Mamallapuram

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we really enjoyed pondicherry. it's going to go down as one of my fave places definately. very indian, very tamil, but also, quite a lot french!

our room had the best air con we have had so far... we had to wrap up in several blankets at night. it was fab, although it did make it even harder when we had to leave the hotel.....

we visited Auroville. what / where is auroville you ask. well, please see auroville.org if you would like to hear about it without a massive dose of cynicism (as usual). this is what the website says....

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."

sounds nice eh? so, how do i get involved???

well, anyone can live in auroville so long as you are willing to be a "servitor of the divine consciousness".

okay, maybe just a day visit then. it was set up by a french lady known as The Mother. she spent time at a ashram in pondy, set up by Sri Aurobindo (i guess that's where the auro bit comes from, ("Sri" means holy)). we didn't visit the ashram, so i can't give you low down on him, i am not sure how long he spent contemplating for instance. anyway, at least this woman, The Mother, thought to do something instead of just philosophising. it's not quite a town, it's a collection of communities, called things like "Gaia" and "Certitude". in many ways the main bulk of Auroville looks like any collection of small villages. but i beleive it is more of a concept than a literal town. there is a visitor centre including a shop selling lovely handmade (but expensive) products. it's odd to have a pricey shop on site when one of the aims of auroville is to operate a cashless economy.

the main attraction for the day visitor is the Matrimandir. it's a big golden globe, rather sixties styleee (it was built in the sixties, or envisaged in the sixties anyway i think). inside is a "concentration zone". it's NOT for meditation, but for concentration, see, i think this Mother character might have a been slightly more down to earth than most of these gurus. you are only allowed a certain distance away to view it, and if you want to concentrate inside you have to make an appointment several days in advance. if you want to stay within auroville or find out more you have to commit to at least one week and offer to work (as well as pay for your food and accommodation). if we had more time, we might have given it a go. i cannot help my natural skepticism but at the same time it's a nice idea. i just don't think i am earnest enough really. in the end we cycled around some of it, which they didn't exactly encourage but also didn't stop us.

on our last night (saturday) in pondy, we spotted a poster for a DJ night at a "nightclub". house music, looked quite promising. well, except the licensing laws mean it had to finish at 11:30pm which is not what i would normally call a nightclub. anyway, we had seen plenty of tamil modern dance on TV. most of you will be at least a bit familiar with 'bollywood' dance, modern street dance heavily influenced by classical indian. Tollywood (tamil language films) is possibly even more prolific than bollywood and on tv all day long are the videos from the latest films. they style is not quite bollywood, not quite punjabi dance, or bhangra, or streetdance, or anything really. it's actually a bit more like your dad doing streetdance rather too enthusiastically, and getting it mixed up with an aerobics class from the 80's. it's quite entertaining. well, the point is, the young tamil lads in the nightclub employ this same style to the techno house dance music, and you know what, it was brilliant fun. they were only too keen to show us a few moves and you cannot fault their energy! also, they were all quite decent (we do get plenty of male admirers generally in india, of varying degrees of lecherousness). at the end of the night they said thank you very much for dancing with us and shook our hands!

we are now since yesterday in Mamallapuram. we decided to save a bit of money and not get aircon. so, it's back to hot, hot, hot. everything must be done slowly, with plenty of breaks for iced coffee, coca-cola, lassi etc. we haven't seen the two main attractions yet (the shore temple and five rathas) but we have seen some amazing rock carvings and sculptures.

there are many temple caves, temples carved in one piece out of a huge rock. and a huge rock balancing precariously known as Krishna's Butter Ball. a young local stone carver appointed himself our guide and explained some of the carvings etc. apparantly Krishna was very fond of butter, and had 1600 girlfriends. there is also quite a lot of representations of Vishnu here. i have noticed that of the three "main" gods, Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva, Shiva seems to be much more popular and well represented in most places. Our guide explained this is because Vishnu had only eight incarnations whereas Shiva had 100s. I guess this gave Shiva more chance to make friends and influence people.

there was one temple cave with a small chamber for meditating in. with the encouragement of the guide we sat inside and chanted "om.....". the chamber had some amazing acoustics, and the sound genuinely did echo and intensify inside as you chanted or hummed. it was quite impressive really. it was like the effect you get when you run your finger around the edge of a wine glass, or a tibetan singing bowl.

generally Mamallapuram is well set up for backpackers, plenty of shops selling imported fags (although i prefer indian brand Classic menthol, or Scissors menthol, Scissors, cute name for fags, and they are mini ones and very cheap. anyway) and loo roll. but it is off season now and many shops are closed. not many people are crazy enough to be here in this heat.

as you know, if you are paying attention, we have a flight from chennai on 20th may (thursday). we are not that keen to spend much time in chennai so are considering staying here and getting a taxi direct to the airport in the middle of the night on wednesday. it will probably actually be cheaper than getting a hotel in chennai (flight is 7:20am so we have to be there at 5:20am).

it's going to be strange getting on a flight, feels like maybe i am going home, especially as we are re-visiting apk, which the project director told us sincerely we could always consider our "home in india".

i don't keep track of the days, weeks, months very well, but i worked out a couple of days ago that i am well over the halfway mark now. i have been in india 12 weeks or so, and have only 10 weeks or so till my visa expires. still, plenty of time.......

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