An Indian friend Mithru I made in Varkala offered to take me on a tour of the historic town of Mamallapuram (also called Mahabalipuram) which located 50 km south of Chennai on the Coromandel coast. We arranged to meet at the Thiravanmiyur bus terminal where we caught a local bus to the outskirts of Mamallapuram. Mamallapuram is a world heritage site dating back to the 7th-8th century. It was a major port city for the Pallava Kingdom. The site comprises of a series of temples and monuments carved out of natural granite geological formations. The granite rocks provide an unusual geological feature along the flat coastline and so it is…