2017 mahabalipuram

Mamallapuram ( mahabalipuram)

First ride of the year though an short ride 60kms from Chennai city, with an new friend Lavleen. started by 5.20am to view sunrise from light House of mahabalipuram taking ECR route, the roads are well maintained with medians, two years back it was without medians and prone to accidents.

Enjoying the cool sea breeze ride along seashore and land on ECR road. We reached the destination at 6.10am, first we visited 5 rathas (5 charriots) it's an marvellous architecture carved out of rocks, leading back to rich heritage of our history.

 I always get two questions in my head when I see these carvings 
1. Were our ancestors so jobless that they kept carving on every rocks and stones?
2. That our ancestors were highly skilled workers that they carved each and everything to perfection? As there were no fevicol or quick fix available during those times to fix an error.

From 5 raths we headed to light House as it was closed, we roamed around the light House there are two monument similar to Raja Gopuram in Melkote Mandya district called as Raya Gopuram. As usual my monkey inscticts makes me scale one side of Raya Gopuram.
  Rock carvings are spread across a vast area.

For general information the ticket you purchase for Rs 30 per head can be used to visit all the three heritage sites in mahabalipuram.

The seashore temple back side was under restoration process, couldn't get a look inside,  got a couple of good photos of the temple and its surroundings. With beach looking clean and rough sea waves not many people venture into the sea.

As it was getting late and sunny we started our return by 9am on the way while returning visited tiger cave 5km from Mahabalipuram it was empty, so we got an opportunity to click good pictures. 

Chennai peak hour traffic is much better than Bangalore peak hour traffic we could cover our last 20km under 40min.

Riders
Santhosh Venkataram
Lavleen Raizda

Bike
Thunderbird 500