December 19

The driver finally arrived, and we went to pick Prahladh up from his uncle's and continued south to Dakshina Chitra - a reconstructed village depicting the art and architecture of Tamil Nadhu. It was quite nice, and not too much of a tourist trap. Avi bought a scroll depicting the story of Ganesh and N'ama had henna applied to her left hand and arm.

The next stop was at Mahabalipuram which is a complex of temples of different styles. We took a local guide there who was very passionate but Praladh said he also made a lot of stuff up. The guy apparently finished 10 grades (in a Tamil school) and then taught himself Engish. It was not always easy to understand what he said but it was amusing nonetheless. The first temple was by the ocean - a bit worse for wear due to the proximity to the sea. Then we went to an area containing 5 pagodas and a few other structures - called 5 Brothers. And finally to another site whose main attraction was a huge wall intricately carved, which created the most amazing bas-relief.

We continued from there to a very nice hotel for a very late lunch. The setting was beautiful, the food mediocre but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

Our hotel was in Mayapuram which was quite a drive so we decided to skip the last temple on the itinerary. We drove and drove, bought some snacks so we don't have to stop for dinner and then around 9:30pm the drive stopped and said that we did arrive at that temple - Chidambaram. So we decided to look at it quickly and were very glad we did - it was just amazing and seeing it at night made it even better, especially when the gongs started tolling and people ran in for the last prayer.

We got to the hotel after 11 extremely tired. The hotel was not very nice but we were too exhausted to notice and even the cold showers did not matter at that point.

Avi's laptop seems to have a bad fan, so I will stop before describing today's events in fear it will melt down. Hopefully we can still turn it on tomorrow!