Now and Then in Tamil Nadu

After a stroll along the beach walk overlooking the Bay of Bengal early this morning while the air conditioning on our bus was undergoing repair (successfully, thank goodness!), we spent a VERY warm day investigating rural life along the road between Ponticherry and Mamallapuram for much of the morning and then later in the afternoon enjoyed some fascinating hours exploring some seventh century archeological sites of stupendous achievement along the coast here in Mamallapuram itself.

Our first stop gave us the opportunity to observe the opening exercises at a large girls' school with some 900 students ranging from sixth grade through twelfth grade. Next door was a free primary care clinic where local folk could turn for medical emergencies.

Down the road a bit we learned alot about local village guardian deities of Dravidian origin dating back two thousand years or more before the common era! Shrines housing these guardian figures stand at the entrances to rural villages. At night the shrine deity leaps on his trusty steed and circles the village three times to assure all in well. All this has been going on around Tamil Nadu for more than four thousand years!

We then watched some charcoal makers at work and wandered through a local village (where we were engulfed by the kids still too young to go off to school elsewhere). We drove by huge salt flats (a major natural resource gathered locally and sold all across the country) and stopped briefly at a small fresh fish market.

Following lunch at Mamallapuram restaurant (where most of us opted for what we had yesterday, an all-in-one meal called tahli made up of lots of little dishes arranged around the edge of a round tray and eaten with various breads and lots of steamed rice - absolutely delicious!), we checked into the Radisson Resort at Temple Bay, a place so special none of us wanted to leave again ever!

We did have the chance to take an afternoon swim before we took to the road again to visit three major World Heritage Sites dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries. The earliest consisted of the world's largest stone bas relief mural depicting the Hindu creation myth surrounding the origins of the Ganges River; the second, a set of granite "models" used to test out architectural possibilities for temple buildings eventually to be carved out of solid rock on a much larger scale.

Both sites were mightily impressive, for the stone carving skills so obviously in evidence, the beauty of the resulting creations and their very intact survival. Visiting just at sunset made the entire experience all the more magical.

The third site (which we visited first) was the Shore Temple, another impressive example of early Indian temple architecture from the eighth century. Although eroded significantly by sea salt and wind, the tall central tower is still quite dramatic, standing as it does directly on the shore of the Bay (safe behind a seawall reconstructed and reinforced after the 2004 tsunami which surrounded the temple but did not destroy it).

After all this, it was grand to return to our plush hotel to rest, eat dinner and get some much needed rest ...