Chennai Mahabalipuram trip 25 26 April 2008

24/Apr

We left bangalore by KSRTC volvo bus at around 1145 pm. The bus was originally scheduled to depart at 1030. We had a painful wait at the bus stand for over 90 minutes.Earlier in the evening, I left office at around 7:30 by celcabs taxi. This taxi broke down midway. No autos were available and I had to walk till Indian Express Office near Shivajinagar. Caught a bus there, got down at Udaya TV office, got an auto there and came home finally.

25/Apr
Well, the bus reached Poonamalee high road bus stop at around 6:30 am. We took an auto from there and reached the choultry (Ramasamy Kalyani Tirumana Mahal , #47 Mount Poonamallee High Road , Kattupakkam, Chennai – 600056) which is near Kumanan Chavadi bus stop. This choultry is a new one. At least that's what the auto driver told us.Jayathi's sister and brother in law received us and we got an AC room all for ourselves. The wedding ceremony was over by the time we reached the mandapam. We had a bath and went upstairs for breakfast. This choultry looked really posh. Couple of floors and lot of rooms. It even had a lift ! The entire hall was air conditioned.

After having lunch at around 1130, we made a move. We left by auto to Anchana's dad's house in West Mambalam. It is very near Ayodhya Mandapam on AryaGowda street. We took directions from mama and we found his place pretty easily. Going around in circles looking for the house in that weather wouldn't have been fun; that's for sure !

After a cup of coffee, we left for Mahabalipuram at around 2:30 in a taxi that mama had arranged for us. One needs to head towards Chengelpet (past the Vandalur zoo) for MBpuram. It takes around 2 hours to get there.We spent some time looking at the nice rock sculptures. Unfortunately, we had'nt taken a camera along. So we had to make do with the cameras on our cell phones. We did not visit the Sthala Shaya temple there.

We headed towards the beach and spent a lot of time there. The water was clean and refreshing. We started from there by around 6:30.We stopped at the Adyar Anand Bhavan at Pondy Bazaar and bought some carrot halwa. Reached home by around 9.Chappatti and sabji for dinner.

26/Apr

After breakfast of idli and coffee, we started from home towards the famous Ranganathan Street. Though I had been to this placebefore, never had I got into any of the shops therein. One word comes to mind - unbelievable.We visited Nalli, Pothy's Kumaran Silks and Saravana Stores. The variety of dresses and other apparel on viewwas mind boggling. We purchased a couple of sarees and a couple of trousers.Lunch at Pondy Bazaar Saravana Bhavan. The food was ok. The ambience was good. The service was bad and theprice was astronomical. Swathi south Indian meals cost 160 bucks. Almost not worth it.Some more shopping and then home by around 3 pm.After a cup of coffee, we started towards Velassery where Priya's friend Sunita lives. Cost us 90 to get there.Sunita lives with her husband Bijoy and kid Alwyn. Alwyn apparently gets along very well even with strangers !5 minutes is all it took for him to become friends with us ;)He was ready to come with us when we got ready to leave ! 80 bucks more to get back home. We must have spent close to 500 just on auto fare on this trip.

After dinner, we left for Koimbedu bus stand. The bus started more or less on time. Reached bangalore at around 5 am the next day.

Shravanabelagola Trip 20/Jan/2008

The plan was to leave Bangalore pretty early for Shravanabelagola. But we overslept and we were able to leave for Majestic only by around 7:30 am.

We took lemon rice and curd rice along with us for the journey.We boarded a bus bound to Hassan. A co-passenger advised us to get off at Chennarayapatna from where he said several buses would be available to reach SVB.

We reached Chennarayapatna in just under 3 hours. As we were entering the CRP bus stand, we spotted a bus leaving for SVB. SVB is around 10-12 kms from CRP. There were lush green fields on either side of the good road connecting CRP and SVB.We could see the giant statue of Gomateshwara atop a hill even as we were a fair distance from the bus stand.

The town of SVB is a small, rather tidy one. We passed a pretty garden on our way up the hill.Leaving our slippers, we began our trudge up the hill. We soon realised how out of shape we were ! Gasping for breath, and legs paining, we finally managed to reach the top. The view from up there was pretty good.It did not take us very long up there. The rock sculpture of Gomateshwara was pretty impressive, although I must admit, I had expected it to be much bigger.The temple surrounding Gomateshwara was pretty impressive too, as temples go. There was a lot of rock up there ! It was just as well that it wasn't too hot that day !

Contrary to our expectations, we found that climbing down was not very easy ! We were thankful when we eventually reached the bottom.

Raghu Hotel appears to be the biggest restaurant in SVB. We had lunch there. The food was pretty ordinary but the service was excellent. The staff were extremely courteous asking repeatedly if we wanted second helpings !

There appears to be a good shuttle service between CRP and SVB. We had to wait for just over 10 minutes before we got a bus back to CRP.But we had to wait for a pretty long time at CRP to get a bus for Bangalore. Most of the buses were full.I had a tea at the bus stand hotel while we were waiting.We finally did get a bus which was relatively empty and we boarded it.

We reached Bangalore by around 7 pm.

Spectators at the Sydney Cricket Ground

Indian cricket spectators are boors. Contrast this with the Australian crowd which genuinely applauded Tendulkar's superb effort on the Sydney Cricket Ground on 04/Jan/2008.

It was so good to watch. As soon as Tendulkar took off for those two runs after stroking the ball into extra cover, the entire ground including the Australians stood up as one. These people, if you ask me, are true lovers of the game. Yes, they root for the Australian team and want it to win, but they acknowledge class when they see it; even if it is present in the opposition ranks.