Mahaballapurum

Saturday was a great little trip. Whitney (an undergrad studying at U of Madras from the University of Rochester, staying at my hostel) and I took a bus 2 hrs south on the coast to the town of Mahaballapurum, where there are some phenomenal Pallavan temples from the 7th century. We saw the 5 rathas- 5 monuments carved out of natural rock formations dedicated to 5 hindu gods. Next, we went to see several temples also from the 7th-10th century carved into the rocks of the hillside. Krishna's butterball is a gigantic stone, nearly round, and 100 tons, balancing on an incline...very strange (and thought to be natural). The Shore Temple is the crown- a very unique temple right on the beach, that was miraculously protected by a dike even before the tsunami. It is very cool, because unlike most other Dravidian temples, there are no pictues of kings and gods, instead it's all pictures of normal life- milkmaids, old men, cows, elephants, etc. The 2004 Tsunami hit this area very hard and there are habitat for humanity settlements and many other temporary villages set up to house the people that got their homes destroyed. The beach was beautiful, Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal) very warm, but no swimming for us, as there is a rip tide, and also, beaches in this part of the country are attended in full clothing. If one went in a swim suit, I'm not sure what the locals would do!

When I have more time, I will upload some of the pics I took onto smugmug. Not much time to write now.

Catching an overnight (3tier AC!) train to Namakkal tonight to start work there tomorrow. Thankfully, there is another student from the US who will be staying with me- she is from the University of Arizona and contacted my professor about working here- but somehow she knew I would be coming, but no one told me she would come. She is very nice and I think we'll get along great, so it will be good to have a co-conspirator. Especially because she speaks some Tamil since her family is Malaysian-Tamil, originally from this area. More from Namakkal....