Our first trip out of Delhi was to Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is in the south east, and closest to Sri Lanka. We flew into Chennai (Madras), which is the capital and the largest city in the state.
Due to fog, our flight was delayed by several hours. The kids were good sports though, and spent most of the time reading.
Isabelle, Kieran and Milan
We flew IndiGo, an airline that capitalizes on the nostalgic notion of being part of the jetset, complete with flight attendants that look identical to each other with matching outfits and black bob wigs. Their most recent commercial is fun and captures the image they are going for.
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We had good visibility coming into Chennai, so I experimented with the "airplane" setting on my new camera.
Colorful buildings in Chennai
After locating our driver at the airport, we drove south to Mamallapuram, where we spent a night at the Mamalla Beach Resort. The term "resort" in India seems to mean a hotel that has a restaurant and a pool.
An exhausted Isabelle waiting for us to check in
Flower petals floating in water are a common welcome
We headed straight to the beach before the sun sank, and enjoyed some spicy chick peas and beer.
Isabelle, Kieran, Lakhdeep, Henrietta & Alexis
Henrietta and Annie
Spicy chickpeas... delicious in moderation.
We drove in to Mamallapuram in search of the Bob Marley Cafe, but couldn't find it, so we ate at Santana instead. (I know! Who chose these names??) We picked a fish and some giant prawns from a table and were served a family-style meal. Mamallapuram proper is not very different in feel to many Central American beach towns. The place was crawling with traveling trustafarians! Souvenir shops were sprinkled in between restaurants with rooftop views of the Bay of Bengal, and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a yoga studio. The one thing that anchored this town as its own place was the numerous stone carving studios.
We chose the big one in the foreground, along with prawns.
Still jet-lagged, we went to bed early and woke up in time to watch the sunrise. We had a traditional southern Indian breakfast of dosas, fruit, ada (cabbage pancakes) and masala omelets.
I can't close this post without sharing a photo of the sight of Isabelle's inaugural "ladle shower". She thought I was joking when I instructed her on how to bathe in this bathroom, and she did her best at trying to convince me a shower wasn't necessary after all.
