Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram

Ever since seeing the Rick Stein BBC series in search of the best Indian curry we planned to visit this lovely fishing town to try the best fish curry Rick ever tasted.  We found the restaurant and had the fish curry and agree it was a pretty good curry (beautifully fresh red snapper in a spicy gravy. They brought a tray of fresh fish for us to chose - went away and cooked it up).

The Rick Stein discovered  restaurant with the 'best fish curry'

 The location can’t be beat – right on the beach of the Coromandel Coast with a lovely cooling breeze off the Bay of Bengal surrounded by colourful fishing boats.  The area was affected by the Tsunami a few years ago but seems to have recovered (though hard to tell in India were even things not damaged by natural disasters are looking pretty run down).

 

Bob relaxing over a beer

 However the next night we had a mixed fish masala from the Moonrakers restaurant and I think this was even better.  This was a whole red snapper, prawns and calamari cooked in this spicy masala paste.  Fantastic.  The fish just doesn’t get any fresher than this.

Fishermen tending their nets with an 8th Century temple in the background

Heading out into the surf

Mamallapuram is just beginning to grow as a tourist town (frequently a mixed blessing) but for now it is very nice – enough nice restaurants, shops and guest houses to keep the Western tourist happy (though finding a place for sundowners is a bit difficult and only a few of the restaurants sell beer, and surreptitiously at that).  The town is still a quiet fishing town with minimal touting from the trinket sellers and tuk-tuk drivers.   

Its main attractions are the ancient temples, rock-cut caves, stone Rathas (monolithic sculptures) and bas-reliefs from the Pallava Dynasty of the 7^th and 8^th Centuries. The whole area has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.  The carvings are very impressive.  We spent two mornings exploring them 

 

Shore Temple build in early 700

Ajuna's Penance - carved from a single rock

Krishna's butter ball

 

Bas relief

two of the five Rathas

 By 11 am it really is the ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’ time and we must head back to the hotel for a shower and siesta, only to emerge again around 5pm when it is slightly cooler.  

Mamallapuram gets power outages every day for about an hour or two in the middle of the afternoon.  All the shops and guest houses have back up batteries or generators to accommodate this but the circuitry is such that only essential items are maintained.  So the fan stays on but the air conditioning and internet go off.  This unreliable electricity happens despite having a nuclear power plant within sight just down the coast.  The locals tell us that things are much better as last year they would have power outages for about 10 hours every day.

Attempts are being made to make Mamallapuram a bigger tourist destination.  Off the beach is an old Indian submarine that is being made into a museum.  It is a Russian made Foxtrot submarine named Vagli, one of the Vela group submarines, made in the 1970's.  It will be brought up on the beach to a specially made complex.

INS Vagli