Mamallapuram, Dec 21-27

Mahabalapuram as known by many, this area features 1400 year old bas relief and cut-rock temples and monuments, including the recovered shore temple, not pictured. We spent six wonderful days wandering through the sites, walking along the shore (Bay of Bengal), and poolside ordering food from our hotel attendant. The way to the beach is lined with harkers offering clothing, toys, jewelry, shells, brass items, crystals, and stone. Lots and lots of stone. No, really. This town is not just representing a documentation of a long ago culture, the Dravidian art represented is one of the oldest lines of Indian history and is very much alive. This town is still in the sculpting business, in some ways on a smaller scale, in other ways not. Soapstone, alabaster, jet, and marble are the most common mediums for these craftsmen. Most of the designs are Hindu devotionals of most Gods and Goddesses, with tourist overtones of kama sutra, pot leaves, yin-yang, and Om's. Okay, that one IS Indian, but still. It's only the hippies back home who REALLY wear them. Amazing work. We got a few samples to bring back, small ones as this is stone. It was actually fun and weird to stay there. I had never stayed in a hotel for that long before. And we had room service because it was the same price as dinner downstairs. And marble floors to do the best hotel-room-yoga ever. No, really. Two of us even. one is difficuly enough, and we were side by side! The hotel even arranged a driver to meet our train at Chennai Central, an hour away, and we got a ride back at 4am at the end of our stay. It was a 15-minute rickshaw drive to and from the station in Mysore, and that much could not have been better. Now here is what didn't work. Making reservations the week before Christmas. Our original plan was to go to Pondicherry and Auroville for most of our stay, and we were trying to cram in our stay in Mamallapuram as well. We purchased train tickets for Chennai, intending to get to points south by car, bus, or train. We got first class for the ride over, executive for the ride back. Getting bumped to a lower class is never an encouraging sign. The next phase involved many rupees, many minds, many books, many hours of grief, many , many, too many phone calls. PHONE CALLS TO FIND OUT HOW TO MAKE A PHONE CALL !!! Sorry. No, really. I tried not to yell at the phone booths too. We tried calling at our regular place, only to find out that out-of-state phone calls use a different system, and that's why my calls won't go through. On the right phones they won't work either. The numbers are repeatedly checked with travel books, online sources, even the ever friendly phone booth attendant. They pour through ancient tomes looking up the prefix, because that is obviously my problem. their problem is that the books are in English and their alphabetizing skills are not the best. They tell me the number doesn't exist. I flip further back in the book, find the town listings, and try to make my calls. Numbers are either not in service, offline, or otherwise not connecting. India's version of directory assistance is consulted several times and finally, it is revealed that Chennai has swallowed up the nearby area with it's zip and area codes, and I am given the secret information. What is frustrating but understandable is that this is a situation of people running to catch up with technology. If I hadn't needed to call the East coast these phone representatives would never have known, never have updated their books. Nobody told them. Actually, they didn't update the changes, and I guess there is probably little call for calls to Chennai in their minds. I estimate that seventy calls (attenpted and otherwise) were required for this part of the journey. Many more followed as we found out that every hotel in and around Pondicherry and Auroville is booked solid through the new year. Ouch. I had emailed at some point to the Hotel Bhavan in Mamallapuram and arranged for our first night. After freaking out about the rest of the trip, I played e-tag and phone tag confirming our stay. Finally Vivian gets an actual hotel desk attendant. We are able to confirm the one night the email thought I wanted. We actually needed six, and they countered with maybe two, with attitude. By the end of the conversation Vivian has secured three nights, no more, but there may be a chance to push when we get there. More calls are made, no luck in P & A, we call back begging for more time, we have a child, we're pathetic Americans, the trains are booked up,... We get the lodging, the car at 9pm, the room service, the pool... aaaaahhhh. Five days of bliss. Christmas at the beach, temples almost to ourselves at times, fruit on the buffet for breakfast, cable TV. Every morning at 5am the nearest Temple blasts devotional music. Five days. When I check in downstairs about our car for the return trip and about payment for the remaining balance, I find they thought I was leaving in the morning and there may not be lodging for us tomorrow night as this is the busy season. It did work out in the end, and I will let one of the girls relate for you the unfortunate events of Yarrow's digestive system on the ride back. The long, long, stinky, bumpy ride back. The trip was a trip in time, a trip in language (Kannada for Tamil), and a trip for the soul. It was challenging in ways we didn't expect, and wonderful in ways we couldn't have recreated.