Trivandrum to Mamallapuram

---

Its been a while since I last wrote but I've ben very very busy doing nothing at all.

After leaving Kovalam I popped up to Trivandrum which is only a few miles up the road to catch a flight to Chennai (Madras). Spent the night there but didn't really do alot except eat, drink and sleep. Durring the day there was a huge march/demo on the main road outside the hotel. Not sure what it was all about but quite a few people were carring big pictures of uncle Joe Stallin, Karl Marx and Lenin so i'm going to take a stab in the dark and say it was something to do with the communist state government.

Had an uneventfull flight from there up to Chennai but only passed through on my way an hour down the coast to Mamallapuram. I had planed on a few days there before moving on but I really liked it and am running out of steam a bit so stopped for ten days in the end. Its only a small place large village rather than a town and is famous for the five rathas (temples carved out of solid rock), rock carvings, Krishna's butter ball and local rock carvers.

I'd seen most of the sites in the first few days so spent about a week just wandering around watching the carvers at work and lounging in the garden of the place I was staying reading and watching the resident troop of monkeys up to no good. Had to be carfull not to leave anything unattended or the next thing you know theres a monkey up a tree wearing your Y fronts on his head.

The only downside to the place was the constent power cuts. Its a big problem in tamil nadu so the torch i bought with me was worth its weight in gold.

After leaving mamallapuram it was a quick trip through Chennai again for the flight to Mumbai for the last few days before flying home. I had my name called over the tanoy at the airport as secruity weren't happy about something. Luckily they just wanted to search my hold luggage, had visions of the old rubber glove and the inability to sit down for a week!!

So I'm now right back where I started 3 months ago in Mumbai. Saw some more filming going on this morning right next to the place i'm staying, hung around again in the hope of bollywood stardum but it wasn't to be just ended up having a barney with the secruity bloke about weather or not i could take photos. He said I couldn't I gave him a lesson in some of the more colourfull words in the English language.

So thats it for another year will see some of you in a few days and will continue with the blog in December, have no idea where it will be from so let me know if you have any ideas.

---