Monuments in Mahabalipuram

 No I’m not going to attempt to say it but when the Indians do, it sounds a little like a slowly shooting machine gun. We are current sat at Chennai airport waiting for our flight to Delhi, and will arrive in good old Rochester MN in about 40 hours if all goes well. We have both been mildly ill so Mahabalipuram was our last full day of tourism, I’ll cover the last two days in another post.

So the G20 has been in town, and the day before we visited the delegates were treated to a tour, predictably causing even more than the usual level of  chaos. When we did the Inca Trail for the first time, our guide Eric would usually give a lengthy lecture on each of the many sets of ruins we walked by. Inevitably he would wind up his presentation with a dramatic description of what the archaeologists had dug up, and inevitably it was lama bones. So in south India whenever you ask what you are going to see the inevitable answer is temples. After upsetting the whole Hindu population of Chennai by pointing my phone in the wrong direction (see photo of angry man Sue posted yesterday) I was a bit templed out. But Mahabalipuram was worth a trip.

Here’s Sue risking life and limb under this extraordinary boulder. According to our guide it was absolutely safe, but I didn’t notice her getting under it.

Then a stunning bas relief that was nearly 2000 years old:

And for those of you waiting with baited breath yes there were some temples:

My favourite part was seeing the local animals enjoying some of the G20 bounty

 My belated New Year’s resolution is no more Hindu temples.