December 21

We started off at 9:30 and went to Prahladh's. His parents are also charming and we
sat there a bit before setting off to Thanjavur. A friend of Prahladh's father
joined us for the day. We started at the Brihadishwara temple which is almost
identical to the one we saw the previous day, but much more active and bustling with
tourists and pilgrims. We hired a guide who was extremely amusing. He told us of the
wonders of the digit 9, and tried to impress us (unsuccessfully) with some very silly
arithmetic magic - he was much impressed by the contra-trick Yuval showed him. We
did the rounds of the deities, admired the sculptures and talked to some pilgrims -
the guide almost undressed a very cute young man to show us all the pilgrim stuff he
was carrying - rosaries and bells on strings under his shirt. We broke for lunch and
decided we ate at enough hotels so Prahladh took us to a place where the lcoals eat
(and which of course costs less than a 1/0 of what we paid at the other places).
This was very nice - we ate off banana leaves using our hands and it was delicious.
No ill effects so far so we will try and repeat this. After lunch we went to see a
crafts bazarre which was pathetic and did not satisfy our consumerism and then to
the Royal Museum. It houses some amazing sculptures of Shiva, Vishna, Parvati etc.
which date back to the 11th century and later. It was a bit worrying to see all the
sculptures there completely unprotected and everybody able to touch them. We also
climbed the bell tower to enjoy the views and see the skeleton of a whale which
washed out to the shore 400 years ago. The sign said it belongs to the "particular
class of whale-bone whales!". Next we went to the Saraswati Mahal Libraries and
looked at the eclectic collection of books that the king had at the beginning of the
19th century.

We took a different way back and visited the ancient Kallanai dam and bridge over the Cauvery delta. Theway was much less busy than the highway and very beatiful - lots of trees and vegetation. We walked over the bridges and then continued to Prahladh's parent wherewe dropped Prahladh off and then to the hotel for dinner. It was nice that we got in a bit earlier today so we could have a nice relaxed evening.