has to offer. I am sure many of you will remember growing up in India and being dragged to many temples in the name of vacation. While I resented it quite a bit while I was growing up, even though it was mentioned many times to me that this was the route to salvation, I wish I had captured and jotted down the many places that I visited with my family growing up. Those were not the days of digital camera and so pictures were expensive to process. I still remember this fabulous vacation we took with my favourite Chitti (mother’s younger sister) and Chittappa. We covered all the wonderful places – Kashmir, Delhi, Agra. While we posed in the Mughal Gardens, stood with Taj in the background, rode the pony to Gulmarg and Pehalgam and photographed the many monuments of Delhi and  came home eagerly expecting to see the pictures – my chitti called back on her return to tell us that Chittappa had forgotten to load film in the camera and we were only clicking away an empty one !

So to liven things up – I will continue posting a travel series, alternate between posting places in the US that we have visited and places in India. The thoughts of actually blogging have entered my mind only in the last year or so – with that in mind, the quality of pictures has improved over the last year, the ones before might be a bit hazy.

Being from Madras (for us old timers, it is hard to say Chennai), I had to dedicate the first post to one of the most visited destinations from Madras – Mahabalipuram.

Mahabalipuram is at a distance of 60 km from Madras. It can be reached by road in about 1 ½ hours depending on traffic. There are resorts in the area where you can stay if you wish to – overnight. We spent about a day and half at this place. Left after breakfast from Madras and reached Mahabalipuram around lunch time. Located on the sea shore – it shows us the exquisite craftsmanship of the wonderful artisans of the Pallava era. There is a lot that has been written about this place on the internet– so I do not want to add any more.

We made a trip to this location with my dear sister K and her family in 2008 (yes, it a little bit dated, but things have not changed at Mahabalipuram in the last 1400 years!)

There are various locations to visit.

The Shore Temple – our resort was just outside the shore temple on the sea coast and we walked across to the Shore Temple after our morning cup of coffee. It was an amazing sight seeing it rise so majestically out of the ocean. Cannot believe that this monument is from the 700 A.D. Wow ! It was a great place to visit in the morning with no bus crowds.

The Five Rathas – Chariot temples dating back to the 7^th century again. These are large structures in stone – amazing architecture. Apologies – only two pictures available here, the other ones with the large nandi and elephant had pictures of V and R that I did not want to post. 

Arjuna’s Penance – a giant bas relief that contains many detailed carvings including two large elephants which are popularly associated with Mahabalipuram.

This is a picture of a mural inside Arjuna’s Penance.

   

Finally Krishna’s Butterball – A giant rock that precariously sits defying all odds. You wonder if it is going to fall anytime now, but it has not fallen as far as I know in the last 20 years….

 Finally, here is a picture of a ride that we took on the residential bullock cart at our resort. The kids loved it.

We found the shopping around to be a bit expensive as there are many foreign visitors who make a visit to Mahabalipuram. The shop keepers did not budge on their prices and eventually my sister and I gave up and moved on.

There are a couple of places to eat other than the resorts – but being so long ago and not writing information down, I do not have that information with me.

I hope I have inspired your to visit Mahabalipuram if you have not. If you have – I hope this will make you visit again.