Here we are in front of the Shore Temple.
We arrived in Mamallapuram at dark and walked around the village. It was pretty much made of shops, restaurants and hotels. At first I wanted to spend Christmas there, and so did everyone else. We passed a tourist centre and in the morning, Dad and Mom arranged to have a taxi guy drive us to all the different temples. He drove us and at the gate of the Shore Temple and he introduced us to this man called Ali. We assumed Ali was part of the tour and gladly accepted the offer. Looking back it was obvious he wasn't. The taxi guy probably told him about us so he came to this spot. People do this 'fake tour guide' a lot in India. No more tours for us, thank-you very much. We had to get a ticket to enter the temples, and it will count for all the temples we will go to in India, including the Taj Mahal! At first the guy seemed . . .
nice and told great stories, but he treated me horribly. I always had to look at him. Not at the temples, not in my bag, not even at Mom when SHE asked a question. Even when I tried to make myself not squint by holding my eyes, he told me not to. When he 'asked' us to sit down, he more ordered it, and some of the stones were dirty and Mom didn't want to he repeated himself more sternly. Also, as we visited temple after temple he got worse and Mom thought she could smell drug-ish cigarettes on him. On top of all that, I was really sick and as there was no washroom handy I wasn't in a good mood. That day we were forced to buy two things, both of which were overly-expensive, swarmed by
street-sellers, and invited to Ali's house for a magic show and a bonus snake show. We foolishly accepted the invitation. His magic show was good, along with the tea and cookies he offered, but when he went brought out his snakes things got worse. Did I mention I'm terrified of wild cobras? Well, apparrantly these were 'domestic', but I wasn't about to trust him. The problem was we were about half a metre away, and the room was pretty small. I actually
started crying. He claimed that all the venom was gone, but again, why trust him? He had two; the king cobra and a regular cobra.The cobra 'danced' to his words, which had no rythm, and I remembered something I'd read somewhere that they didn't dance, they were just deciding where to strike. I begged Mom to come with me and leave, but she surprised me by insisting tostay. I wasn't about to leave and be alone with all the other people in the household (I'm not too keen on kidnapping), so I stayed. Then he brought out his king cobra. It tried to slither out of the basket twice and we left in a hurry.
street-sellers, and invited to Ali's house for a magic show and a bonus snake show. We foolishly accepted the invitation. His magic show was good, along with the tea and cookies he offered, but when he went brought out his snakes things got worse. Did I mention I'm terrified of wild cobras? Well, apparrantly these were 'domestic', but I wasn't about to trust him. The problem was we were about half a metre away, and the room was pretty small. I actually
started crying. He claimed that all the venom was gone, but again, why trust him? He had two; the king cobra and a regular cobra.The cobra 'danced' to his words, which had no rythm, and I remembered something I'd read somewhere that they didn't dance, they were just deciding where to strike. I begged Mom to come with me and leave, but she surprised me by insisting tostay. I wasn't about to leave and be alone with all the other people in the household (I'm not too keen on kidnapping), so I stayed. Then he brought out his king cobra. It tried to slither out of the basket twice and we left in a hurry.
After that we started noticing stuff; how the price on the cafe boards were different than on the menu, how not all of the fish was fresh in restaurants, how hotel managers got mad if we didn't stay more than a night at their hotel. We decided it was best not to spend Christmas here after all. That night Birch also had an allergic reaction to some tuna we foolishly thought he wasn't allergic to, but he's okay and nothing big really happened around that. Dad did some research on where to stay for Christmas and decided on a place called Auroville.
Allie
Allie
RSS Feed