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!