Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mamallapuram: Day 2

January 14, 2010

Something I feel like I should note is that both of our professors had been to all the sites that we visited for the first half of the trip multiple times: they knew them like the back of their hands. However, this was the first time that either of them had been to the south, so we were ALL in the same boat.

For our first and last full day in Mamallapuram we toured the local Hindu temples. Immediately a difference from our experience in Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow (aside from the temperature) became apparent: gone were the mosques of the Islamic north. In their place were churches and cathedrals. While Uttar Pradesh, the province we were in in the north, is about 12% Muslim, Tamil Nadu in the south is about 7% Christian and 6% Muslim (about 85% of both regions is Hindu). So it was a regular occurrence to see churches everywhere.


I'm especially fond of this photo because I saw the church on the right-hand side of the road and just whipped my camera up and took a shot without really aiming or anything as we drove by on our bus: this was the result. So i can't really take any credit for how well it turned out :)

Before anything else, we visited a temple that wasn't in any of our guidebooks but that Norbert had heard about and wanted to check out.


It was at the top of a nearby mountain. To get to it we had to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 550 steps. Don't believe me? Or don't know how to visualize that many steps? Let me help:


There were stairs...


...and more stairs...


...and even more stairs...


...and *pant* even *pant* MORE stairs...


...and FINALLY the top! You really felt it when you got to the top...haha


View of the surrounding area from near the top. The really tall buildings are all temples.

Since this was India, there were monkeys everywhere and so we were used to it. However, the monkeys here let you get REALLY close!


Exhibit A


There are at LEAST 7 monkeys in this picture: i'm sure there are more hiding in the trees


That's our professor, Tim, literally surrounded by monkeys. That's all the monkeys from the previous picture plus four or five more on the right side!


A more detailed pic of the temple complex


Me!

This temple was one of the highlights of the trip for Zack, and I'd agree that it was just awesome to climb so high and be rewarded with a spectacular view and an amazing temple at the top. And then there were the crazy monkeys doing things like stealing things from the other tourists and just being ridiculous in general! haha

The other temples we visited during the day really showcased how the temple-building practices evolved.


The locals went from carving temples out of stones that were already there...


...to carving temples into the stones that were already there.


This relief at one of the temples just blew everything else out of the water!


I mean, just LOOK at it! amazing.


Kinda liked this gargoyle-esque statue on the roof of a building-that's a temple in the background.


This is a lighthouse that the British built way back when (but more recently than all this other stuff haha). Love the view of the ocean!


More temples.


The Shore Temple is the pinnacle of the architectural feats that these particular peoples achieved in Mamallapuram. This is the same site that was in the picture of the beach from yesterday.


Pretty neat, no?


Me (complete with some hat hair haha). I kinda wish I'd not been mostly blocking the second part of the temple there, but whatevs!


For dinner that night we had seafood! These are some of the prawns that we had-I am not exaggerating when I say this is the best seafood I've ever had! I had some more pictures of the food but it was either blurry or just of the remnants of the food (which I found on viewing now to be a bit gross-no one wants to see the remains of a meal!).

So that was our time in Mamallapuram! I started reading Ender's Shadow on the bus rides now that I was done with all the required reading for class. Such a good book :).

Tomorrow: we...leave India!??!? nope, but it sure feels like it in our next stop: the French city of Pondicherry!

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