Arriving in Chennai

Arriving in Chennai in the early morning is a pungent reminder of coming back to the East. The airport is concrete and smells of the less exotic aspects of a visit to India. Immigration is swift and casual, but a visit to the loos is another reminder that we have at last arrived.
The drive South to Mamallapuram takes in the long sweep of beach with its resident fishermen. This community suffered great loss in the Tsunami, and the concrete block houses built for the fishermen are still not finished.
Mamallapuran is an old port and is now a World Heritage Site on account of the temples which litter the area. Most were built between the 7th and 9th Centuries, many carved from a single block of stone. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabalipuram) The whole area has the aspect of a series of demonstration samples of the art and architecture of the time, my favourite sculpture being an unfinished panel of an elephant with a baby playing underneath its tummy.
The stones are unprotected and other visitors can make it a noisy and litter-covered experience, but a short time looking at the detail in the sculptures shuts out modern annoyances. The Shore Temple is on the beach, and a stunning place to visit at sunset or sunrise.
All around the temples are stone carvers who work the soft stone of the area. They specialise in Hindu deities, but visitors to the markets and tourist shops of South India will recognise the delicate and skilled carvings of elephants and other animals. The stonecarvers line the route out of town and display their wares outside their lean-to shacks where they both live and work, oblivious of the health hazards of the stone dust.
Back to GRT Temple Bay, the walk along the beach was beset by the usual problems where you have a fishing community, but the naturalist may have been pleased by the huge piles of dead anchovies and large puffer fish on the shoreline. There are several small guest houses and restaurants on the beach.