MAMALLAPURAM What A Pallava

Good times, bad times at the beach.

An easy-going town with a nice beach, some interesting old temples and a lot of gift shops.

The old rogue.

On our first day of wandering we were railroaded by tour guide David, a good Roman Catholic boy, by marriage said he. Not sure he'll appearing in the Sopranos any time soon.

As it was the first day of Cultural Heritage Week all the temples were free today, he told us.

For a couple of quid he would give us a taster of the Shore Temple.

After a cursory but entertaining bit of 'guiding' he relieved us of another few quid by roping his mate in to tuktuk us around the other nearby temples as well. David came along pretty much for the ride.

We knew were being naive, but he was good fun and, as it turned out, the temples WERE all free that day, so we saved about a quid on what we would've spent next day as planned, and met another great character.

Butterball. For fat Buddha.

The temples themselves were about 1300 years old, built for the Pallava kings, and were beautifully preserved examples of the local stone masons artistry, which filled great swathes of the town, largely in the gift shops.

It was a nice, clean town and recently in the headlines due to Chinese PM Xi Ping's trade  meeting with Indian PM Modi; some cobbled together PR guff about Chinese design influence, which in reality probably involved Chinese slave labour, but why let a bit of historical human suffering get in the way of a good trade deal?

Dancing girls, ready for the show.

Mamallapuram has some decent beach, particularly near the Shore Temple, where we caught a bit of sun, watched the locals go for a dip (looked a bit under-towy for us), admired the local horsemen and saw some nuns taking selfies in the sea.

I was offered a reading with an astrological parrot, but declined. I was a bit sceptical of its powers, to be honest.

There were lots more white people in this town, mostly Americans and Russians, so we must have crossed some sort of invisible traveller border to the South.

Roger from Miami, who had retired from a career as an art director in Hollywood and divided his time between here and Thailand.

Marvin and Trish had been on the road for 17 years, had a pad in Portugal and had upped sticks from Sausalito, San Francisco and never looked back.

Lesley from Boston and Michael from Oz had met some years ago while travelling on a local bus. She was impressed he'd brought a surfboard onto a crowded bus, so they got chatting.

They still travel on the buses, he still has his surfboard, they both carry fold up Brompton bikes, plus their rucksacks. On the bus. Cool, but curious to the locals, I bet.

We had some good times with these lovely, interesting people, drank a bit and ate some good grub, too.

Main drag.

Bottle shop on the edge of town.

Then something made me stay near the loo, so I stayed indoors for a bit.

Kim explored more temples and stuff and told me (again) I was missing out.

Then we headed further south.

Goes down well.