Everything with chips

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In the course of my sightseeing today, I realised that the air is constantly full with the sound of sculptors working on their pieces. The studios of Mamallapuram turn out statues for temples across the globe, and their chip-chip-chipping is background noise throughout the day. Around the workshops there also tends to be a cloud of stone dust, an unwelcome sight for contact lens wearers.

I first went to the Shore Temple, a World Heritage site that is probably the most disappointing monument I've seen in India. Though it has a dramatic location within yards of the breaking surf, and must have been a sight to behold in its day (constructed in the early 8th Century), the intervening years have seen its carvings so ravaged by the elements that it's virtually impossible to make out any detail. Only on a couple of surfaces within the temple, partially hidden from the scouring effects of the sun, wind, and sea spume, can be seen anything remotely detailed.

I then visited the stone carvings in the town, some of which I'd already seen yesterday. It was baking hot so I had to regularly seek shade and take a breather.

In the afternoon, I visited the most impressive carvings in Mamallapuram - the Pancha Pandava Rathas (accessible via the same ticket as the Shore Temple). This is a group of 5 free-standing monoliths that imitate structured temples, plus several life-size animal sculptures. The lane to the complex was packed with stone-carving workshops, making it highly atmospheric. The rathas were all carved in a fashion where the upper parts of the stone were worked on first, so that nothing below could be damaged. Though the detail of the carvings is OK, the significance is really in that they were carved from solid rock.

I dined at a French place called Nautilus just over the road from my hotel. It was very cramped and busy, and I had to share a table, which didn't please anyone. Though the other customers seemed to be from all over the world, the one linking theme was that they all smoked like chimneys, so after a day of stone dust my eyes received no relief. I wolfed down my fish and chips before taking an evening spin around town and then retiring.

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Photos

Shore temple
"Detail"

Shore temple
Nandi bulls

Five Rathas
Detail

Old joke
Apparently the Sanskrit term for a building with a rounded end translates as "elephant's bum"