Day 94 of 145
It is hard to believe that it was 25 years ago since Dana and I last made call at Madras (now Chennai) on the Royal Viking Sky’s1985 World Cruise. Madras is a big city and not a clean city which has a few sites to see in within the metropolis but to really enjoy all it has to offer you have to get out and away from it.
One of the more popular sites is the Church of St. Thomas (a.k.a. “Doubting Thomas”) one of Jesus Christ’s chosen 12.
He spent some 20 years in India from 52 AD to 72 AD before he was speared to death. The church claims his tomb and there is a hill further from the sea where it was said he preached daily. He was also in Cochin, on the west coast, where we will soon be.
The first day of two, Dana and I stepped out late after noon for a little tuk tuk ride for a two hour trip down the beach (said to be the second longest in the world) and then around part of the city. The beach is so wide it must also be about the widest in the world. Many people come to bathe here.
We came across a bizarre sign along the beach. In 2004 this east coast state of Tamil Nadu was impacted by the disastrous tsunami where a total of just under 8,000 people were washed away. The locals told me that about 700 early bathers were washed away on this beach alone.
The second day I took Matthew, our Video Broadcast Manager, down the coast to do a Jamie’s Journey to the Hindu site of Mahabalipuram (Great Sacrifice Village). On the way we ran into a Bollywood filming in a back alley and we saw a dance number that was quite good.
As for Mahabalipuram, it was even better than I remember it and many of the guests who took the tour also believed that the day was fantastic! There are basically three sites to see there. First was the Shore Temple which was built around the 7th century. At one time it is believed that there were a total of seven of these but the other six have been claimed by the sea (Not from the 2004 tsunami). The last one built is the one that still remains and was just barely unaffected by the 2004 tsunami.
It was both interesting and beautiful with 162 carved bulls that surround the temple. The bulls are the transportation of Lord Shiva, the supreme Hindu god.
Next we visited the 5 Rathas which are the chariots of the 5 supreme gods. The god of creation, protection, destruction (of evil demons), goddess (wife) of energy (fire etc.) and god (the son) of luck.
These structures are all built on what remains of one solid, enormous piece of rock. It took 200+ chiselers working every day 26 years to complete. They are really fantastic to see. Hey started from the top and worked their way down.
Next we stopped at the Penance of Arjuna which is an incredible carved relief out of a wall of stone (45 feet high and 100 feet long) that tells one of the two epic (and complicated) Hindu stories. You will notice on the wall (below) that part of it was never completed. That is becasue the King at the time died and when he did the work on the wall ceased.
Along with it you can visit close-by Krishna's Butter Ball, a huge spherical monolith (Lord Krishna evidently loved butter they say – My kind of guy!) which looks like it should have rolled down the hill centuries ago and almost appears to be defying gravity. How DID it get there?
Just near to that we came across a giant bull picking through the trash. Knowing that all bulls are sacred I thought I’d get close and pose with him. Well, I knew that bulls don’t like the color red, which was fine. What I didn’t know is that they hate anything that is black even more so.
We had an awkward and funny moment when I had to jump behind a light post because he came after me. My camera is black. I thought he was just camera shy!
We made one more stop at the Tiger Cave. This was a place where the kings would come early morning and meditate as the sun came up and is facing the sea which is just a short ways beyond.
There was another 1200 year old temple there that we also stopped at. There was also one bull there but this one had not moved in centuries.
Something else I wanted to see at this stop was a temple I read about in a newspaper story I found on the Internet when I was doing some research for the day. This was interesting to me because it had been buried for who knows how long, but when the 2004 tsunami hit it uncovered the rest of a giant boulder which was actually part of an ancient temple. It has now become an archeological dig.
With the help of our Tiger Caves Guide, he took us through another gate and showed it to us. While he was telling us the story we learned something interesting from him. His name is “Coconut Raj” and for 20 years he worked the beach of the Tiger Caves selling coconuts to the locals on the beach and to the tourists at the cave. Every day it was his ritual to come to the park early and set up before people started to arrive.
December 26th, 2004 began like any other day. He went down to the beach and set-up his coconut stand then went back to the parking lot to wait for the tourists to arrive. From the beach to the parking lot its maybe 300 yards and about half way there he heard a loud noise. He turned and looked behind him and saw a giant wave coming over the rise leading down to the beach. He ran for his life and climbed up a giant piece of rock which sits at a 60 degree angle which was used as an ancient lookout. He climbed to the top of it as two giant waves ran beneath him.
Had he been on the beach, where he had been less than two minutes earlier he would have been swept away. In 20 years he had never set foot on the rock. That day he spent eight hours on top of it! Across the highway his home and neighborhood was destroyed but his family all survived. He is now a guide at the Tiger Caves and no longer sells coconuts but he is still called be his old name.
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