A bunch of Seattle Amazonians, including my boss Colin Bodell and yours truly, found ourselves in the Asiana Hotel in Chennai this weekend, and decided to play tourist.

We got a driver to take us down the coast to Mamallapuram, a town 60km south of Chennai. It’s famous for its stone carvings and temples, and for a large impossibly-balanced rock known as Krishna’s Butterball. Wikitravel has a good article on the place.
After several hours at “M’puram”, we headed back up the coast, but stopped for a quick visit to Crocodile Bank, a zoo and research centre devoted to all things crocodilian. From their website:

Starting with 30 mugger adults, the Bank has bred over 5000 and now holds over 2400 crocodilians of 14 different species. By 1987 the CrocBank developed a much broader focus, and became the Center for Herpetology, Indias premier institution for herpetofaunal conservation, research and education. Currently besides crocodilians, the Bank maintains 12 endangered species of turtles and tortoises, five species of snakes, including the King Cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, water monitor lizards, Varanus salvator salvator, two species of pythons and albino cobras. Housed in enclosures very similar to their natural habitat visitors can get a close view of how these reptiles live in the wild.

It’s awesome. Highly recommended.
The photos that I took are presently uploading (slowly – we’re up to number 28 out of 134 but they’re all up on grommit now) to my gallery. Enjoy.