a weekend away, continued...

so, as i said, on friday morning we happily left pondicherry- by we i mean lindsey, anna, and myself- most of the others spent one more night in pondicherry before joining us in mamallapuram- also called mahibilipuram-or for those of us who tend to mix the two into some crazy hybrid like mamallahabilapuram- just plain old m-town. mamalla is 58 km south of chennai and a two(ish) hour bus ride north of pondicherry. it is apparently the stone-carving capital of india and somehow manages to seem
both like a sleepy little fishing village and a small tourist hotspot. i definately saw more non-indians in mamalla than anywhere else i have been- most of them were european backpackers and burnouts- but it still felt like a return to india from disorienting pondicherry. there are only a few streets, all of them lined with shop after colorful shop, their owners outside trying to entice anyone and everyone inside. it is also full of ayurvedic massage places, orphanages, and elevated restaurants-that is, the restaraunts are generally on the second floor with open air thatched roofs. mamalla posseses a certain charm that is apparent the moment you lay eyes on it (and after a few days, as with most charming places, it can lose that charm just as easily).
our first day consisted mostly of making ourselves comfortable in our room at the Tina Blue Lodge and taking advantage of the beach (which, unlike pondicherry, is actually beachy-there is sand and bathing suits are actually acceptable). tina blue is a doll of a little place for the price- less than $7 a night for all three of us combined. our concrete room had a much-needed though slipshod mosquito net and its own bathroom, complete with turkish toilet and bucket shower, so it obviously didn't matter that there was never any power during the day! basically it was my idea of perfect, and by the end of our two days there, i felt as if we had become part of the family that ran the place.
as for the beach...


it is strewn with the incredibly colorful fishing boats (and gossamer fishing nets of equal vibrance) of fisherman who haven't been able to go out for the past few days due to rough waters. it is also ripe with cows, various washed-up and decaying sea creatures, jewelry and sarong hawkers, and lazy sunbathers.



the mamallapuram beach is also home of the shore temple, one of the most photographed monuments in india and the oldest stone-built temple in south india. that is it in the background there.
m-town seems to have endless shore temples or underwater temples or cave temples or temples-with-a-view...


back up for a second, did she say underwater temple? yes she did! this brings me to the aforementioned potential best day of my life- i would say it would certainly rank in the top ten. on saturday we woke just after sunrise around 6:30 and walked the equivalent of about a block down to the beach. with few people awake and the morning light just beginning to weave its way through narrow streets, it really seemed like a fishing village, plain and simple, charming. perhaps i'm just romanticizing like all tourists do, but there were no tourists out yet (and, by the way, we like to call ourselves 'travelers'). anyway, we walked among the beached boats and found a fishing crew to take us out to see an underwater temple we had been told about, a task that was surprisingly easily accomplished. sitting on the wooden motor-powered little vessel, they pushed us out into the breaking waves of the bay of bengal. we crashed through the rough surf- we crashed for a long time, even once we were past the breakers. lindsey was holding onto my hand for dear life and anna almost broke her tailbone, we were all soaked to the bone, and for me life was magnificently crisp, clear, unclouded. out on the choppy water, far from the shore, we could see the shore temple and the shore-stranded fishing boats taking another day of rest, and in the direction of pointing fishermanfingers we could see-nothing? actually, for a split-second we could see a few inches of the top of what the imagination can construct as temple that was flooded long ago by a rising sea. apparently when the water is calm and clear you can look down at it from the boat and see the whole thing, but it doesn't matter to me that i couldn't see some underwater temple, it matters that i went out in a rickety little boat with the rising sun and saw a bit of the seafaring life, it matters that we rode a long wave to shore on the rickety little boat, and it matters that our fishermen friends popped up all over town for the next few days.
here's a picture of them:
ok, so onwards with the day. we stayed on the beach for a while
drying our clothes in the sea breeze, doing sun salutatons and what have you, and still the sun was rising. we were the first for a
lovely breakfast at a lovely restaraunt that served lovely crepes
and lassis and coffee-FILTER coffee! and then we rented mopeds.
all the woman who rented them to us asked was "is this ok in the
staes?" to which we obviously replied "yes" and without signing anything, after paying our four bucks for the day, we onto our next adventure.
after a shaky start in the more populated streets we made it to the open road and let those suckers fly. actually, none of the speedometers worked, and cars were passing us, and... but hey, it was close enough to flying. we were our own badass motorcycle gang, roaring out of town, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust...
we took a road that runs parallel to the coast- it is not shoreside per ser, but close to it. there was an expanse of land-often barren, often occupied by fishing village huts or hutch cell phone recharge stores or lotus ponds- but always palm-tree scattered with a view of the water. shortly after leavng town, we visited the tiger temple and its accompanying beach, and then rode on another 17 km-wind on the face, hair in the wind, along the edge of india- to Crocodile Bank, a huge croc farm that is home to Jaws III, India's largest. i think it was at that point we collectively realized that it was not even noon and already this day was incredible. i guess you had to be there.
and as soon as we realized this, it all went downhill, naturally. my moped had gotten suddenly much louder on the ride there, and when we were leaving i realized the silencer on my bike had detached on one end and was dragging on the ground. ok, fine, pay some guy with a monkey 10 rupees to tie it up with wire. but then the damn thing wouldn't start, not even with the help of about ten moped savvy dudes. arghhh. what the? #%@*!!!!!!!
so finally i hopped on the back of lindsey's scooter and was able to keep my eyes off the road all the way back to the moped stand where a rather messy and long-lasting argument ensued. basically they wanted me to pay for damage i did not do- honestly i didn't do a thing. they were trying to tell me that the bike was brand new when it obviously was anything but- proved by the fact that it just fell apart on me. they blamed us and we blamed them, we said no contract, no money for you. they wanted us to pay the welding fee and the price of gas for the owner to get all the way back out there. it was the principle of the thing that we were really arguing about, not the money. after several return visits throughout the day, several more arguments, we paid the three dollars and made amends because they agreed to pay their own gas fee. not gonna lie, it was pretty silly, but also ridiculous and frustrating.
the poor end of the day balanced out the unreal beginning- both of my traveing companions got food poisoning, which i somehow managed to escape despite having had the same food.
on sunday we met up with some travelers we had met the day before- yatan from israel, misho from holland, and anjelicka from austria- and took the bus back to chennai with them, ate the biggest dosas i have ever seen, said our goodbyes, and hopped on the train back home to hyderabad.
of course there is a lot i didn't mention, like the eight year old kid on the beach who taught me tamil and then tried to make a date with me, the earrings i found with the exact same silverwork pattern as my favorite bracelet from back home, and milos' twenty cousins who were hanging out with me at tina blue...but i think for now the story must end here.


or, i'll end at the quasi-beginning, with a visual of the pondicherry beach on republic day.