We left Bangalore a little past 7:30AM- a challenge for Janet(!)- we drove for about an hour and stopped at a coffee place along the highway. We then drove on toward Pondicherry from Krishnagiri and stopped for a short while at Gingee Fort- where we had stopped the last time too. The temperature was much better this time, but it was still hot. We took a few more pictures and observed a small army of laborers working on restoring some of the old fort walls. There was
no one there the last time- a month ago. A couple of the pictures show sights seen along the road. It is not at all unusual to see people hanging from the side of a bus here- at least on smaller road, but some we saw were on major roads. We were also amused by a herd or goats being brought across a road just as we and many other people were riding along. This is life in the smaller towns, but we see similar things sometimes in Bangalore.We had to move on to Auroville though.
When we went to Auroville in Sept. Jim bought a sort of xylophone and the day after we returned this was dropped on the floor and parts were damaged. We were able to contact the makers by email and they said they could supply new parts for a reasonable price, but they recommended we not ship them, so we arranged to pick them up. We went there straight from Bangalore (well, we did get a little lost!) and they were at their shop and they did fix us up! They had a number of interesting other musical instruments so it was a good visit!
Our next stop was at the hotel at which we stayed our previous visit to return the mobile phone charger that we had accidentally taken with us.
They too were cooperative and gave us our money back fairly quickly! We then went to our hotel for the night. The temperatures were much better this visit compared to the last, but it was still hot.The next day we went back to Mahabillipuram. Jim regreted that we did not stop at a site just north of the Tiger Cave last time. A site which was partly uncovered in the tsunami of 2004 has been excavated further and we stopped to look. It was not as interesting as the stone carvings elsewhere, but still interesting to see a site that has been uncovered. There was a sign in Tamil which we assumed said to keep out because there were ropes all around the place, but some people went in anyway until a laborer told them to get out. We were tempted to give him some for chasing the people out- thinking this might encourage him to chase others out, but
he then asked for money from us (the foreigners) before we could give him any, so we decided not to give it since he would probably figure we gave it because he asked, rather than for doing a task he was probably supposed to be doing anyway. We could not figure what the site was - other than it was probably a temple, but part was built around a big granite boulder. Unlike other areas, the boulder seemed to have no carvings so we wondered what the story is that goes with it. Janet walked on the beach some too.We went into the town which is not very pretty and it is full of shops and stone cutters. We visited a couple shops to look at sculptures before having lunch and then visited more sculptors. We bought some small scupltures in marble, sandstone and granite that are of very good quality. We went back to the hotel and planned to leave early Monday morning to go into Chennai to accomplish our third goal.
The Indian government, in its lust for paperwork has taken up more than 5 full pages of our passports over the past year. This combined with another couple pages or so that we used in our trip the Tanzania, has left us with few blank pages left in our passports. So, we got some forms off the internet and filled them out and Jim was dropped off at the US consulate in Chennai to have blank pages added to our passports. The actual work was relatively painless, and took about 30 min., but the security is fairly tight an annoying. However, that goal was accomplished!
In retrospect, it is probably unusual that we planned to do these 3 things and all 3 went smoothly. In general, here, it seems likely that one or two of the three would have given problems and we would have had to do it all over again! For example, we just received our passports back from the Indian government on Friday before we left (our visas are renewed until end of next Sept.), but they could very well have delayed the return for some reason, but we got them and it went fine.
While Jim was at the consulate, Janet was driven by Joseph to a shop that was nearby. The shop was quite nice, but did not actually open until after Jim walked there from the consulate. We then visited some other craft shops in Chennai which were quite nice.
We got on the road to home and arrived about 9PM. The Highway connecting Chennai and Bangalore is actually pretty good most of the way. There are parts still under construction and one part that seems to be a giant bus stop on both side of the divided highway where the traffic comes to a crawl, but otherwise its a fairly smooth trip.
We enjoyed this short trip, however Jim came down with a cold or something (which is still lingering) and was somewhat sick on Monday, but quite sick on Tuesday and Wed. so he stayed home from the office. About 1/3 of the department was sick just before we left and over the weekend and when we returned so he may have gotten the illness at work the previous Thursday.
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