thinking of staying in mammallapuram and commuting to kovalam (kovalam in tamil nadu, 35 kms south of chennai, where my project is), because kavitha keeps sending me (and now also telling me, as i met her today) all these disclaimers about where they have set me up to sleep at BALM (which is the affiliate of banyan) in kovalam – disclaimers like: “it’s really basic, just so we’ve warned you” and “we haven’t quite gotten the bed squared away yet…” and “we are charging you a nominal fee of 125 R” (that’s about 3 dollars – that’s not a good sign). however, i may hate mammallapuram, as it is a real tourist trap and i am mortified at the behavior of the tourists. it may be an hour commute each way on a very hot bus…but i could stay in a room right on the ocean, overlooking the fishing boats…dunno yet, will try out the place for the weekend. right now i can’t get even a small plate of indian food here, as all they have is bogus tourist food. there is fish though, but only 2 hours of electricity a day to refrigerate it, which does not inspire the greatest confidence, but it looked awfully tempting on the plates going by!
 
looking forward to working on this library project. all play and no work makes this camper quite restless.