This whole confusion happened because of the Europeans! They come here and they cannot pronounce the south Indian names. I should not blame them though, these names are really tough. So all the places have two names; South Indian difficult one and English easier one. Like Tanjavur became Tanjore, Allepuza became Alleppe, Triruvannathapuram became Trivandrum and so on.
So one fine Sunday morning at 4.30 am a taxi came at CSR to pick us up for Pondy Bus Stand. But wait!. Where is Karan the great? He is sleeping yet!!! Celine literally kicked thrice at the door, but our “Sleeping Prince” didn’t hear that! So finally when we started, we were only 30 minutes late. Still it was not over. We reached Mitra and came to know that the girls are still sleeping too……30 more minutes. We didn’t mind; at least we have reached the Bus Stand before the bus left and……… it started raining…wow!
Its ok, we got into the bus soon and we all got seats!!! Hahahahahaha. Better than Kerala trip; what say? Oh! we means, Karan, Dehi, Ranjini, Munira, Satya, Matiya, Antoine, Celine, Camille and me J this time we did a good thing, we collected 200 rps from each person and Karan was our Bank and trust me that was really a good idea.
It was 5 hrs journey and it was really fun. We didn’t really care about the way but we played silly games, we gossiped, we talked, we ate, we sang and we just enjoyed it. I stood at the bus door, cool air were blowing my hair and making me relaxed, quiet and happy… amazing.
[Its pity that its a business to read luck by parrots. for that the readers cut the wings of the birds so that they cannot fly.... pity and silly..]
The town is strange. The main bus road is only twenty feet, highly crowded and the bus just left us in the middle of a bazaar. That’s good. The first thing we did is eating. Second thing was drinking and third is to walk for the temple.
The temple is a typical South Indian Temple with Shikhara, Gopuram, Garva Griha, Nandi and the Ambulatory path. For the non Archis: Garva Griha is the main Chamber, Shikhara is the solid, massive, highly decorated pinnacle and Gopuram is the gateway with Shikhara. And Nandi is the Bull. Is was nice to know about the history but the more interesting was the guide who know some common term from every language like Bonjour, après, chao, kemon acho…. After the tour we stand n the looooooong queue to enter the main temple and to see why the line is so long and what they really want to see! After almost half an hour when we reached the destiny, it was a great disappointment. There is something made of gold inside, but you cannot enter there and you cannot even see it properly…. so bad.
After the temple we went to see the palace which was much more disappointing. They plastered it all over and they drew some “modern” painting of the palace itself on the entrance….awful. the palace was full of the statue of Nataraj. Those were nice and we discovered the girls were very khullamkhulla (open) at ancient period. The statues were always wearing very less clothes. Another discovery is girls look good with a little fat [I am happy ;-) ] and nothing too big is not beautiful. I guess you understand what I mean.
But I could not discover the reason why there is a skeleton of a whale inside the palace. But it was really
What do you think? How many people can board in a auto rickshaw?...... On the wat back to the bus stand, we got only one auto rickshaw and we were 10 in it. Matia, Dehi and Munira were seating at the back, in the luggage carrier. They put the curtain to hide themselves from the police, but their legs were hanging outside…how intelligent we are!
Mahabalipuram in English (I guess it came from Hindi) and Mamallapuram in Tamil.
Friends, if you come to Auroville try to go to Mahabalipuram. It’s a beautiful small town in between Auroville and Chennai. It has sea, the Sun Temple on The beach, a lot of restaurants with good sea food, and a very nice big park full of sculpture and rocks. Out of all, the park was the best.
This time it was me, Camille, Celine, Antoine, Matia, Raphael and Vincent. I will not forgive French people for their pronunciation, Vincent Becomes Vnasno!!! And please don’t try to pronounce. These bad people will laugh at you…. Kidding…
We ate at Bob Marley Café and what sea food they have! Muah…
We passed most of our times in the park, walking and talking. It was really good. Auto rickshaws will offer you several package. Don’t go with those and specially don’t waste your time on museums, those are horrible. It’s a small town; you can walk all over it. Again I want to say the guide book is gonna help you a lot. It’s expensive, but if you can manage, it’s perfect. In the afternoon we had nice coffee, milkshake and crepes in the sea shore restaurants again. Wonderful.
You know, if you have a good group to travel, you can enjoy anything any where. And these two trips are the proofs of that.
