We arrived in Mahabalipuram quite tired from just over 24 hours of travelling. It's an ancient port town with hundreds of years of history, although you wouldn't necessarily know it from the bustling and ramshackle main road.

We got settled in to the hotel and then went get SIM cards and have a little look around, making sure to dip our toes in to the Bay of Bengal to mark the start of our coast to coast trip.

It was raining quite heavily (apparently very unusual for January) so we didn't do too much exploring. We found the bikes we're hiring and set them up for the ride, swapping pedals for our own, fitting the mounts for our bar bags, and giving the bikes a good checking over.

After that we headed out for dinner to a place called Moonrakers. They tried to tempt us with the catch of the day, but we played it safe and opted for "panner butter masala" instead. Very tasty!

Then we headed back to the room and tried to stay awake as long as possible to fight the jet lag.