Day 90 - Mallamapuram, India

Day 90 – Hers.

 

We awoke at 7:30 to solid and steady rain – tropical rainstorm rain, soak through your jacket to the skin-type rain, the same as we had the morning we went to see Ankhor Wat.  After breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant (a rather lengthy affair – it took an hour and a quarter to get a cup of coffee and two pieces of toast), we were meant to have a walking tour of the World Heritage Site temples and carvings that are Mallapuram’s claim to fame.  Dennis arranged minibuses to allow the tour to go ahead – but we didn’t really get the full explanations – nor many spectacular photographs – because of the heavy rain.  The temples and carvings are quite amazing – most completed in the 4^th-8^th centuries when Mallapuram was a major trading port – and many carved as ‘caves’ into solid granite outcrops.  We saw five different sites – my favourite was the ‘5 carriages’ temples which had huge carved animals, so lifelike that they could almost have been strolling amongst the temples, each animal and temple carved from one monolithic piece of granite.  The original plan had been to return for lunch and then hire cycles to go to one more site – the ‘Tiger cave’, yet another temple carved from yet another massive piece of granite, but in the end, Dennis just took us there as part of the morning tour.  Just as well, really, the rain didn’t let up at all until well into the evening.

We lunched at another local restaurant that messed up the orders and took forever to serve food that was edible but hardly fantastic – then found a grocery store to replenish our provisions.  We sloshed back to the hotel and peeled off our soaking wet layers.....had a quick shower (cold again, ugh) and then spent the rest of the afternoon reading. 

We didn’t feel like another meal of only passable standard, so ate some of the things we had bought in the shop for our dinner. Many of our group went out to hit the beer this evening.  We passed on that, thanks, but went out for coffee with Caroline – the chatty Texan – and met two other travellers with whom we swapped travellers’ tales and tips. After that we just chilled by candlelight (the power was out again....) until it was time for bed.