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I took a night bus from Puttaparthi to the town famous for its temples and silk manufacturing. I finally arrived at 4 in the morning! Sweaty, dirty, smelly - yak, but there was a sweet rickshaw driver waiting and we found a hotel almost instantly...great! 
Wow, the temples! I visited the major 5 in one day, in the afternoon I went to see a NPO (non profit organization) for the protection of Women and children, run by an Indian couple since 25 years, living a few kms outside Kanchee, it was very interesting. Their main task has been to stop child labour in the silk factories, and I got a list from her 
with the "kosher places" to buy from - so I then spent the rest of the day in the silk shop...unfortunately, there was a politicical strike going on in Tamil Nadu because of the conflict Tamil/Sri Lanka and the city literally stopped for 12 hours and my trip to the next place got postponed, but, when I finally got there...
Mahaballapuram...what a great place! Really! I highly recommend it - the people are lovely, friendly, it's small and you can feel the suffering they went through when the tsunami swept their villages away. It is not a "pretty place" as far as the ordinary tourist site is concerned although there are quite a few tourists, mostly quite embarrassing, walking around half naked in a hindu/muslim culture - quite respectless, sticking together drinking beer and wine in the only restaurant serving beef and fries (!!! especially as the cow is holy in India !!) but, of course I am not surprised, 95% of the tourists were German or French, sorry to say, but according to my experience they seem to be the most arrogant when it comes to behaving abroad... I just pretended i did not speak anything else but English :-). Well, to find out more about this fab village, I spent a lot of time with the people, talking and drinking tea, and I also spent a considerable amount of money in their shops, not only because they had great things, but I have also decided that I would like to come back and contribute to the children's education, it is a very poor village, some don't have access to school and a lot have lost their parents. 
They are re-constructing allover the place, and the builders and roadworkers are everywhere. The problem seems to be that, since the re-building of the coastal villages has stopped because it is no longer making first page headlines, well the funding has stopped and the development is completely irregular and non sustainable. There are a lot of things that one can do to help - they need both material help and know-how. The main lesson that I learnt from there is how humble and nice they were with so little...something we should learn from in our western "crisis mania" - they have had, have, and will have crisis...all the time - it's part of their life - I am really grateful that I got to see this. Next stop will be Pondicherry....Om Shanti Om from Tamil Nadu xxx
I took a night bus from Puttaparthi to the town famous for its temples and silk manufacturing. I finally arrived at 4 in the morning! Sweaty, dirty, smelly - yak, but there was a sweet rickshaw driver waiting and we found a hotel almost instantly...great! 
with the "kosher places" to buy from - so I then spent the rest of the day in the silk shop...unfortunately, there was a politicical strike going on in Tamil Nadu because of the conflict Tamil/Sri Lanka and the city literally stopped for 12 hours and my trip to the next place got postponed, but, when I finally got there...
Mahaballapuram...what a great place! Really! I highly recommend it - the people are lovely, friendly, it's small and you can feel the suffering they went through when the tsunami swept their villages away. It is not a "pretty place" as far as the ordinary tourist site is concerned although there are quite a few tourists, mostly quite embarrassing, walking around half naked in a hindu/muslim culture - quite respectless, sticking together drinking beer and wine in the only restaurant serving beef and fries (!!! especially as the cow is holy in India !!) but, of course I am not surprised, 95% of the tourists were German or French, sorry to say, but according to my experience they seem to be the most arrogant when it comes to behaving abroad... I just pretended i did not speak anything else but English :-). Well, to find out more about this fab village, I spent a lot of time with the people, talking and drinking tea, and I also spent a considerable amount of money in their shops, not only because they had great things, but I have also decided that I would like to come back and contribute to the children's education, it is a very poor village, some don't have access to school and a lot have lost their parents. 
They are re-constructing allover the place, and the builders and roadworkers are everywhere. The problem seems to be that, since the re-building of the coastal villages has stopped because it is no longer making first page headlines, well the funding has stopped and the development is completely irregular and non sustainable. There are a lot of things that one can do to help - they need both material help and know-how. The main lesson that I learnt from there is how humble and nice they were with so little...something we should learn from in our western "crisis mania" - they have had, have, and will have crisis...all the time - it's part of their life - I am really grateful that I got to see this. Next stop will be Pondicherry....Om Shanti Om from Tamil Nadu xxx
