Stone Village

Drove back to Chennai today. It's quite a change from the dusty roads of Mamallapuram. Now we're up on the ninth floor of a 4-star (www.grthotels.com) with views over the western part of town and WiFi.

The comfort of Ideal Beach Resort, where we stayed the first time we were in Mamallapuram, was pretty hard to beat in the village itself. Things improved a lot after we found a nice, low-key Franco-Indian restaurant away from the tourist ghetto that was responsive to Esbjorn's diet demands. It was easy to spend hours there playing games and relaxing. Our room in Sea Breeze Annexe was OK and included free access to the big swimming pool at the main hotel. Alice and Esbjorn went stone shopping in this mother of all stone carving villages in the sub-continent. There are guys in every nook and corner chiselling away on everything from large temple statues to chillums. Street sellers chase you around with necklaces trying to persuade you to do "small business".

I went to check out the fishing village where new concrete houses were being built as part of the post Tsunami rehabilitation. I spoke to a guy and it seemed like things were developing better here than around Ideal. Here water was distributed in the morning and the nearby 5-star Temple Bay Resort had donated land for the new village. The fishermen were now asking for GPS equipment to be able to take their boats far out to sea.

In Chennai we went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was alright but almost everything on the menu contained egg products ): Afterwards we went to Spencer Plaza where the kids planned tomorrow's shopping.