Mamalapurran

I was pretty wrecked the next morning after my night of battling with the mozzies. Anyway leaving this mad city now for a little village called Mamalapurran or something along those lines! The journey took about 2 hours and after about 40 mins the scenery dramatically changed from two-bit little shops, crowded dirty streets to more barren roads and less crowded and dirty streets....progress! We checked into our hostel...the address on the business card is simply 'near bus stand'!


(the main street)





Supercool..cows roaming the streets just what i had been waiting to see! We had lunch by the beach, the water isnt clean enough to swim in but how nice to be at the seaside! Cows relaxing on the beach (actually cows everywhere!) , fishermen with their little boats and nice cool breeze. We rented bikes and went for a cycle around, thank god its not as manic as Chennai i couldnt imagine surviving long on a bike there! Our guide told us a little about the different gods as we walked around the temples, and that this was one area that had been hit by the tsnumai and that he had been on the beach at the time it happened...survived obviously but quite scary to stand on the beach and look at the sea imagining the big wave.








Here there is also a famous big stone, its just resting on a hill and looks like its going to topple off. There have been many attempts to move it including slicing half of the back of it off to spread the weight to the front and hopefully make it topple but no very secure! Many people doing 'leaning tower of pisa' type photos holding up the stone!




Some kind of art competition.....you can take pictures of just about anything here in India and it looks so good! The women here wear nothing short of the brightest colours.





After this we headed out to an orphanage nearby. Im really not the best person with kids in fact i just dont know how to handle children at all at all so i was actually a bit nervous what the hell am i going to do here! However the little girls took a shine to me 6 girls in each hand showing me around their rooms, the toilet the medicine press etc! It was a very good experience and i think i got more out of the visit than the kids did! All they wanted was a little affection even from a total stranger the 10 year olds were so tiny, much smaller than an irish 4 year old and they couldnt believe how old i was at 25!






Just as the mosquitos were tucking into us and i think most of us were feeling weak from not eating all day and heavy sun we headed back to our hostel. Since we walked around many temples earlier ( in a clockwise direction!) we infact had been 'reborn' so with this new, fresh, sin-less start we figured we 'deserved' a few beers that night.

This place was certainly calmer than Chennai apart from a few little girls selling beaded necklaces almost having me at breaking point with a constant 'lady..hungry, hungry, hungry, very hungry, lady, hungry, hungry' and they follow you for most of the day if it wasnt for one of the guys i was travelling with screaming JEESUS!!!which made me burst out laughing i may have given in and bought the beads...or maybe i should have just bought them anyway...