I’ve been sitting on this photo album for about a week because I’ve been planning on writing a detailed account of the amazing weekend Michelle and I had in Pondicherry & Mahabalipuram. Alas, I never had time, and now I’m gearing up to go back to Chennai, anticipating new tales to tell. I suppose it’s better to write a quick summary than nothing at all, so here you go.

I flew from Bangalore to Chennai on Friday evening and we drove down to Pondicherry, about a three-hours drive. Along the drive, we have various surprising experiences. The first was seeing a motorcycle driving on the highway with a passenger who was holding a 4×8 sheet of plywood in his hands. He was holding it straight up and perpendicular to the direction of travel, like one of the sails on the Black Pearl. We were half-tempted to hang behind them and wait for the guy to inevitably sail off the back of the bike. But we didn’t.

Then, once we turned off the main road onto the smaller road that leads to Pondicherry, we struck up a conversation with our driver, Sethu, who had lived in Italy for two years. It turns out he was on the roadside of the Giro d’Italia when Marco Pantani won in 1998. The cashew trees were in bloom, so here we are in the middle of South India, chatting about Marco Pantani with Sethu while smelling the fresh scent of cashew blossoms. In India, you just never know what is going to happen next.

Well, we actually did know what would happen next: we spent the following day in Pondicherry, a French colonial town on the Bay of Bengal. Needless to say, it’s a beautiful town and - since we’re in South India - it was crowded and stiflingly hot.

The next day, we drove up the coast to the ancient temple town of Mahabalipuram. These amazing temples were carved straight out of a solid hunk of granite. ALL OF THEM. ONE HUNK OF GRANITE. Holy buckets. Unfortunately, most of the temples were never completed due to wars and people dying, etc, but it is a truly amazing site.

Read more about Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry.