It was the month of December and me and my friend were roaming around Pondicherry when we decided to squeeze Mahabalipuram into our trip. We boarded a bus from Pondicherry's bus station which dropped us at a highway junction close to Mahabalipuram within 3 hours. From the junction we decided to take on an auto to drive us through the entire area for sight-seeing.
Although initially I was really apprehensive about the driver but later I found out that he was a licensed tour driver with even an official ID card. The whole of southern India is much ahead over others in these aspects especially in law and order and the fact that even an auto-driver had a licensed ID card really amazed me.
Our tour started with getting an entry pass and then entering the region enclosing the panch-rathas. The weather was extremely hot and dry even though it was the month of december and the sun was scorching above our heads. But the beautifully sculpted carvings and architectures managed to take our attention away. It was breathtaking, how beautifully they were designed.
The Panch-Rathas were breathtaking in their view and although all the walking around was making us drowsy but we still wandered around the place continuously basking in the waves of amazing sculptures and scriptures.
Next on our itinerary was the Indian Sea Shell Museum which houses an amazing collection of shells and different varieties of aquatic creatures from lobsters to water snakes. Also thankfully the whole setting and atmosphere inside the building was much cooler compared to the scorching heat outside and thus it kind of became a resting spot for us to cool down before we headed out again outside. At this moment I started to realize that booking that auto for the entire trip was our best decision ever!
Apart from the shells , the museum also housed a wide variety of aquatic creatures and some of them were really scary such as a water snake which I saw for the first time in my life and hoped to never come across again!
After all this we headed down to the Mahabalipuram light house. Although I was really apprehensive of the climb to the top especially since the steps to the top were damn small with only one single way of going up as well as down and with the huge amount of crowd gathered over that small area but with my friends constant insistence I decided to go ahead with the climb along with him. Have to admit though, It was damn scary!
After getting down back alive, we decided it was time to enjoy some cool breeze and hence we decided we would head over to the Shore Temple on foot. The shore temple is located close to the Mahabalipuram beach and hence the temperature was much cooler in that area giving us a sigh of relief!
The final item on our list was Krishna's boulder which was essentially a giant piece of rock but nonetheless we were here and so it was worth checking out.
After all this walking and being driven around, we were extremely tired and it was time for us to leave. We headed back to the highway junction from were we caught our bus to Chennai to a guy's place who was my friends's friend. We were in deep need of some rest.
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