Roadtrip to Sadras fort

After our successful bike trip to Kanchipuram we were brimming with enthusiasm for our next trip. I was quite excited searching for another good place nearby. I had temples in my mind but I thought let’s try something different. I had heard about a Dutch fort near Mahabalipuram named Sadras Fort. Unfortunately none of my friend had gone there before so it was totally a new place. I researched the place and found it to be 15 kms from Mahabalipuram.

We had planned to see the sunrise on our way to Sadras fort on 16^th July 1011. But as expected we woke up little late for that. We left at 5.45 am and had to see the sunrise on the road itself. The sky was little cloudy so we were not that unlucky as sun was behind cloud at sunrise. Anyways we stopped at place on ECR some 20 kms from Chennai to visit a sort of virgin beach. We have many unexplored beach stretches on East Coast Road of Tamil Nadu. We relaxed for a while there, took snaps of ourselves and decided to move. It was morning and we started to feel hungry. I had heard that there was a café coffee day in Mahabalipuram which is open 24 hrs. We drove another 30 kms and reached Mahabalipuram crossing and there was our breakfast point. We were all excited to have a nice breakfast but as we approached the counter there was nothing much. We ordered burgers and shake that was only available. After our food we were back on our road towards Kalpakkam which is some 15 kms from Mahabalipuram. Kalpakkam is township famous for its Atomic Power Plant. On our way we could see the huge complex which looked similar to Fukushima Power Plant of Japan (nearness to sea) destroyed during Tsunami. Our Sadras fort was in Kalpakkam Township. The road in the area is extremely good. We reached the fort in the morning between 8 am -9 am.

The fort is not that huge as like those of Mughals in north. It is in ruins maintained by ASI. There is only one person taking care of the whole complex. There are two big canons guarding the gate. We entered inside and saw all ruins and were not able to make out as everything was destroyed by the British.

For all the people who don’t know about Sadras fort it’s a 17^th century fort built by the Dutch for trading purpose. The fort was captured by the British in 1818 as their naval ships bombarded the fort from the coast.

Nothing actually survives of those times except the granaries and a cemetery. We explored the place, took pictured of ourselves in numerous poses! As we were planning to return the fort keeper showed us the cemetery. Cemetery was big and had more than 15 slabs kept each written in Dutch. We could only understand the date part of it. Some slabs had ships drawn on them indicating those were of sailors. There was also a slab for their dog! On it there was a picture of a dog tied to a small tree. The fort keeper showed that the huge tree on the front gate is the same small tree on that slab. That was interesting. We also went inside a room near cemetery which he told had a tunnel inside leading to shore in case of emergency in those days. But that tunnel was closed. The sun had started to go up and the clouds had disappeared and as a result it started getting hot. We decided to leave and gave some money to the fort keeper for acting like a guide. We were on the way back, and then Amrit proposed we should also visit Mahabalipuram which was on the way itself. We decided to take a left turn on ECR highway towards the legendary port city of Mahabalipuram. It was a major port city during the days of Cholas whose capital was Kanchipuram. I had visited it twice before but still we had whole day to pass.

Our first stop in Mahabalipuram was the shore temple built by the Cholas during 7^th-8^th century. The Temple architecture clearly indicated the start of Dravidian style of architecture; the temple is dedicated to both Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. Lord Shiva is with Goddess Parvati and Lord Ganesha depicted beautifully in the statue in front and we have Lord Vishnu statue in sleeping position at the back. We also have a Shiva lingam in the temple complex. We enjoyed the temple as it was not much crowded at morning. From there we went to Arjuna’s penance which is also marvel of architecture. It is a rock carving showing Arjuna’s penance with many Gods and animals. We visited the Varaha Cave at the back of Arjuna’s penance. The architecture inside the cave was amazing depicting Varaha. The architecture indicates the start of south Indian style of temple architecture. From there we went to five rathas which is a temple complex dedicated to all five Pandava brothers and Draupadi. The temples are magnificent of their time. We enjoyed the rock carvings of the statues and the monolithic design of the temple. The amazing thing of the architecture is all the temples were carved out of a single piece of rock rather than joining blocks and blocks! After that we visited the Art museum were there were numerous temple, Gods and Apsaras design models on display. It was afternoon we were hungry. We were confused to have veg or non-veg food but finally we decided to go for sea food. We found an amazing roof top restaurant overlooking the sea. The place had good sea food choices. We ordered prawns and fish and enjoyed the scenery of shore temple and the sea shore. There was a beautiful girl sitting near to us which was attracting my eyes. But as usual because of our hopeless luck we gave her a pass and enjoyed our food. After a while we decided to leave for Chennai as there was nothing much to see there.

On return the sun was at the top and land breeze was strong which was pushing our bike on the opposite lane. We reached home in an hour. It was afternoon and we relaxed after some nice adventures during day!

Roadtrip to Kanchipuram

It was hot Saturday morning of 9^th July 2011. I was returning home after paying the house rent in the bank. On the way I decided to pay a visit to my friend’s place nearby my house. When I reached his home, I saw him analyzing something in computer which turned out to be pictures. Yeah those were not ordinary pictures. Those were of his friend who had just returned to Delhi from an 18 day solo bike trip from Ladakh. I was mesmerized by his passion for driving on the highest motor able road in the world (Marismik La). We started to discuss that his friend has just traversed 4000 km and here we are just sulking in heat. At that moment we just got a thought we should also go somewhere anywhere immediately to quench our explorer thirst. We goggled out couple of places nearby Chennai and zeroed in on Kanchipuram. I had vague idea of Kanchipuram apart from it being a temple town. We just saved the directions in our cell phones and there we were on the highway at 11 am going towards Kanchipuram.

Now the fun started! We had out brunch in hot chips near Tambaram and decided to take the Chennai-Bangalore highway from Tambaram. We had no idea that we were taking the long route anyways we got on a real nice Bypass constructed by HCC were we clocked 100 kmph. After a long ride of 1 hour in that heat we reached Sriperumbudur not knowing we could have reached their in half an hour. On our way we crossed the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial. We were on Bangalore highway cruising at around 80 kmph and sometime later my fellow explorer Amrit got little tired so we stopped for a while to relax took snaps of ourselves and relaxed again. After sometime we started and some 20 km later we started seeing Kanchipuram direction board. We stopped near a place on the highway and asked a boy where the temple in Kanchipuram is! That boy was like astonished and after little giggling he asked us back which temple Anna. Without having any idea we told him the main temple then he said to go to Ekambareswarar Temple we should go straight a little and take left from the highway towards the town. After asking couple of guys on the way we finally got to reach the Legendary Ekambareswarar Temple dedicated to Lord Shiva.

We were startled by the huge Gopuram! There were Tourist Buses from very far places like Rajasthan parked outside. Their one cobbler told us that temple is now closed and we should come later. We were shocked to hear this information. Later we found that temple remains closed between 12pm-4pm in afternoon. After taking couple of snaps of ourselves we decided to have lunch and left to find place to eat. For 1^st few kilometers we couldn’t find a single place to eat and that was bit strange for a place like that. But later we found that we were not searching in correct place. We found Legendary Sarvana Bhavan (Veg Restaurant) on one of main road in Kanchipuram. We had 2 hrs for the temple to open so we decided to relax in Sarvana Bhavan itself (mainly to escape heat). We had some ok lunch and at 3.30 pm we decided to leave for the temple.

The temple in itself is very uniquely constructed. It has around 7-8 main doors before it leads to the main Shiva Lingam. For those who don’t know about the importance of this temple- It’s one of the Pancha Bootha Sthalams representing natural element with this one representing earth. It was not that crowded when we reached so we quickly got inside the main atrium. I was startled by different architectures inside the temple with a lot of them being really scary. The Lingam was made of silver with Shiva and Parvati statue in the bag round. After performing Puja we went out and explored the temple for a while. There were more than 100 Shiva Lingam surrounding the main temple. There were statues of other Gods which I was not able to figure out. Since we were short on time we decided to leave and visit other temples.

Our next temple was Kamakshi Temple dedicated to Goddess Parvati. Just as we entered the temple, we saw an elephant giving ashirvad to people by accepting some giving. We decided to try that. I approached the elephant first and bowed in front of him, but nothing happened for a while. Then I looked towards the Mahawat and asked him what happened? He said first money then blessings!! So I put a coin in elephant’s trunk and got the blessing and Amrit also followed suit. We went inside to find it little bit crowded so we decided to skip the priest meeting thing and just pray and leave. The temple was old and maintained properly. I couldn’t get time to analyze it properly as it started to become dark and we had to return back also. But one temple was still left.

Our next temple was Varadharaja Perumal Temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The temple is splendid in architecture. Looked ancient but the Statues on Gopuram were magnificent. The Temple complex is huge and beautiful. It was not much crowed so we quickly got Darshan of Lord Vishnu. The Vishnu statue was very beautiful and shining with splendor. After Darshan we went to see the golden lizard just at the back of the Vishnu temple. Inside the temple premises I noticed the difference between the priest of Shiva and Vishnu temple; they have different style of chandan on their forehead. We enjoyed the temple architecture for a while and decided to leave.

On return we took the state highway which was not only shorter but quite different from the route we came. There were many rice farms on the way on both side of the road. The roads were not that great but we managed it. I was little bit excited to see farms after a long time so decided stop by and visit one of them. After some photo shoot we were back on the highway headed towards Chennai. As we were approaching Chennai all farms vanished and were replaced by huge industries (We saw n numbers of SIPCOT SEZ on the way). We were so tired that I was finding it difficult to sit on the small space on the bike. It was hurting! To make the matter worse we got stuck up in real traffic jam on Chennai outskirts. I looked in the trip meter and found that we have already traveled 200 km in that day and believe me it was too much considering the heat. Somehow we got out of the traffic mess and reached home at around 8.30 pm. My back was hurting a lot and I was not able to sit properly. Anyways we completed an amazing Bike trip to the ancient capital town of Tamil Nadu. There are so many temples to see but we could only visit three. There are couple of more amazing temples for me to see, so I have to go their again!!