day3

Day 3: Arjuna's Penance

Nick claims to have slept like a log all night, but I know that he got up at least twice to go to the bathroom!
I felt that I was awake about every hour or so, but can't be sure as my bloody watch has started to play up and I couldn't see Nicks little travel clock in the dark.
What with the heat, and the fan sounding like a Chinook helicopter hovering overhead all night, I did not sleep well at all, oh yes, there was one other thing that did not help, the mattress on the bed was no thicker than a two ply tissue.

My body was aching all over when I finally rose around 6.30 a.m. Nick had already been up quite a while and had done all he could in the bathroom, this, I think, even included a shower and a shave.
We only had to stick our head out the door to find one of the room boys who gladly brought us some tea to start the day. We walked along the beach to see the fishermen, but there was nothing going on.
Moonraker was again our choice of restaurant for breakfast, which we ate around 8.a.m before setting off to really have a good look at the town of Mamallapuram.

The town itself is not that big and can easily be fully explored in a morning. According to official figures the population of this town is surprisingly only around 14,000, which in India is no amount at all, in fact you could probably find this many people in one street in somewhere like Delhi. But then again I suppose it would be nigh on impossible to conduct a comprehensive census in India, as I would imagine so many people are simply not registered in record books whatsoever. The latest estimate puts the entire population of India at over one Billion people, making it the most inhabited country in the world.
And I think that most of them try to get on the same bus every day.

We made our way up the main street past the main bus stand and turned right towards the Talasyana Perumai Temple, which was not to dissimilar to a lot of others that we had seen. We only stopped to look at this place from the outside for a couple of minutes, before moving on to "Arjuna's Penance".
Arjuna's Penance is a rock face that has a relief carved into it depicting various deities, animals, and some stories from the Hindu Panchatantra books. There are a couple of stories to account for the reason of this large stone carved relief, one is said to depict how Arjuna served a penance to the deity Shiva, this so that he might receive the weapon that would destroy his opponents. I would not want to bore you with the full stories, but needless to say the carvings are interesting.

You can not stop to look at anything of interest for to long without being accosted by someone offering you something, whether it be trinkets, or the offer of a guided tour, today was no exception.
"No thank you!" must be a sentence these people hear a hell of a lot, and one we found ourselves saying a hell of a lot, but this does not deter them, as they keep working on the law of averages.
As we moved away from the large gathering of hawkers now surrounding us, two young lads who claimed to be apprentice stonemasons joined us; they wanted us to buy some of the stuff they had made.
It was quite obvious that they had not made any of it, as it was just the same as what everyone else was selling. None the less they were persistent and followed us as we walked around to cave complex looking at the various stone sculpting that he been carved into the rock. The boys were very informative and tried to explain all the stories behind the sculptures, so we now had guides and salesmen all rolled into one.

The Boy who was tailing Nick was a funny lad; he would suggest a price to Nick, who in turn would offer him about a quarter of this price, the boy would then come back with an even higher price.
Nick likes the entertainment value of haggling, even going so far as to offer ridiculous low sums when he does not really want anything, knowing that they will not sell, but will get involved in the exchange of banter. This banter went on for the best part of two hours as the boys walked all around the place with us, even taking us to places we would not have seen had it not been for them.

From his original price of 500 Rupees, I bought a stone-carved ball from the boy who was tagging me for 200 Rupees. I bought it more out of despair, rather than wanting, and knew at the time that I was probably paying too much, but it was worth it purely for the guided tour.
Nick and the other lad finally agreed a price as we were leaving the complex, when the other hawkers saw what he was willing to pay we were inundated with offers for the same things at half the final offer price, we declined as graciously as we could.

The boys were happy and we were happy, so it seems we all had a good deal in one way or another.
A cold drink was now required and so we set off in search of somewhere to sit in the shade to sip on an ice-cold coke. The boy who had sold his wares to Nick still followed us, trying now to sell his wares at a fraction of his original prices, but we were not in the mood to buy any more.
We ended up buying some more small stone pieces from the boy! His luck was in as he now found himself enjoying an ice-cold coke in the restaurant with us, at our invitation, or was it his?   I had to smile when he suggested we should all have another drink, with us paying for them of course as he could not afford them. I think he could well afford them after seeing the great wad of notes he pulled out when searching for change to give Nick.   This kid was smart and was well aware of the effect that the government price rises was having on tourism, and more to the point, his main source of income.

When the boy realised that he was not getting another drink, and there was no likelihood of any more sales, he took his leave, and wished us well on our travels. It felt strange knowing you had just been mugged, and yet your assailant had left you smiling.

Walking back towards the hotel along the beachfront we bumped into the man we had met there the previous night. More stone carvings were the last things we wanted to see at that time; again we promised that we would look later that day. The plan now was to get back to the hotel as quick as possible and without being stopped by another hawker, and to be honest we did not meet anymore, but kept moving smartly just in case they might be hiding in wait for us.

Back at the hotel we again ordered some hot water for our tea, Hamboo did not mind as he was getting more for the water than he would have done for the tea. The two women were also out on the veranda next door and we invited them to have some of our instant tea, they were only to keen to join us in a taste of home.
I would say that their ages were a little way apart; at first I thought they might be mother and daughter but the conversation revealed that they were only friends. The older of the two who's name was Pam was probably around 50, while the younger whose name was Mandy offered her age as being 36. Nick thought that she was older, but not that it really matters one way or the other.
They were leaving that afternoon for Madras and then flying onto the Maldives for a further week, before heading back to England. We wished them well for the remainder of their trip before going into our room for a shower and rest before a spot of lunch.

The heat and humidity around midday was really unbearable to stay out in for too long, I had been sweating so much all morning as we walked around, the shower was a welcome relief and helped to cool me down. This followed by a siesta for an hour was also a good way to recharge a tired body, noisy fan or not, I did sleep soundly for that hour.

It was around two p.m. as we emerged from our hotel room looking for somewhere to do lunch, we had a quick look at the hotels menu, then made our way back to the Moonraker restaurant.
The two women from next door were there having a lunch before departing, they were a lot braver than us as they were tucking into the fish, we had vegetable omelettes I think?

After lunch we walked back up through the town before catching a rickshaw to the Elephant temple, the last of five Rathas (sculptured temples in the style of chariots) a couple of kilometres away.
The name of this Ratha is Nakula-Sahadeva; on the outside is what is supposed to be the best-sculptured elephant in all of India. This sculpture named Gajaprishthakara, which literally means Elephants backside, is a fine looking piece of hand made carving and is actually life size.

Again we only looked at this temple from the outside as you can really get templed out at times, after stopping briefly to take some pictures, we made our way back onto the beach in order to walk back to town along the shore line.
To get to the beach we had to walk around the temple and across a vast area of open land with palm trees growing everywhere, including one where a local woman was squatting and doing what comes naturally? We discreetly looked the other way, but she did not seem too bothered that we had virtually walked straight into her.
As we walked on a little further averting our eyes from looking at her we could see to our right, and a little further up the coast, the shape of the Nuclear power station that is said to be having a harmful affect on the fish in this area. Probably another good reason not to eat the fish! It's not often you can catch fish that has already been micro waved.

A large group of young men started shouting and waving their arms at us from a little way behind us, what was going on here you start to think, it can be quite daunting when you see a large group running at you like rampaging football hooligans, but we stood our ground, all be it a little apprehensively.
There had been no need to worry as it turned out they were a group of engineering students on a day trip from their college in Madras, and all they wanted was to take a picture of us with them!

I was a relieved man I can tell you! I can imagine them getting back to college and showing all their friends the pictures of these two weird English blokes they met on the beach. Still they meant us no harm, and we were happy to oblige them, and so spent a few minutes in conversation with them, answering all the usual questions.
Although the temperature was now well up around 100 degrees it felt nice and cool with the sea breeze blowing in, and gently rustling the palm trees across the wide expanse of beach. We stopped to sit on the sand for a few minutes a long way from the busy stretch about half a kilometre further on.

While we sat there we were offered coconut milk and various fruits from beach hawkers who somehow managed to spot us from afar, but turned them both down, although I did give them a few rupees for allowing me to take their photographs. The coconut seller was more than pleased to pose, and when I gave him the money he insisted we take a coconut, probably because I had given him more than he had actually wanted for the coconuts in the first place? He went away shaking his head and laughing to himself when we again declined.

The next group of people to approach us were a family on a day trip who asked me for my autograph? I don't know who they thought I was, but I suppose that will go down as my 15 minutes of fame that everyone is supposed to have at sometime in their life.

The plan was to buy tee some shirts as we went along so as not to have to carry too much, so from the beach we cut back up into town in search of somewhere we could buy these. It wasn't long before we found a men's outfitters selling every kind of shirt you could ever want. These included those with and without collars, dress shirts, Thai dye e.t.c. We plucked for some plain old cotton tee shirts at around one pound each.

As we made our way back to the hotel I had stopped for some reason, then looked up to see Nick giving some kids a couple of notes! What was this? I knew he could not be buying something as we were nowhere near a shop, and he does not like to give out money to beggars.
He prefers to give me all his change so that I can give it out (he's not as hard hearted as he likes to make out). What it turned out to be was that he had stopped outside an orphanage, and said that he did not mind giving the money to the kids, just so long as they gave it to the person looking after them inside.

The children were very grateful, if a little reluctant to take the money, and asked that we go inside the orphanage to give it to their mama! I think that maybe we did not want to go in just in case we saw something that may have been upsetting, or not to our liking. Whatever it was, neither of us went in, preferring instead to give the money, pens and sweets to the kids and then walk away!

As we walked away a woman came out onto the roof of the orphanage and shouted her thanks to us, again she invited us in, but we kept walking, slightly embarrassed, and maybe a little ashamed knowing we should have gone in. Maybe we expected the worse, and did not want to witness it?

We avoided the beach near our hotel on the way back just in case we bumped into the man from the craft shop; he was probably laying in wait behind a fishing boat. Hamboo and hairy ears were waiting for us when we returned to our room, they greeted us as though we were long lost friends, and within minutes we were drinking a fresh pot of coffee, and of course tipping them for the service.

Pondicherry was to be our next port of call on the trip and we planned to leave the following morning, so we asked Mamboo about bus schedules for the next morning. He seemed a little upset that we were moving on so soon, but told us that there were many buses that ran on this route, leaving every half an hour or so from the bus stand in town. He recommended we catch one of the earlier buses, and as it would be a Sunday they would not be too crowded in the morning, this sounded good to us, so we decided on catching one around 7 a.m.

On hearing that we planned to leave the next morning Hamboo told us that it was his day off and he would not be around to see us off, but if we wanted to leave anything (tee shirts e.t.c.) we could give them to hairy ears. We told him we would see what we could do when we packed our rucksacks!

After our coffee I mentioned to Nick that I would like to go to the beach for the sunset to take some pictures, he was not up for that as he had a prior engagement in the bathroom to take care of.
I left him to his engagement and headed out again, first off I headed to the right side of the hotel where I looked over a wall out onto the open wasteland that had become home to a few families living in tents and makeshift hut dwellings made of palm branches. There were also goats and horses roaming around on this piece of land, not to mention a large pack of pigs routing through all the rubbish strewn around.

A couple of children had noticed me looking over the wall and came running over looking for whatever I could give them. Sweets, pens and a few rupees seemed to do the trick as they posed happily for some pictures. Your heart really goes out to these kids who have nothing, but still manage to smile in a most warm and genuine way that you don't see that often. It is at times like this that one can feel so humble and at the same time, so useless. What use was a pen if they had no paper? A few sweets won't fill a hungry stomach, and a few rupees won't change a life.

There were quite a few people on the beach, and they were all probably there for the sunset just like as me. I got talking to a young fisherman who was sitting around, not waiting for the sunset, but waiting for the rest of his boat crew to turn up before setting to sea for the night. From what little English he spoke I was able to gather that he was twenty-three years old, married with a small son, and he fished from a boat owned by his father. We sat for the best part of half an hour trying to communicate the best we could, as we waited for the sun to set on the horizon out to sea. All the time I was keeping one eye out for the man from the craft shop, just in case!


I took a few photographs of the boats and fishing nets as the sun was setting, and even one of the young man I had been speaking to as he sat there alone. He looked a real lonely figure sat on the edge of a boat looking out to sea, with only some crows for company. I get these ideas for real arty pictures come into my head, take the pictures, then wait eagerly to see the results, which are usually crap and nothing like what I had imagined they would look in the first place.

Oh well, art is art, no matter how crap it looks, just take a look at some of the things that have won the Turner prize for instance.

Returning up the beach to the hotel I felt that I could have sat there for hours, the whole experience of just sitting there on a semi-deserted beach had been very tranquil and relaxing, apart from the odd look over my shoulder in case the man from the craft shop crept up on me.

Creatures of habit that we are, we ate tonight again at Moonrakers for around 8.p.m. then took a slow walk back to the hotel, Nick had to visit the bathroom, and I had to go and lay down under that bloody Helicopter! I really needed to cool myself down.