Shaded by a 1,300-year-old Hindu temple, I peered into the Indian Ocean imagining the fury unleashed here in Tamil Nadu by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. For all their destruction, those waves left behind one extraordinary, puzzling gift.
Excited archaeologists soon swarmed this coastal town of Mahabalipuram, 50km south of Chennai. They studied ancient structures in the ocean sand revealed by the tsunami, hoping these remains may be part of the legendary underwater temples of the 1,200-year-old Pallava dynasty.
The puzzle of those subsea temples remains unsolved. But one sits above the ocean, and the Unesco World Heritage site and tourist attraction recently became India’s first “green energy archaeological site”.
Late last year, Indian authorities revealed the temple is fully powered by solar energy. Known as Mahabalipuram Shore Temple, it is the very same building that shielded me from the fierce Tamil Nadu sun as I stared seaward.
