From Dawn to 'Dust'- Chennai and Mahabalipuram

So here we go… it was New Year weekend and I really wanted to make it better than my previous ones (sleeping, or working in laboratory), so me and one of my colleague Santhosh decided to visit Mahabalipuram, Kanchipuram and Chennai and have a little outing at these two places. We have been planning this for over a couple of months, but every weekend there is some work from University that was killing our plans.

The original plan was to visit these places on my Access, but considering weather conditions we thought why not have even more fun by traveling into local state transportation buses, that too the worst ones. Later, it came out a bigger adventure. We changed a plan little bit, and rather than going to Mahabalipuram, we started for Chennai. The day started with nice three hour bus journey, after reaching Chennai both of us were feeling hungry so we decided to take food at Sarvana Bhavan (famous food chain here), which is famous for its ‘thali’ (assorted food). As soon as ‘thali’ arrived, my first reaction was OH MY GOD!!! The reason for that reaction is here-

Anyways, I decided to finish each and every bowl of that ‘thali’, and I DID IT! After grand lunch, we visited Chennai Central mall for some window shopping, and also major attraction was landmark as I as out of contact with the new releases in fiction and non-fiction for almost 2-3 months. It was a wonderful experience to back to world of literature. We spent almost three hours over there and then moved to Marina Beach. To be really frank, I was not expecting anything out of Chennai beaches, but it was better than my expectation with a harbor in the horizon and some kites flying in the sky (I am a BIG kites fan!). I decided to take out my camera and try to click some pictures there to clean the photography ‘rust’ that I had last weekend. 

After spending few hours there and enjoying some delicious beach side bhajji (bhajiya (India fried snacks)), sugarcane juice we decided to start our journey towards Mahabalipuram. I was excited as we were on time and about to reach Mahabalipuram about 7:00 PM, and it would have been a great site to visit shore Temple in evening, but there were some other plans in store for us… Chennai traffic! We spent almost 3 hours to reach main bus stand and then further 3.5 hours to reach Mahabalipuram. By the time we entered the city, it was 11:30 PM and I was in no mood to spend my New Year’s Eve on roads of deserted town. So, we booked a lodge and rush towards the sea shore which was luckily 5 minutes walking from lodge. By, the time we reached there, it was 11:55 PM and withing 5 minutes we welcomed 2011 with a great show of fireworks on the sea shore! At 12:30 AM we decided to get back to lodge with aim of getting early and welcome first day of year on sea shore.

Next morning, we reached beach at 5:15, and it was a great experience. A beautiful dark and silence all over with sound of waves coming from distance. That moment was the highlight of our trip! We could see people lighting the fire and sitting around it and enjoying the fresh atmosphere. Slowly, morning arrived to enrich us with a new energy and new hope for New Year…

After spending couple of hours at beach we came back and packed our bags with the plan that we will leave for Kanchipuram after visiting ancient scriptures in the town. We started with one hill top and visited many beautiful cave Temples there along with a light house. 

The next stop was ‘Five Rathas’, which is one of UNSECO site in India, after reaching there we changed our plan as we can clearly see that Mahabalipuram has much more to offer, and we canceled plan to visit Kanchipuram and decided to stay and enjoy Mahabalipuram. I got into my laid back traveler attitude near the place and lied down to enjoy the beauty of place. After two hours we visited the ancient Rathas and decided to go to visit the shore Temple. When we were walking down the road, we could see lot of rock sculpture work is going on and some of the great artists are busy in doing their work. We decided to pay visit to one of the artist and we have seen him making one clay model live in front of our eyes… kudos to those artists and their accuracy.

Finally, we visited one of the most beautiful temples on Indian coast lines and spent some time there. In return journey more surprises were waiting for us, as soon as we reached the bus stand, a sea of thousands of people was waiting for us and each bus was going jam packed. So, we decided to move a kilometer in opposite direction to catch a bus and get a comfortable seat. Luckily our trick worked and we got in but easily, and soon people started pouring into the bus and we could see people standing/sitting on top of the bus as well… anyways we reached Vellore via Kanchipuram late night with some of the great memorable experiences.  

And finally some flicks of waves striking the stones... 

Ciao

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