India Wed and Thurs

Ok, so this is first time that I have had time to write in my blog since Tuesday. Here is what happened……
Wednesday India
Not too much going on, still the same traffic. I have been trying to get a picture of a family of 4 on a motorcycle but I have only recently seen 3 at time.
Tonight we went to an Italian restaurant that was open air near the beach. You could not see the beach from where we were but if you walked down the driveway to the road you could see it. In India people go to the beach but they don’t swim or wear bathing suits. So there is really nothing on the beach, no surf shops, no condos no boardwalk. Just a beach, its kind of nice. But there is the litter, but that seems to be all over Chennai. The food was very good I got lemon chicken in butter and if I could have had seconds I would have.


Thurday India
We go finished early (2pm) So the driver who has been taking us to and from the office all week took us on a sight seeing journey. We went to Pancha Rathas its basically one large rock cut it small temples. This was amazing! Then we went to Mahabalpuram there we saw
• Thirukadalmallai, the temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu. It was also built by Pallava King in order to safeguard the sculptures from the ocean. It is told that after building this temple, the remaining architecture was preserved and was not corroded by sea.
• Krishna's butter ball - a balancing rock
• Arjuna's Penance - relief sculpture on a massive scale extolling an episode from the Hindu epic, The Mahabharata.
• Varaha Cave Temple - a small rock-cut temple dating back to the 7th century.
• The Shore Temple - a structural temple along the Bay of Bengal with the entrance from the western side away from the sea. Recent excavations have revealed new structures here. The temple was reconstructed stone by stone from the sea after being washed away in a cyclone.


There are a bunch of people that are trying to sell you crap. Things carved out of stone, jeweler, silks and guide books. And of course they see us coming from a mile away, they try every sales tactic from being aggressive or trying to be your friend ,not giving up after you say no, having a starving baby in one arm, being a tiny man or missing a limb. I had no money on me so I couldn’t get anything If I wanted too.

On the way back we stopped at some other places….. Ok on the way back I didn’t realize we were taking all these detours. First we stopped at this store the driver said to wait here. He ran in and talked to someone then came back out. Alrightly. Then we drove back to Chennai it was about a 1 hour drive so it was dark once we got back to the city. We pull into this run down hotel and drove to the back parking lot. We have no idea where we are and the driver says get out. Ummmm yeah, so we get out, he asks if we want coffee we said no. Then we have a restroom break. Thank God I only had to pee I didn’t want to touch anything in this bathroom. There was a bucket of water on the floor that water from a spicket was dripping to. I assumed this was for flushing since the tank of the toilet had no top and no water in it, I did not flush. Then we start walking down a very crowded street with shops and street vendors and we are told to take our shoes and socks off. I asked what are we doing here and he points to the temple entrance. "Are my shoes going to be here when I get back?" I asked I was wearing Doc Martens, the driver asked a lady in a shop next to the temple to put them in her shop, which was really just a table with some trinkets on it. Ok If we didn’t know this driver from all week I think we would have thought we were being kid napped. Well this ended up being one of the coolest things I have seen. We had ended up at the Temple of Shiva, there were people inside praying and a stage show with children dancing to a live Indian band. I could kind of tell they were depicting some story but couldn’t tell you any more than that. Then there was the temple that was pyramid made of a bunch of smaller statues of people and animals. This was a highlight and a nice thing to see to end the night.
We headed to a shop then back to the hotel had dinner and waited to go to the airport at 11pm for a 1:50 am flight to Germany.