Day 95 – April 20 – Madras, India

Today we did a long excursion to Mahabalipuram, Kalakshetra and Dakshinacnitra…7.5 hours!  We first drove along the coast and beach through a fishermen’s village.  It was hard to see just how poor these people are.  They homes are little more than grass and cardboard shacks except where the government has built rows of cement housing that look like prison barracks.  There is no running water in any of the dwellings.  There is a common well with hand pump on each row of housing and a toilet and bathing facilities very so often.  Regardless, of what we think, there was a lively community there with children playing, men coming out of the dwellings dressed in shirt and tie on their way to work.  They still fish from very small boats for small fish that they sell.

We then drove to Kalakshetra, a unique institution where they teach performance arts such as classical dance (like we had seen the night before), music, painting, drama and other fine arts.  While the school had just started its summer break, there were four young women who were still on campus.  They were post-graduate students.  They were not in full costume but in just bright dance outfits.  They performed two dances of the classical temple dances and it was very interesting to see their facial expressions, hand positions, feet and legs all moving in such a beautiful way.  The theatre was open air, but they had lots of fans going so it wasn’t too bad, but we could tell we were in for a very, very hot day.

Then we had a two hour drive along the Coromandel Coast to the temples of Mahabalipuram.  This complex was built by a Hindu King in the 7^th century.  This area is covered in large granite boulders and these were used as the material for the temples.  The first area we visited, the “Rathas” or chariot temples, was where five different boulders had been carved into monuments.  Each boulder was carved in a different style, but all had very intricate carvings from the Hindu mythology with people, animals and gods all depicted in some part of a story.  Then we saw a very large bas relief (they said it was the world’s largest bas relief) that had different sections.  Two of them were divided by a clef in the boulder that represented the sacred river Ganges and was called the Descent of the Ganges and the other side “Arjuna’s Penance”.  Both sides were intricately carved and very beautiful.  On the other side, there were more carvings but they had been covered with a roof sometime, probably in the 14^th century.

The last stop was at the Shore Temple, which was built on a cliff overlooking the Bay of Bengal.  This monument was built in a different style.  Instead of being carved from a single boulder, it was built of granite blacks, that were then carved into the various figures.  It was about a 300-400 meter walk and Fred decided he had had enough of the heat so stayed on the bus.

This is a very busy tourist area and we encountered the pesky vendors that inhabit so many of the Asian tourist areas.  Jan found the best way to handle them was to just ignore them and not even look at them or their wares.  Once they knew she was not going to buy, they left her alone.  It was also very, very hot.  We took our umbrellas and it helped to give us more shade than just our hats.

On the way back to Chennai (Madras), we stopped at the Taj Fisherman’s Cove Resort for lunch.  This is a beautiful resort with lovely gardens.  We had lunch in a separate air-conditioned pavilion.  It was served buffet style and features southern Indian cuisine, again.  There were various curries and rice dishes and they were all good.  The food was not near as spicy as the dinner at the Sheridan the night before.

The last stop was at the Madras Craft Foundation Art’s Village.  An American who married an Indian has been buying homes from the four southern states of India, moving them and reconstructing them in this village.  The idea is to have a place where the traditional housing and traditional crafts can be preserved.  So many village have few people left in them to maintain the traditional homes because they have moved to the large cities.  So here is a place where they can be maintained and craftsmen can continue to practice their arts.  It would have been a great place to visit if we had not already been hot and tired!

Back on ship, it was showers for both of us and then a quiet evening with dinner from all the canapés that Rajib brought us.