Mahabalipuram (mamallapuram)

It took a 10/20 minutes to ascertain that in fact, I wasn’t going crazy, and yes. They are the same place. >< It’s all the more annoying in trip advisor because they have different hotels listed under the different names, so the trick is finding out which name to go with. But ah well. That wee snafoo aside.
Oh my god this place is cool. I’ve spent most of my time here chilling out 🙂 carving stone, painting or chatting in the local bar I was also painting. *happiness*
Annnnd the temples are cool here too. It’s the perfect  rock bouldering/scrambling landscape with beautiful archeology sprinkled round the place.

So. Mornings visiting temples whilst the sun is doable. Mid day hanging out with the wifi in my guest house or painting. Afternoon carving stone (I love new skills!) and the evening at the bar.. Having a great time 🙂
There’s a joke here that you get stuck in this town, and I do see why. Already I’ve put off leaving two days, once because I felt like it and the next actually because of a local bus strike. But I would of stayed anyway, the atmosphere here is really good. Because it’s getting into summer it’s off-peak, meaning it’s not too busy, and you have time to just sit around if you want to. Things happen that wouldn’t otherwise because everyone has free time. Last night when we were sitting in an indent in the road, which is where our teacher carves from we had music from an acoustic guitar that the local kiddies danced too. Then they joined us with the stone, asking us to draw designs and the like. It was adorable.
I’m spending most of the last part of the day with two new friends from the US and India, all girls and having too much fun for it to not be healthy 😛 Wheeenn Ekom and I turn up in NYC we’ll have an amazing guide in Misha..

Chennai

I’m in India!! So hot but it’s amazing. Everything is slightly sunburnt and faded, concrete dominates, either looking decayed or half finished. The metro in construction lines the road. Richest place I’ve seen from my taxi from the airport is the army training academy with a grand arched gateway entrance. ‘Sound horn’ is written on the back of every truck. My taxi has seat belts but no where to plug in and air con, he has a heated discussion over pricing on the phone. Chennai meanders rather than concentrates itself, my first hotel is a spike among low buildings. And it’s amazing. The raintree Hotel is not cheap. But it is gorgeous and the breakfast buffet alone turned out to be worth the money. With a roof terrace overlooking the city, huge rooms (with power showers!!), great food, fast wifi and friendly staff, I would recommend. But only maybe for a couple of nights max (say bye to your budget :P). Ah – almost forgot! So much complimentary stuff!! 😀 there was a dental kit, sewing kit, miscellaneous kit, self care kit including a plaster and a nail file, free water and fruit upon request, and pretty toiletries! Yay! These first couple of days I enjoy the air con and take loads of showers, exploring round the hotel on foot I avoid busier areas. Lots of young boys play cricket under the elevated roads and small Hindu shrines are everywhere. Looking down small streets is an experience, everywhere has so much colour, either from the walls or from the material drying from the windows. It’s lovely. From my next hotel and the bucket showers of hotel ammu palace, I do some proper exploring.

Marina beach is long and hot, the walk to the water front doesn’t make me look forward to the prize as it is hard going. I was tempted to kidnap a horse and take it to where I wanted to go before sending it back. St thome church was white, pristine against the usual riot of colours.

Behind the church is the staff said to have saved chennai from the tsunami, and behind that is the poorest place I’ve seen, in complete contrast with the towering architecture and bright stained glass windows there are patches of waistland along a track where a shanty town has been constructed. I’m stared at but exchange a smile with one of the only people active, a coconut seller. My first proper street food is on the way to the government museum.. Two samosa – one veg curry, one onion.. So good. and a savoury doughnut which was obviously fresh made. The museum itself was pretty cool, I drew from their collection of bronzes which were really nice. Bumping into a coach load of older British tourists was fun, I listened to their lectures on the gods depicted and followed them up to a gallery they opened for them. I also saw kapaleeshwarar temple 🙂 it was fun taking the bus to the temple, starting out the window between glances at the ticket man to see if it was my stop yet. The temple itself is situated overlooking a square lake with a smaller building rising from the center. Market stalls line the roads alongside leading to the temple. Flowers are sold on strings, as well as separately, along with small candles. When I reached the entrance itself I was chivvied along by two men! They thrust flowers into my hands and put my shoes behind their stall. I’m completely ripped off, of course, but it’s in good humour >< and I’m glad to have offerings. Inside the temple it feels somewhat like a circus, what look like paper mache statues are scattered around and are as brightly coloured as the real stone versions. I follow the flow of people here to see the tower the temple is famous for. Choosing ganesh to make offerings to, I give up my various flowers and candles to a man who presents them to the statue behind him. I’m then given some white powder for my forehead and a red flower to go with. I did have to watch a few people to figure out what to do with this 😛 I didn’t want to be disrespectful but I must have looked funny loitering. The first night at hotel ammu palace, I’d met a lovely kiwi who had me watch my first cricket match! New Zealand vs South Africa, it was tense and I’m now apparently a fan. 😛 But anyway, I have a place to visit in new Zealand when I get there! We grouped up to go for meals and added to our group his friends he was meeting and another guy staying at the same place. My last night in chennai ended with a Canadian, a kiwi and a brit trying to teach each other card games over chocolate and whiskey! Great send off.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Ah this week was strange! Time scrunched up and I turned round and it was Thursday.. Flight to chennai on Saturday morning. The turtle project follows a weekly routine so we knew what was coming and I just tried to enjoy my time with the turtles and the people. One thing I did at the project was separate from the usual. I helped continue an idea from volunteers previous to me. We wanted to put up turtle information, to provide more of an education to future volunteers. This will be about turtles in general as well as the turtles at the project. They had me write up information cards about each individual turtle because my handwriting’s ok. These were then laminated and hopefully the next group of volunteers will see them hung up around the tanks. There’s also a turtle blog, Instagram, fb and twitter in the making if anyone is interested. 🙂 I loved helping out with that, it felt like making a quantifiable difference. Ah. But India stressed me out this week. Where to stay, the actual booking of hotels, what to do, trains. Going from a mostly organised house offering 3  meals a day and familiar people to a new country where I’m pretty well alone felt like a big step. I do have a contact in India however 🙂 a friend of my dad’s. He told me where to stay and I was set to arrive with a place to go. Trains are an entirely different matter, but I figure I can work it out when I get to the wifi of my first hotel. Friday, my last day at ambalangoda, was awesome. We had discovered a Volleyball the day before so the time consisted of; turtle feeding and farewells, painting my name on the volunteer wall, iced coffee, Volleyball, walking to then relaxing on a big rock down the beach, then a final trip to the bar after dinner. Not bad 😛 .. Out of honesty I’ll admit that when I say Volleyball it was more like fetch.. My aussie friend Sarah and I had a great time though 😛 and looking back we should have taken a rock selfie!! The cute puppy will have to do.

Ambalangoda (3xfast)

At 3am we roused ourselves to get the 4am taxi to the train station. Ambalangoda the destination – and where the project I came here for will actually start! So excited to begin 🙂 it was quite a lot of people going down to kandy from ambalangoda. We were put on the train and told to count 7 stops after Colombo. Not an exciting journey – all I really remember was that it got crowded and the oranges we ate gave off amazing Citrus smells. Managed to take some pictures in the dawn but mostly slept.

We took a tuktuk to the ‘captains’ house. Seriously.. I don’t even know his name! As soon as we got in we went to the beach and I got my first burn. It’s crazily stereotypical the beach, the perfect water and sand. That one palm tree on the horizon which is slightly crooked. It made me laugh because of how postcard it all is. Then a couple of volunteers showed us hiro! An ice cream place which is awesome if you don’t mind waiting for an hour and a half. It’s got cheesy old music on (but too much beiber) and sells silly string.

Eventually we got back to the house to see the captain. He lectured is for awhile, repeating himself quite a lot >< I think he’s a hard man to work with.
But the turtles are his project.
The next day we meet the other turtle volunteers who are all lovely. Our turtle duties include, feeding, cleaning tanks, picking up beach rubbish, cleaning turtles, releasing baby turtles, any other odd jobs and staring at noan our coordinator. He’s just so pretty! 😛 The petite diving dorito.
Everything is so much fun, if hard work, all the turtles have awesome personality and are beautiful even if they’re disfigured. They all have names and most like head and neck scratches.
Releasing babies is the least work, they’re hatched and kept for 24 hours before we line up and let them run into the water. I don’t know why they’re not immediately let go – surely keeping them just drains their energy as we don’t feed them in that time? They should be released in a much more natural way – here there are suspicions of touristic value overriding turtle safety.. However, it’s a wonderful feeling to let them go and amazing scenery as you do it.
Tank cleaning is a mission, scrubbing yourself and the tank into shape – trying to make a difference in the algae. But music put on by another volunteer helps and impromptu dance parties occur regularly.
Feeding is good fun, especially with the less injured turtles who dive and swim for their food. And I have a new life skill! Fish preparation. We cut up hundreds of fish for feeding; head, then tail, then guts, oh my!
Cleaning the turtles involves using bits of coconut and sand to get the algae off their shells. The leeches we get off using tweezers, my first cleaning session a hawksbill called houdini had leeches in her eyes. Took me about 15 minutes to get them all out but I’m now happy to pronounce her leech free for the moment.
During the nights after food we all go to shangrela,the local bar. Learnt quite a few drinking games now 😛 And I’m the worst person in the room according to cards against humanity! Yay(!?)
Or there is Yoga on the beach – did that once. I don’t have the constitution, and between giggles a wave washed over us. Did not help my zen.
On the weekend we decided as a volunteer group to go down the road half an hour and end up in Galle. It’s a town built around a colonial fort and it’s very nice, very different from the rest of Sri Lanka however, you walk around and you almost feel like you’re in a European country like Italy or Spain. We had lunch at the Galle fort hotel, not cheap but damn their I’ve coffees are good. Brownies too but still not up there with my sister’s 😛 We were saying goodbye to a few volunteers at to go home and it was a nice send off. Shame about the weather that weekend, the first drizzle I saw in sri Lanka. Such a novelty! But not great when lots of shops are shut because of it. From Galle we went back along the coast to Hikkaduwa, a touristy little town good for scuba diving, parties and souvenirs. Vibrations was the club we went to, that was good fun. Crazy shuffle dancing and drums that they just didn’t stop playing for what felt like hours. 🙂 mad skills all round.
Awesome week really, only problem that occurred were the thefts in both volunteer houses. I myself haven’t been stolen from but many people complained of losing thousands of rupees and even a pandora bracelet. We complained to the captain but not much happened, it wasn’t fun becoming paranoid about belongings. Lockers were promised by Saturday/Sunday. They were finished the following Friday.
Learnt how to be careful I suppose 🙂 and invested in such items as padlocks with chain.