Subway Sandwiches and Buddhist Ruins

     We left the shelter a few hours early yesterday and decided on the way home that we wanted Subway for lunch. We had seen a Subway several days prior when driving around the city, but we weren’t exactly sure where it was. Viru thought she knew which neighborhood it had been in, so we drove around in circles for quite a while but it was nowhere to be found. No 3G signal, and people on the street weren’t sure where it was. Of course as we drove along, we craved a nice big sandwich more and more, but eventually gave up, disappointed, and headed back towards the hotel. Suddenly, voila, there was the nice friendly Subway sign sticking out at us! It was quite an ordeal and our driver will now forever know where Subway is, but it was worth it. The menu here is a lot more veggie friendly, with a paneer sandwich, a potato patty, a soy patty, and a couple of others. Plus I got Lays ‘American style cream and onion’ chips, which was really nice after missing snacks in a country where more savory things are too spicy for me to bear – though my spice tolerance is definitely improving!

     After washing all the cow muck off ourselves (which we subjected the people at Subway to), we headed down to the crafts bazaar by the beach. There were countless booths of people selling items from all over India. We spent two hours wandering the market, enthralled by all of the jewelry and craftwork and going on quite the shopping spree. We were the only tourists there, so got lots of looks but not the typical heckling that one often gets at a more touristy market. We wanted to go back today for more, but the beach road is closed because of a marathon, so we’ll have to head back another day; the market will be here for another week. We then headed across the street to the beach. My first encounter with the Bay of Bengal involved me turning away from it and baam, suddenly a huge wave decided to come crashing ashore. Luckily I was wearing a skirt so only got half drenched, but the bay is much saltier than the Pacific and I ended up tracking plenty of sand into the car. Our poor driver, we make such a mess of the car every day as it is with our dirty scrubs.

     In an attempt to avoid the heat, we got picked up this morning a little after 7 and drove 40 km to the Buddhist ruins at Sankaram. It was really a hidden gem – almost no one around here knew about it, but our driver has some friends in a nearby village who knew the ruins and walked around with us. There are two big hills, Bojannakonda and Lingalakonda, each with intricate formations that were excavated in 1907.

     We started off with Bojannakonda, walking up the staircase to reach engravings of Buddha and various gods carved in the mountainside. Orange and white butterflies flying everywhere, wild jasmine scenting the air. The only noises around us were the songs of the birds and music from the village below. We were alone on the hill with our guides at first, but soon a Buddhist meditation group of men, women, and a few children arrived, all dressed in white. They lit incense in some of the caves and we listened as they chanted in Sanskrit. It was a very peaceful environment; words and pictures don’t do it justice. We explored the hill, which was covered in stupas, some worn away but others with engravings that were still visible. There were a few caves that we could walk inside, where we used our phones to illuminate the intricacies on the walls as well as to spot a few bats. The caves were boiling hot so we could only stay inside them so long, but the level of detail that had been carved into the mountain was amazing. Looking down below, the farmlands sprawled out beneath us and the rolling hills lay out hazy in the distance with contrasts of greens and reds and browns. 

     After a snack of gooseberries soaked in honey, we climbed up Lingalakonda, where we definitely felt the morning’s heat as it reflected from the rocks. The engravings had all worn away, but there were stupas of all different sizes filling the top of the hill. We also looked over at Bojannakonda in the distance, where we could see the people in white illuminated against the hillside. There was a wonderful breeze as we looked down at the valley below and climbed around on the various levels of the ruins. We could have stayed there for a lot longer had the heat not been so intense, but it was still a really amazing two hours.