Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/j1cDy6R5GLdgs1Sc9
First thing – figured I would add a “Travel Ratings” section to the homepage that I’ll update over time, just so people can see how I found different places if they wanted to…link is here: https://rajivdesikan.com/travel-ratings/
So after Cambodia, I basically had another month left in India before heading back to NY for a little and then going to Peru. Spent some more time with my mom and grandma, and also got to see some relatives while hanging out in Chennai which was nice since it had been over 2 years since I had seen everyone. Also took my grandma out for dinner at this swanky (and amazing!) restaurant called Peshawari, which was only her third time leaving her apartment complex since COVID started! The food there was “frontier” food aka Pakistani/Afghan food (since Peshawar was a frontier city of the British Raj), which was sort of interesting only because I had just reached out to an Afghan tour operator about doing a 2 week tour in Afghanistan this fall…I’m in this Facebook group “Every Passport Stamp”, and while I hate counting countries while travelling (it should be more than a checklist), people do post about more “out there” trips (this group is how I found out about Iraq), and a solo Swedish woman posted about a 10 day roadtrip she took in Afghanistan in March/April, and she was probably the first post-Taliban tourist. But yea, definitely super interested in hitting up that, Syria, and (this is a bit different obviously) Iran in my final year…might as well go big for the little time (over 1 year but still, first world problem) I have left.
After a few days in Chennai, I went up to to one of my all time favorite cities, Delhi, for a friend’s wedding. I know this post is labelled “South India” for all the Karnataka + Tamil Nadu stuff in here, but yea the photo album has a handful of pics from Delhi first. Anyways, had a couple of days to kill in Delhi before the wedding, so I did some light sightseeing of things I had seen before – saw the Red Fort from a distance, paid a visit to the Jama Nasjid (absolutely beautiful mosque), hung out in the serene Lodhi Gardens (unlike European gardens with follys built in them, this is a garden with real, 600+ year old mosques and tomb ruins scattered about), and of course, wandered around the narrow alleyways of Chandni Chowk (my alltime favorite bazaar area in the world). Chandni Chowk was fairly crowded and it definitely felt like a post-COVID, back-to-normal world, but the searing summer heat meant that it wasn’t as packed as it was when I was last here in October 2020. The street food was, as always, excellent, and I was glad to see that my memory of Delhi’s amazing food scene was still accurate. Sadly, my favorite restaurant here, Karim’s, was closed (I don’t think it was due to COVID, just regular closure on a Tuesday afternoon), but I still had some incredible parathas and lassis and sweets while wandering around the crowded, narrow streets here. In addition, I checked out the Delhi museum, which I had not done the last tine. It was comparable to the museums I had seen in Chennai and Calcutta in the past – good collection, but on the smaller side. Standouts for me include what is arguably the second oldest depiction of Shiva, from the Harappan civilization 5000 years ago (this is only topped by some rock paintings in Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, that are 10k+ years old), and some of the Gandharan art, which is Greek influenced sculptures from the current Pakistan/Afghanistan border area, which came from Alexander the Great’s incursions into the area. Specifically reminded me of all the cool ~2k+ year old Buddhist stuff from the Amaravati Stupa that was in the Chennai museum…speaking of which I do really want to see the Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh (another 2k+ year old Buddhist ruin) next time I’m in India. I also met up with a high school friend, Alex and her college friend Cayla, who were both in town for their college friend’s wedding, for dinner…I think it was my first time seeing her since 2012 or something like that, so was kind of funny that we were meeting up in Delhi of all places. But it’s always cool to have random run-ins around the world (like grabbing dinner with another kid, Teddy, in Paris). Of course the original plan for a 6pm dinner morphed into staying up until 1am when the bars started to close (it was a Tuesday night). I stayed with my cousin Vishnu and his wife Ruchika for a couple of days in Delhi before heading over to the wedding venue. Vishnu is a journalist for the Economist, and funnily enough, Ruchika works for J-PAL, the MIT-run NGO whose founders recently won a Nobel in economics. Just sort of interesting that I have two close relatives who work in the NGO space since that’s exactly what I want to do post-travel (my cousin Kavita in Chennai has worked in education NGOs for the past 10+ years).
So the friend whose wedding I was going to was someone I met two years ago, when Martin had me as his +2 to his old coworker’s wedding outside Mumbai. We sort of hit it off at that wedding, and he messaged me a few months ago inviting me to his April wedding. At the time I was obviously planning on an extended South America overland so I thanked him and declined, but once I realized I would be in India last minute to spend time with my grandma I reached back out to him, got the wedding details, and decided to drop on by. Like all Indian weddings, this was a crazy, fun bonanza. Excellent food, tons of ridiculous dancing, and the usual obnoxious delays that happen at Indian weddings (every event was like 3+ hours after the stated start time). Was a bit smaller than the previous Indian wedding I went to so I would say it wasn’t quite as fun as that one, but it was still a good time. I only knew the groom, the bride and groom from the previous wedding two years ago, and another girl who was friends with them and who I had met two years ago, and I’m pretty sure I was the only non-native Hindi speaker at this entire wedding. But still, it was easy enough to meet and hang out with new people there, though I don’t think I made any new friends who will become close enough for future wedding invites.
The entire week I was in Delhi, my sister was actually in Chennai, as she also flew over to spend time with my grandma and mom. She spent that week working from home US hours, and then I met up with all of them for a couple of days before we flew out from Chennai to Mysore, in the neighboring state of Karnataka. We had booked a 4N/3D safari at the Kabini Tiger Reserve, and spent a half-day in Mysore first to see the Mysore Palace, which is this grand, ~100+ year old palace that is a mix of Islamic and Hindu architecture…it was very similar to the palace ruins of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, and was a nice hour+. Obviously it’s a good deal newer, but it honestly compares well to any of the grand palaces of Rajasthan. There were some beautiful symmetrical hallways and rooms in there that I particularly enjoyed…I’m always a fan of those Wes Anderson-esque shots.
My sister and I then headed over a couple hours south, still in Karnataka and near the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, to the lodge we were staying at. The lodge was run by the state government, and only the tourists at this lodge get access to the best safari vehicles (fully open sided, 8 seater). If you stay at the more expensive private lodges nearby, the park will put you in an overcrowded bus, so the state monopoly meant that if you are serious about wildlife, you would stay at the state-run lodge. Tiger safaris in India are nothing like safaris in Kenya and Tanzania, where (at least from my experience), big cats are a dime a dozen and it even seems easy enough to see kills (my sister and I saw 4 kills in total, 2 each in Tanzania and Kenya). The main reason for that is that this is a thick jungle, so there is minimal visibility beyond the roads, and there’s really no chance for offroading due to all the bushes and trees that surround you. It is an awesome ambiance, especially in the early mornings when the mist is rolling over and you basically have zero visibility. In all honesty, the safari here was comparable to my ones in Namibia, South Africa, and Uganda in terms of wildlife spotting – you do see the occasional cool thing but it’s a lot of “just OK” sightseeing, unlike the overload of the Masai Mara and Serengeti. The other thing about this safari (and apparently Indian safaris in general) is that they aren’t *quite* to the level of the elite places in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, we did 6 total safaris (three from 6-9:30am, and three from 3-6:30pm), 5 which were jeep and 1 which was a boat. For the 5 jeep safaris, for 3 of them we got lucky and had this amazing guide with us in addition to the driver, whereas for the other 2 we only had a driver. The guide distribution for the cars seemed totally random, and it would make a lot more sense to have a guide for every single vehicle (or at least, for every vehicle for the guests of the government lodge).
So seeing tigers is really, really hard. I’m always reminded of this excellent Ringer piece, which is itself an excerpt from a book that has been on my Goodreads to-read list for quite some time – https://www.theringer.com/2018/9/25/17898428/man-eaters-brian-phillips-impossible-owls-excerpt. But yea, Kabini has 120 tigers in the park, and from a density standpoint it is arguably the best in all of India (and really, the world, since India really is the best option by far) for seeing tigers. And of the ~50+ safari cars that go out every morning and every evening, during peak season (which is right now, April/May summertime in India), there is always anywhere from 1-5 cars that see a tiger at each session. Of course, the qualifier here is that a “sighting” is often a brief 3 second cameo as it runs by and back into the bush, or a tiger that is 100 meters away, deep in the bush, barely visible with even binoculars. On the flip side, if you are really lucky you get a once-in-a-blue-moon sighting of a tiger lazing about in open visibility within 20 meters of your vehicle. I will say, much like my failed snow leopard safari in Ladakh (which was still amazing due to the awesome landscapes and Tibetan culture), knowing the high chance of failure and the whole concept of “tracking” (from monkey noises, paw prints, etc.) made it an exhilarating experience. Over the course of our 5 jeep rides and one boat ride, we only saw a tiger once. We were driving along a road with thick bushes on either side of us, and our guide (this was one of the 3 rides with him) somehow spotted the tiger to our left, a good 30 meters away, lying down deep in the bush. He had the car reverse to confirm his sighting, and we could just make out the colors with our bare eyes…these safari guides truly are amazing. But with binoculars or with my max zoom on my camera (230mm), we were able to clearly see him, majestically lounging about after what was probably a full meal. I spammed like 60 photos, but because of the plants in front of him and my lack of camera skill (I only shoot on automatic, not manual), all but 3 of the photos focused on the plants, creating a blurred orange image behind it. But 3 of them were great, especially 1 money shot where you can see him, facing us, eyes open. Just such an amazing, amazing experience…I would say that tigers are probably my favorite animal, and this was up there with the mountain gorillas of Uganda and Great Migration in Kenya as the coolest wildlife experience I’ve had. Obviously the quality of this sighting was far less than Tanzania and Kenya where you have leopards, cheetahs, and lions sauntering right next to your vehicle, but I would almost argue that the difficulty of spotting a tiger made it that much more worth it. I feel like this qualifies as an excellent sighting even though he was barely visible to the naked eye, because with binocs or a zoom camera we could clearly observe him just lying around for 20 minutes before he finally dropped his head and dozed off to sleep, at which point we could only see the stripes on his body and not his head. But the one picture of him looking at us is genuinely one of my favorite pics I have ever taken…you can see the vast jungle expanse, the orange tiger popping up in the square center, looking at us but basically telling us he doesn’t give a shit about us. Really glad that the focus of the camera somehow worked on that one picture.
Besides the tiger sighting, other highlights included tracking a leopard, and seeing a peacock mating dance (with the tail fully formed!) during our one boat safari. Unfortunately the peacock was facing away from us the whole time so we couldn’t experience the magnificent display, but at the very end we did get to see it from the side. The whole ritual actually reminded me a lot of the ostrich mating dance that my sister and I saw a couple of times in Kenya. The leopard tracking was also incredible…we were driving around and our guide suddenly heard monkeys going berserk. Based off the direction of the sounds he directed the driver to make a u-turn (which wound up being like a 7 point turn) and the directed him to a spot. Monkeys usually make tons of noise when there’s a predator nearby, and we patiently waited for 20 minutes until a leopard leapt from the bush and then jogged across us. It was only a total of like 10 seconds, and by the time I got my camera ready I was only able to snap his back as he ran into the bush. But just the whole tracking nature there was incredible, though obviously in a vacuum the sighting itself was not as impressive as the up close ones in the Serengeti (another one of my alltime favorite pics of mine is one I got of a sleeping leopard on a tree). Besides those two standouts, it was also cool to see peacocks galore (they are gorgeous and colorful), some kingfisher birds up close (they are also incredibly beautiful, and the namesake of India’s national beer), and my first ever owl sighting, which was on an early morning drive. The one thing that we didn’t see, which was always going to be a given, was the mythical black panther of Kabini. There is one black panther that roams the Kabini forest, and it only gets spotted a handful of times a year, if that – only ~20% of the forest is open for tourists. Apparently the last sighting was in early March, and that was by some rangers in a closed-for-tourists part of the park. But the fact that this was even a (remote) possibility just added to the mystique of the whole trip.
Overall, Kabini was awesome, and I was so, so happy to have seen a wild bengal tiger in person. After Kabini, we drove back to Mysore, where we tried some Mysore Pak (this incredible desert that is basically soaked in ghee) at the corner store where it was allegedly invented, before my sister got dropped off at the airport for her flight back to Chennai. I then got a car and went up to the town of Hassan, which is in like central-western Karnataka, and spent the night there. The drive there was, much like driving in Tamil Nadu, lush and green all around. South India really is gorgeous if you’re into that sort of scenery. I then spent two days to see these ~1000 year old temples from the Hoysala Empire.
Anyways, on my first day of this temple tour, my first stop was the Lakshmi Devi temple in the small town (all these temples were located in small towns) of Doddagaddavalli. The temple itself was “eh”, but the absolute highlight here were these pair of funky goblin-like creatures guarding the shrine to the goddess Kali (for all my white readers out there, this is the goddess in The Temple of Doom). The one that was in pristine condition had his ribs showing (ie he was starving), genitals exposed, a sword in one hand, a severed head in the other, and a skullface with a Gene Simmons-esque tongue rolling out, coupled with Beetlejuice-esque hair. Just a wonderful little creature that was a cool take on the typical guardians that you see in Hindu temples prior to entering a shrine…these guardians usually have fangs and a tongue out, and look vaguely demonic, but nothing approaching this dude here. It actually weirdly reminded me of the statue of a flayed St. Bartholomew in the Milan Duomo. Also interesting was that in this temple, there was a board game carved into the ground by bored locals, apparently like 800+ years old but not as old as the temple itself. It reminded me of the board games that were carved into the lamassu (massive winged Assyrian guardians) in the British Museum, done by local Assyrians thousands of years ago.
After that, I headed over to another town, Belur, to see the Chennakeshava temple. This is a 1000 year old Vishnu temple, and at first glance it doesn’t look like anything impressive…just a flat, symmetrical (it’s some sort of -gonal, way more than octagon) building. But the closer you get, the better it gets. It’s this ridiculously intricate marvel, where every single sculpture on the wall looks like it’s crafted from wood. The precise floral patterns and 3D carvings – 3D in that the figures literally stick out from the walls, as opposed to being carved into the walls like in every other wall carving in the world were honestly amazing. But it was just awesome to walk around the flat temple and see all these gods and mythological stories fleshed out in ridiculous detail. The intricacy levels here put even the Banteay Srei temple in Cambodia to shame. Overall, I would summarize my top India temple experience as this: most beautiful at an up front level would be the Hoysala temples of western Karnataka, the coolest setting and ambiance would be Hampi in northern Karnataka, the most impressive one is temple 16 in the Ellora caves (just purely from how it’s a MASSIVE temple all carved from one cliffside, and it is gorgeous to boot), and my favorite overall would be the grand temples of Tamil Nadu, from the towering and majestic gopurams, the countless varied sculptures that adorn every building (which, to be fair, are not quite as intricate as these Hoysala ones), and of course, the bright and vibrant colors.
After Belur, I went to see the Veera Narayana temple in Belavadi, where sadly no photos were allowed. It was also an “eh” temple overall but the highlight for sure was this gorgeous statue of a black Krishna playing the flute under the tree, that was like 10+ feet tall. And the final temple was the Hoysaleswara temple in Halibedu, which was the capital of the Hoysala empire but is now just a provincial town. This was basically a bigger and grander version of the Belur temple, with even more gorgeous carvings all along the side of the temple. Literally any one of these 3D, intricate masterpieces would be a showstopper in a regular temple, but they are just piled on top of each other here, it’s almost like an overload (in the best way possible). My favorite motifs that reappeared in both Halibedu and Belur was one of Narasimha (Vishnu avatar of a half lion/half man) ripping open the entrails of a demon’s belly, Krishna playing his flute, and of course Shiva dancing in the nataraja pose (though the Chola style of nataraja depiction is still my favorite style). I saw a couple of Jain temples in Halibedu after this (since the Hoysalas were first Jain before converting to Hinduism) which were primarily interesting because it showed that the Hoysala Hindu temple design and architecture was lifted directly from their Jain temple style.
On my second and final day of this quick tour, I made a couple of stops before finishing up in the eastern part of Karnataka in the capital city of Bangalore to see some relatives. The first stop was the town of Shravanabelagola, to see this 1000+ year old Jain monument called Vindhyagiri. So Jainism is sort of its’ own religion and sort of a Hinduism offshoot that was quite big in India up until around 1000 CE…Jainism and Buddhism were two of the most popular religions here until a Hindu resurgence at around that time. There are still a decent number of Jains in India but it’s very much a minor religion, alongside Buddhism and Zoroastrianism and below Hinduism/Islam/Christianity/Sikhism. Anyways, Vindhyagiri is basically this complex that is on top of a ~70 meter hill. Walking up this hill barefoot (like Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, and Mosques, Jain temples also require you to remove your footwear) at 30+ celsius weather was a fun time for the soles of my feet. The top was honestly quite a sight that in my opinion deserves at bit more hoopla. It’s an over 1000 year old, almost 20 meter tall statue of the historic Jain figure Bahubali. It’s fully carved from stone – literally carved out of the top of the hill, so they basically dug down 20 meters from the top of the hill, and then carved a statue out of a standing block that was left up. Just crazy impressive. The statue itself looked a bit like Buddha to me, which I suppose makes sense given the artistic influences that would have been present in India at the time. After this stop, our last stop was the small town of Nuggehalli where I saw a couple of temples including the impressive Lakshmi Narashimha temple. This was basically a much smaller version of the Belur temple, which in itself was a smaller version of the Halibedu temple. So a similar symmetrical shape with ridiculously ornate and intricate 3D carvings all along the exterior walls. One big difference here was the presence of small gopruams, or towers, on top of the temple so it wasn’t flat like Belur or Halibedu. Overall, these Hoysala temples definitely have a clear synthesis of the South Indian/Tamil style (tons of statues and wall carvings on the exterior) as well as North Indian (temple shape and design, lack of towering gopurams, etc.). The style of the Nuggehalli, Belur, and Halibedu temples actually reminded me a lot of the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, with the similar shape and design of the rows of wall carvings – in all of these temples, there are basically layers of carvings. So the bottom row was elephants, one of the middle rows depicted the Mahabaratha, the top row had all the Gods, etc.
So after this final temple in Nuggehalli, I stopped for lunch before getting to my cousin Madhu’s place in Bangalore. Food-wise, Karnataka food was similar to that of Tamil Nadu (so of course, very delicious), but the flavor profiles of specific dishes were just subtly different enough for me to appreciate. But I will say that for an outsider, both cuisines would probably seem the same. Spent about two days in Bangalore seeing some relatives, including Madhu, his wife Varsha and their 5 year old daughter (who is my niece! she kept calling me “uncle” which I was not a fan of), and my grandma’s older sister (Madhu’s grandma), who is a sprightly 92 years old and in fantastic shape for her age.
I got back to Chennai on a Sunday afternoon – my sister had actually flown back to NY earlier that morning – and then spent my last week in India just hanging out in Chennai with my mom and grandma and seeing some relatives again. I did take a day trip to the temple town of Kanchipuram, just south of Chennai so still in Tamil Nadu, with my cousin Ashvin. These temples were largely pre-Chola (like those of Mahabalipuram, closer to Chennai). So Ashvin is basically like a giant repository of knowledge for Tamil Nadu history – he was almost like a de facto guide here, as he was when he took me to the Chennai Museum just before COVID. We saw a bunch of temples, but I would say the three noteworthy ones were the first three that we saw. Kanchipuram itself has like hundreds of temples, all of which have some religious significance and all of which are like 500+ years old. The first temple we saw was the Varadharaja Perumal Temple, which is a giant complex that took well over 90 minutes to see everything. Google says it’s 23 acres…about similar in size to the other two major temples in the city that we did not see – Ekambeswarar for Shiva and Kamakshi Amman for the Shaktism cult of Hinduism, which venerates female deities. Shiva worshipers consider her as Shiva’s wife Parvati, Vishnu worshipers consider her as Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, and pure Amman worshippers consider her as being “above” Vishnu/Shiva/Brahma.
Anyways, the Varadharaja Perumal Temple was quite cool primarily because you could see the layers of history here, from the original Pallava construction (they were the ones who built the single carved temples in Mahabalipuram) in the 800s, to the Chola period (most of the historic grand temples in Tamil Nadu) a few hundred years later, to the Vijayanagar period “only” 500 years ago (they did Hampi), to the more recent Nayak period that was just before British rule. So next to major temples, you have these small houses that were meant to house the Brahmin priest who worked at the temple. These are all mostly locked up now. After this first temple, we were drinking some masala lime juice drink from a street vendor (would not recommend this if you don’t have an iron stomach like I do), and Ashvin somehow sweet talked the vendor into opening up this old Brahmin house that was right behind him. How he knew that this vendor even had the keys I have no idea. Turns out that this house is sparsely used, but the inside was a gorgeous blast of color, with ~100 year old paintings of various equivalents of saints and gods. Very cool side trip that we took here.
After this was the highlight of the trip, seeing the oldest stone Vishnu temple and oldest stone Shiva temple in all of South India (older temples for both are all rock carved or constructed in caves, like in Mahabalipuram). Both were ~1200+ years old. The first was the Vaikunda Perumal temple, for Vishnu. One interesting factoid here, was that the Pallava dynasty almost ended because of a childless king. They wound up fetching some distant cousin who was a royal member in Cambodia, and dragged him over to be the new king. Up until this dude, the Pallavas were mainly Shiva worshipers, but this new guy was a Vishnu worshiper so commissioned this temple. A super interesting thing is that if you look at the surviving carvings of this King, he has clearly Asiatic features, most notably his eyes and facial hair. And there is an old Tamil script accompanying all of these scenes so everything is clearly labelled and subtitled, and all in all, in very good condition considering the age. Apparently this is a big reason why a lot of subsequent South Indian depictions (like the Chola Natarajas) have, for lack of a better descriptor, “Asian” looking eyes, among other non-Indian features. Since this was the first major stone Vishnu temple, it directly influenced a lot of the artwork and motifs that you see in all subsequent Vishnu temples. Similarly, the Kailasanthar Temple, which predates the Vaikunda Perumal by ~50 years or so, played an identical role for subsequent Shiva temples. It was very cool to sort of see these “proto” versions at both these temples, and the 1200+ year old wall carvings were all in amazingly good shape given their age, and more impressively, their use. Since Hinduism is basically “living history”, all of these historic temples have constantly been in use and been updated with time…there’s no real sense of “preservation” like there is in the West, because these customs and traditions are directly linked to the past and have never had a “divide”. While these two specific temples have more or less always been operational, because the historically significant parts – the outer temple and wall carvings – are mostly purely aesthetic, they have been left alone. While the interior, which is the “important” part where prayer is done, has basically had continuously upkeep for countless generations.
Was very glad to have done this day trip out to Kanchipuram and seen all of these historic temples (beyond the three mentioned here, we saw like 5 or 6 other ones, all on the smaller side). Actually, one other highlight was the Ulagalantha Perumal Temple, which had this massive statue of a sitting Vishnu (probably 10+ meters tall, and you could only see it by peeking up past the doorway where the priests are and where you are not allowed. Needless to say, no photos allowed). But this daytrip sort of provided a nice cap to all the Tamil Nadu temples I saw 2 years ago, and filled in the gaps in terms of post Mahabalipuram (with the carved temples) and pre Chola (with their magnificent and massive tower structures). One other highlight of this day trip was the mouth watering good we had. We stopped by some random shack of a restaurant for breakfast (these are referred to as a “mess” in colloquial Tamil) where for under 1 USD, we had a filling breakfast with tea that arguably ranks as some of the best breakfast food I have had in southern India. And for lunch, we drove outside the town for this great biriyani spot (sort of similar to plov or pilaf, with rice simmered in meat juice) that was a regional cuisine from a town in southern Tamil Nadu.
Every time I do historic sightseeing in India, I’m reminded by just how poorly the country does in terms of self-advertising. There are tons and tons of historic sights in other countries, that I would argue are very subpar when compared to lesser known Indian ones, that people know about due to the countries doing a good job of making sure people know about it, and making these places foreign-tourist friendly. On the other hand, you have places like Kanchipuram or Shravanabelagola in India, where objectively the sights are impressive (1200 year old, beautifully detailed temples and a 1000 year old, 20 meter tall, single rock carved statue on top of a hill, respectively), but even I didn’t know about until I looked into it more when planning a vague trip down in this area – I obviously knew about Kanchipuram but not about the two specific standout historic temples I saw.. I will always die on the hill that India is up there with China as the only places on Earth with this treasure trove of cultural history that goes back thousands of years across vastly different cultures, AND with large portions of this being “living history” versus “static history”. There’s just so much random historic significance lying around. I guess it’s good that this hasn’t been exploited negatively yet, but there definitely is a fine line between total negligence in terms of attracting foreigners and overdoing it where it becomes a theme park.
After this Kanchipuram trip, I just had a few more days in Chennai before flying back to New York. Spent some more time with my mom and grandma here, and saw a few more relatives so that was nice to catch up again with people. Got to eat some good food (including one of my favorite restaurants ever, Woodlands). Also went back to the Kabaleswarar Temple in central Chennai with my mom as she hadn’t been in a looong time – this is the major temple in Chennai, and the starring attraction here is the colorful and detailed gopuram tower as you walk inside the premise. I swear that India trips always fly by, and this was no exception. Obviously the reason for visiting was unfortunate, but again, I think it’s important to take advantage of any sort of situation that life gives you and getting to see some family and travel around a bit definitely qualified as that.
I get back to NY in a couple of days, and am basically spending less than a week there before heading out to Peru. I’ll be doing a stay in the jungle at the Tambopato Research Center on my own, before then meeting my parents and sister (my mom flies back to NY a few days after me) in the Cusco area for a couple of weeks, for my dad’s 60th birthday.