Hotel Mamallaa Heritage Mamallapuram

... swimming, but when I went down to check it out, the water felt really warm. We got up to our room to settle in and before we knew it, we were getting first a basket of fruit and cookies and then a bottle of red wine delivered to our room as welcome gifts. Our next visitor was a man who came to turn our towels into animal shapes. That night for dinner, I had prawns and remembered one of the other major pluses about being in South India along the coast - the ...

... and your self confidence will be back very shortly. <br><br>I had some little shopping to do and Mahaballipuram is a great place to do so. I had also promised Judy that I would try to find a few things she wants to bring back to the US with her when her company sends her back to Boston next summer. We found the big beautiful Buddha that she was looking for. Madhan negotiated really hard and we were both very excited about bringing ...

... taken over by tourism - only tourists and Kashmiri shopkeepers ever seemed to be around here. But the tourism wasn't so bad. As a traditional fishing and stone-carving town, Mamallapuram only seemed to attract the culture vultures and so on the whole managed to avoid the nasty/seedy side to the industry. The people there were also incredibly friendly. They would smile and say hello as you passed, and although many would try and get you to go into their shop, it wasn't in the ...

Mamallapuram (took some time to say that one right) is a small fishing village cum tourist spot situated between Pondicherry and Chennai. Departing Pondicherry (and getting charged a full day's hotel fee for checking out two hours later than 6:00 a.m... Grrr...), I took the government/public bus, sadly, for the first time this trip. You would be amazed at how easy and, seriously, comfortable and enjoyable the public buses are (at least this one was ...

... for his cheapest AC room (Rs700) after explaining that yes it was a nice room, but that didn't change our budget, we wanted AC and could only pay Rs400 per night... we reached an agreement... Okay if you stay for 3 nights - but please make sure you don't tell any other of our guests... We retired to the room as it was the middle of the day and we were rather hot and exhuasted, we switched everything on but the remote for the air con didn't seem to work ...

... before the ocean, and as I stand there, I squint my eyes just so at the horizon, allowing my focus to retreat a bit, and for the briefest of moments, I get the sensation of having the faintest grasp of just how huge the world really is. I opted to rent a bicycle for a day so as to be able to venture out farther into the town. It has been years since I've ridden a bike, and making my way through the narrow streets along the ocean, I felt like a kid again ...

... wasn't stagnating with plastic trash or a single stream that wasn't oozing pollutants with more and more cartloads of waste being taken to their banks and tipped in. These squalid scenes are normally populated by scavenging dogs of such obvious ill health that it seems a wonder that they are alive at all. Neither does it help that any open space, whether in town or country, is used as an open toilet which , in some instances, creates a slick of evil-smelling slurry.<br><br>In ...

... many crashes"; I said we'd risk it. Then, exasperated, he told us today the bus didn't leave for several more hours (I knew they left every half hour). I became angry and made to get out of his vehicle but he came over all pleading and begged me to get back in, promising to take us to the bus station. For the rest of the journey he was sulking, which we had come to learn from experience is just another way to get us to cough up money (by making us feel guilty ...