Frank and Robyn Do India

 Next stop is Chennai. Our driver Ramesh stops en root so we can peruse another ancient site. We are not sure of the details about this place but it is pretty impressive. We land in Chennai and then it is off for a city tour. Visited various English forts and churches, the beach(second longest city beach in the world we are reminded 15 times). Then another cool temple full of folk just having a good time.

 Today we do the city tour. We are picked up by our guide and deposited into a bicycle rickshaw-this is most embarrasing and humiliating as we play sahib and memahb. We tour a "famous"ashram which lasts about 3 minutes which is probably about 2 1/2 minutes too long and then in barefooted splendour we visit the temple devoted to our favourite divinity, Ganesh, whose dad, Shiva, chopped off his head and repaced it with the head of an elephant. Then it is off to the local market full of weird and wonderful vegetables.

 Another 4 hour car trip with our faithful Ramesh we arrive in Pondacherry, a former hangout for the French. Walking around here is a challenge as the footpaths aren't pristine. We have a traditional South Indian lunch and spend the rest of the day lampin'.

First visit today is the 7th century temple in Kandakonam. Then on to Tanjore. We firstly visit a palace full of ancient artefactuals and a library where we discover that back in the day you could discover somebody's personality by how much they resemble animals. We spent the rest of the day classifying everybody around us-just try it, its a lot of fun. After this we see the aptly named Big Temple. It is hotter than Hades here and we are obliged to walk around shoeless on the red hot ground. Lunch is at a local hotel-thali. The wait staff are very attentive, maybe a little bit more than absolutely necessary.