Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram

Tripoto
16th Apr 2017

When you have just traveled a month back, your body hasn't recovered from the last tan and after few weeks again when your travel partner asks Hey! extended weekend is there lets go somewhere can you say No.. I think No :P But its just an extended weekend so we can go some place near peaceful and not much of a hack and then we cut down to Puducherry. While looking down the route from Chennai to Puducherry I just came across a small city Mahabalipuram on the way did some research some studies and didnt feel like passing by instead of not being there and get some feel of it.

So here we ended up to Mahabalipuram a small city 40-50 mins away from Chennai via road. You can spent an entire day in Mahabalipuram acknowledging the vast history of Mahabharatha time with some alluring architectural sites, there are some amazing cafes to chill your taste buds that offers authentic sea food you can choose your crab fish and let it prepared live, that is one of a kind experience, if you have some street shopping agenda in your list and you are looking for some souvenir you can find nice marble or wood work sea shells there bargain well you will get them pretty cheap. We reached Chennai via flight by 9:30 in the morning and by 10 we booked a cab that turns out to be very reasonable and we head towards Mahabalipuram. It took us around 1 hour to reach and a quick advice book your hotel or resort prior if you are going in a season as they turn to be pretty full, I stayed in Varuna Inn that is a hotel like 1.5 km away from shore temple on the highway and this hotel turns out to be the best pick as its away from the crowded beach in the city at which we spent our entire evening, early morning sunrise by taking a dip in the water and the calmness just added to its charm. In order to roam around in the city you can take shared autos there that charge like 10 rs per person and all the archaeological sites are near to one other on the same road. We started from our hotel by day time covered all these places by evening, I will mention the sites by pictures in this post you can check them out. Later by evening we are all tired and exhausted and wanted to have some of the best sea food and we landed up to Cafe Moonrakers there are lots of cafes there you can choose any one and you will not be dissapointed.

By evening we are back to our hotel and just wanted to take a dip in the water, I just came out of the hotel and asked a village woman how far is the beach she just looked at me smiled and said just cross this road its walking, we just grabbed our clothes and ran to our surprise it was all secluded just evening boats the fisherman are tying them up ad we spent like 3-4 hours on the beach then by night its was a full moon we stayed there watched the glittering water the cold breeze and then later we came back covered in sand to our hotel took a bath and had a very amazing dinner in hotel's open air restaurant it was chilly in the night. We woke up early in the morning by 5:30 as we wanted to goto the beach again to see sunrise and again to take a dip :) By 7 when we are coming back what added to our fun was we saw all the boats getting back to the shore will all kinds of crabs fish shripms etc and what added to our surprise is they are having instant live sea food selling stalls where people are bidding and selling sea food, I was just taking pictures and a lady came to me and she showed like 4-5 kg shrimps and asked whether I wanna buy and I was like can I have 1 kg for 100 bucks but I dont have a place to cook she was soo sweet she offered that my house is here I can cook in my kitchen for you and trust me shrimps were awesome and we had some fresh coconut water as we get them from the tree at her house only :) It was a morning soo beautiful and later on we booked a cab, again bargain is the key and we head towards Puducherry and I will tell you about what happened in Puducherry in the next write up, stay tuned :P

Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 1/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Shore Temple
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 2/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Pancha Rathas
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 3/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 4/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 5/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Pancha Rathas Architecture
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 6/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Mahabalipuram Beach around Varuna Inn .. Soo secluded
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 7/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 8/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Mornings @ Beach .. fisherman doing there deeds
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 9/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 10/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 11/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 12/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 13/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 14/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Varaha Cave Temple
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 15/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 16/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 17/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Descent of Ganges
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 18/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 19/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 20/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 21/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Tiger Caves
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 22/23 by Nisha Khulbe
Photo of Weekend away from Chennai: Mahabalipuram 23/23 by Nisha Khulbe