Travel Diary: Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu

The superstition belief is,what one does on Jan 1st usually defines what the whole year is going to be like. I am not superstitious but I think I'll go with this one. As for me the year 2015 was a year of travel. I had started the New years with one my best trips in South India.

Ekambareswarar Temple

On a rainy Jan 1st morning, I alongwith a group of friends left from Bangalore by road to Mahabalipuram (Approx 350 kms). All my road trips start around 4:00 am. We want to miss the morning traffic which adds an extra hour to our journey. Our 1st halt was in a small south Indian joint on the highway. It was just across the border in Tamilnadu. I wanted to focus and say Tamilnadu because many people don't/can't distinguish the cuisines from the 4 southern states. Let me tell you its very different and my favorite is Tamilnadu cuisine.... I can see the smile on all my tamilian friends reading this. I absolutely love tamilian food.

The road was excellent till a diversion for Kanchipuram, our next stop.(Approx 280 kms from Bangalore) Its a big place, we could have bypassed it but we decided to go in and visit the lovely Dravidian temples out there, we managed to visit just one though- the Ekambareswarar Temple, if not for religion do visit it for the architectural beauty. The women of our gang including me ended up buying the very popular, must have Kanjivaram silk saree.

The remainder journey was just 70 kms but it took us approx 2.5 hours as the road from here is quite narrow with a lot of buses and trucks.

Kanjivaram Silk Saree

We then reached Mahabalipuram by 15:00 hours, we were very hungry,and went to find a place to eat. We settled for Gecko cafe, the service was very slow and by the time we finished our food it was 17:00 hours. Now with our stomach full we walked to the beach. Most of the hotels and restaurants are walking distance to the beach. The main beach was like any crowded touristy beach, from people selling balloons to eatable, parents screaming at children not to go too deep into the water,horse rides and various other activities which took away my focus from the main attraction- The beach. We decided to head back and check out a quieter part of the beach in the morning. While walking back my friend who wants to become a professional surfer ( I really pray you become a surfer and buy your dream sail boat too) saw a place where they teach surfing- Mumu surf school. The next day went in surfing.Its a very difficult sport however, I would suggest everyone to try it once and check the same for themselves. What I really liked about the owner of the surfing place is he gives the local kids his surfboard to play around with, in return he asks them to clean the beach.Thus the beach is clean and the little kids from age 5 to 15 learn this difficult sport in no time .

Shore Temple

We went to the shore temple, if you rack your brains, you ll remember we've learnt it in history.Its been classified as a UNESCO world heritage site The location of the temple is spectacular. It faces the beach and is surrounded on the other sides by a well maintained park.There are 3 temples in the complex, It will easily take upto 2 hours to see around the temple. The weather here was hot and humid as expected.However since we had decided to visit the monuments of the place we visited a few more like the Pancha rathas, Arjunas penance, Lighthouse, Pancha pandava caves, Most of the monuments are walking distance from one another but due to the hot and humid weather we didn't manage to see them all.

In the evening two of our friends had to leave for Bangalore via Chennai, we dropped them at the bus stand in Chennai. My advice- Please don't follow GPS blindly, as it showed us the way to the bus stand but it was the back wall which had no gate to get in. I've experienced this in railway stations too.On our way back to Mahabalipuram we decided to ask people/traffic cops on the road for direction instead, Asking for direction in Chennai was worse than the GPS fiasco, we kept going in circles till we decided we just follow GPS, it was one of the scariest late night drives, We were directed along the most lonely stretch. Not a soul in sight. I was very glad to reach our resort finally after a good 5 hours, the distance we had to drive was just 60 kms on very good roads.

Pancha Rathas

The remaining of the vacation went in me lazing around in the beach and my friends surfing or taking a boat ride into the sea.

After such a lovely vacation, the big spoiler was on our drive back to Bangalore, the traffic on Hosur road, near Bangalore. Next day being a working day all professionals like us were getting back after their (hopefully) lovely vacations.

For the foodie: Most of our meals went in eating at Gecko cafe, Though the service was slow and the food was average, we were too lazy to try a different place. One lunch was tried at Moonraker- Good food but too crowded. I personally didn't like the ambience. Try the German cafe, run by a few Nepalis, we had an English breakfast there, food was delicious.

Hope this year is filled with adventure and travel for all of you. Happy 2017