Weekend in Mahabalipuram

This was my first weekend outside Chennai. We went to Mamallapuram, which is said to be the only real holiday resort in Tamil Nadu (that's the name of the state I'm in at the moment). There are fish restaurants everywhere, cheap places to stay and lots of begging children. Eugen and I set off early on Saturday, took the 7 o'clock bus from Chennai and met up with a couple of Russians Eugen knew. They're advertising designers and photographers for National Geographic. Unfortunately their English was more than limited, so I had serious communication problems.

Once we arrived in Mamallapuram, also called Mahabalipuram (about two hours by bus), we first wanted to find a room and then join the Russians on the beach. Eugen is thinking about moving there from Chennai, since he's out of the AIESEC programme. Anyway, we found a nice little room for 150 rupees per head, which is a bit less than €3.

Once we had the room, we headed to Ideal Beach. Ideal Beach is a holiday resort with a swimming pool, volleyball court, tennis courts, hammocks and a beach. For 150 rupees you can spend the day there as a day guest and be pampered by the service (which costs extra, but is very affordable). The Russians behaved pretty hilariously at the resort (bawling, drinking quite a lot and ignoring the pool rules), which was just about the only thing besides the beautiful scenery that kept me in a good mood, since I was pretty cut off communication-wise.

In the evening we went back to the village and met Yuki and Markus. They had actually wanted to come along in the morning, but didn't quite make it. Yuki is an AIESEC intern from Japan, Markus is from Austria. They took a room in the same guesthouse as us, and we had a nice evening together.

Eugen went back the next morning, and we went to Ideal Beach again. In town we happened to run into Cecile and Ruben, two more interns from Chennai. The second day at Ideal Beach was miles better than the first (which wasn't sooo bad either): we played some good volleyball and it was simply a lovely day. On the way back in the evening I had my first truly Indian bus experience (on the way there we'd taken more of a luxury bus): a well-filled bus with guaranteed contact with your neighbour… But it was bearable, and dirt cheap…