Tamil Nadu

So the bust driver out of Munnar was much much better than the one into Munnar. This driver took the decent very calmly, which made the ride much much better and allowed all those on board to take in the beautiful views. We even got to see monkeys, though they didn't seem to be the trained variety that pick tea leaves for humans, man I would love a helper monkey. Now of course the entire ride was kept company by the loud incessant honking, though it at least seemed logical for many of the blind curves going down the hills. When we finally reached Theni I was in much higher spirits than I had predicted, but this didn't last long as almost immediately the beggars returned. Having traveled such a short distance it was shocking how different things seemed from Kerala. After switching and getting on the bus to Madurai, while being forced to have my pack on my lap, a man immediately started begging at my window and wouldn't go away so I finally just shut the window, which he then smacked. The ride to Madurai wasn't that bad other than the fact that I had my pack on my lap the entire 3 hours. The other problem with both bus rides is that I spent the entire time calling every hotel in lonely planet to reserve a room, but every hotel said they were full, this ended up meaning that I would have to get a really expensive room, but this wasn't that big of a deal as I was only planning on being their for a night and I was actually hoping to get a good nights rest, which has for the most part been alluding me. So after arriving I had a rick shaw driver drop me at the train station, got a room and then I went to the train station to get a ticket to go to Puducherry.

I managed to deal with the whole information part of the ticket and bought a ticket, which I was told would require a tourist quota and to go up to the ticket master's office. At the same time I met a couple from Scotland who were also buying a ticket and had to deal with the same problem, though I finished first. So I went up to the ticket master's office who had me skip everyone as he seemed very happy to deal with a foreigner and said that there was no quota available, but told me I was one of his VIPs and to comeback tomorrow. I then went to wonder around the town looking for food. I ended up running into the Scottish couple and we started looking for food together. We ended up going to a Thali restaurant, which was quite good, though we had a few miss-communications with the staff, but no real problems. We then wondered around and decided to look for some chai. I remembered seeing a place called best coffee in town (I figured they'd also have chai) near my hotel so we decided to head over there. Of course on ordering we found out that they didn't have chai, but rather they only had coffee, so we all decided to get a cup. The server, this was no barista, deftly poured the black coffee mixed with sugar with hot milk back and forth between two cups, cooling and mixing it together leaving a frothy cup to be drunk. On my first sip it just hit me that it tasted so much like canned coffee, now most Americans have never had canned coffee, but in Japan it is super common and this was perhaps a slightly sweeter and milkier and UCC coffee I guess. Honestly most chai in India has way too much milk and way to much sugar, too much sugar for me even when I was a little kid of about 5 or so, with my usual at the purity diner I didn't put sugar in my tea, though I did put milk in my tea to emulate the appearance of my mother's coffee, coffee being something I wasn't allowed to drink at such a young age. Then we all parted ways and went to our respective hotels. This was my first time with a working TV in quite a while so I decided to flip through the channels and put on the news. Almost immediately I was greeted by reports of unrest in Darjeeling due to the police killing three protesters. This was very disheartening news as Darjeeling is one of the places in India that I've most wanted to go to. I then decided that I wanted wash up and went to fill up the washing basin, but found no hot water so I called down to the desk, they informed me that there was only hot water in the morning, but that they would send up a bucket of hot water. Then after watching some more TV, sleep...

The next morning it was off to Madurai's chief attraction, its Hindu temple. Now it was day and the city looked completely different than it had the night before. The first clear thing was that the street was littered with sugar cane juice sales men. These people have carts laden with large amounts of sugar cane and a juicer, which consist either of hand cranks or gas powered engines turning two parallel rollers, which have the sugar cane pass between crushing the sugar can and extracting the juice. There were also lots of bananas, and by lots I really do mean lots, many of them were being transported around the city on the back of these large cargo bicycles, which make up a huge segment for transporting goods cities. Almost immediately a relatively friendly Indian gentlemen came up directing me to where I would have to leave my shoes when I went into the temple and where I could go onto a roof to get a good view of the city. Relatively quickly it became clear that his motivations weren't entirely altruistic. On getting to the place with the roof it was clear that the place was also a shop so that a major aspect would be them trying to sell me stuff that I was in no way interested in buying. The view from the roof was actually quite nice and worth seeing but, then on my way down they started the hard sell. I kept telling the sales person that I wasn't very interested and that the stuff was too expensive as it was a relatively expensive shop. Another sales person was bringing some other tourists up to the roof and after they were out of ear shot he started chastising me for using the word expensive as he felt that nothing was expensive rather everything was simply properly priced. We ended up in a bit of a tiff and I immediately left the establishment. Almost immediately afterwards the man that directed me to the shop started having a conversation with me, but very quickly he started to tell me about how he was a tailor and wanted to make me clothing. At the time I really didn't want to take on any more baggage. So I dropped off my shoes and went to the temple. The temple was nice and interesting, but most of the places that looked like they would be best were off limits to none Hindus. I think this is a little ridiculous as I've been to countless houses of warship through out the world of countless religions and other than some Mosques I've never been denied entry. At one point I got on a line not realized it was only for Hindus when a guard came up to me freaking and out started directing me out, at first I got quite happy as I thought he might be directing me to some tourist line, but pretty quickly I realized I was simply getting kicked out of the area. After seeing everything that there was to see at least for my western eyes I started making my way towards the Gandhi Museum. After getting my shoes a women started to follow me begging. I kept trying to politely say no, but she persisted so I decided to just walk a bit quicker, in India without even thinking about it I out pace pretty much everyone, in the end she first started trying to run to keep up with me and then quickly gave up.

The walk was quite interesting winding and weaving down the various streets. I decided that I wouldn't really check my book and just kind of go the way that seemed to make sense and ask directions. Most everyone I asked was super helpful but they were all shocked that I would walk it and kept tell me to take an auto or something. This is one of those weird of oddities of India, I've not been able to figure out if they tell me this because I am a foreigner or if they themselves wouldn't walk, but all I know is that when they do this it is almost always more than walkable. I then eventually made it to this bridge that went over a river bed, it seemed like perhaps at time the river is a bit higher, but at this time it was quite shallow and there were water buffalo in little pools bathing themselves, children playing and people doing laundry, leaving the large areas covered with laundry to dry, the stench was horrid. I kept walking and eventually a group of kids were super helpful and directed me to the final leg of my journey to the museum. On getting to the museum I was informed that I would only have a very short while as their lunch break was fast approaching. So I went in and made for a quick look. The museum was nice, they even have the bloodied mundu worn by Gandhi when he was assassinated. I then decided to head back to the city center and just kind of explore. A man with a bike rickshaw then started to kind of follow me regardless of how often I told him I was uninterested in a ride. This time I took a different root and walked down a street with a little market where women were selling mostly vegetables. When I went to take some photos most of the people were very nice, but this one women started throwing things at me, so I quickly left. This time I made my way across a much large bridge across the same river bed, on passing this one small segment I had to hold my breath for a minute or so as the stench of urine was completely overwhelming. The sounds were also quite over whelming, but it would have been quite ridiculous and impractical for me to plug my ears while journeying through the city. Pretty quickly I started to realize that I was in need of water and was quite hot so I decided to head back to the hotel very briefly and grab some water. On my way back the bicycle rickshaw driver found me again and started pestering me again, this time he seemed to heed my enteritis to him to leave me be. It really was quite hot and I came a across a church where I found a few moments of respite from the hot sun and finished what remained of my water.

After making my way back to the hotel I cooled off and got my stuff all packed up and then just wandered around town as my train was not 'till 11pm. It quickly became clear that the city was just filling up and filling up with more and more people. Slowly the city was just getting so much louder and louder as with the more and more people came it meant that there was more and more traffic. I honestly just couldn't take the noise and the pushing any longer so I went back my hotel (I had already checked out, but they had my bag) and just went to their rooftop restaurant, which many of the hotels in Madurai figuring it was the only place I could get away from the noise. In the end it was probably my best bet, but I could still hear most of everything, though certainly a more reasonable volume. It was actually quite nice, there were a few fire works and the view of the temple was quite nice at night. The food was certainly only okay, but the rice was actually much better than most of the rice you find in Indian restaurants.

I had a few a hours, but headed over to the station none the less. I decided to wait in the waiting room of the station and found my self next to an Englishmen reading a paper and asked him if he would tell me if there was anything about Darjeeling in there, he told me there was nothing and I started to read. Pretty soon a group of Indians, three men and three women sat next to me. Pretty quickly they started asking to take pictures with me. This lasted for maybe 20 minutes with them also asking me various questions. After they left I went looking for the Scottish couple. I found them and we had a pretty good discussion until they left. Eventually their train came and I was left waiting alone again. My train then came and I quickly got on and tried to sleep. The train then arrived at 6am. From the station we had to take a bus to Puducherry. I ended up asking these two dutch travelers, thinking they were waiting for a train at the station, where the bust stop was, they quickly pointed the way and said they were going there themselves. The two Dutchmen started to do what I had already learned is a stupid thing to do, but as I had somewhat attached myself onto them I couldn't really effect things, so they started to ask cab drivers and auto rick shaws where to get the bus, they all directed us to take a ride to the bus station. I pretty quickly started to suspect that we could just grab a bus at a station, but I went along none the less. We got an auto to the station and I quickly got us onto the right bus. On the bus I very quickly told the Dutchmen that I bet the bus stops at the station, which it ended up doing so. The money collector then came by to get money from us and I asked him how much, he put up one finger and I asked him one what, to which he put one finger up again, so I was about to give him one rs, but quickly one of the two Dutchmen quickly proffered a 100rs note to the collector, in exchange he got a slip saying the cost was 48rs for all of us and our bags. Through the ride we kept trying to get the collector to give us our change, but he wouldn't relent until finally another rider started to pester him for us. Well once the bus arrived I decided when the two Dutchmen decided to get an auto to the the city center to part ways as I knew it was no more than a 15min walk. I then quickly made my way to the town center area where all the rooms are and it was exceedingly clear when I made it to the French area as not only was the grid orderly, but it was also clean.

Well it was too early for any of the places to give me a room so I just hung out with my bag at one place and ended up meeting and just talking with one of the guards who was from Nepal and this German man. I then went looking for rooms again and actually saw for the first time in India a garbage truck and street cleaning crew, truly amazing. Still no luck finding a room. Finally at 9am I found a place that had a vacancy and took the room quickly up after consulting with another place run by Frenchmen and being told by the first place I went to that it was unlikely that they would have a vacancy. After getting a little settled and getting cleaned up I asked the proprietors where to get some wifi. They directed me to a little on the next street over. On my way in I got confronted by a some sort of TV crew doing a show a Puducherry. I tried to explain to them that I just arrived and really knew nothing about the place yet. But they said that they hadn't had a person from NYC yet so they wanted to interview me, well their loss I'd say. After the very awkward interview I made my way to the little cafe with the wifi and got myself a cheese crepe, hold the salad (not wanting to trust how the uncooked greens would have been cleaned). It was here that I first came across my next short term traveling companion, Rosie. On email I started to correspond with a friends mother about staying in Delhi with them and the same friend's friend Rahu who lives near Delhi. I then went off to explore the city and check out their hand made paper making Ashram and various other sites.

Puducherry really is clean and smelling good. It also isn't nearly as noisy, well all of these are true in the neatly ordered grid on the coast, which is part of the French side of town. It really was quite a peaceful pleasure. On getting to the Ashram you hit the outer ring, which is where things start to get hectic and smelly, but still not like anywhere else I'd been in India before. Of course as always the Ashram was out for lunch so I had to walk around and waste some time. Finally I got in and checked out their wears. After looking around I made my way for a coastal walk and saw their nice Gandhi statue, once again every town and or city has one, and even walked by a Basken Robin's. I also saw for the first time very clearly how they do road repair in India. Essentially they have a bunch of men and women in plain clothes lay their re-bar, delivered by bike, down and then page directly on top of the old road. Essentially the roads are just layered on top of each layer, this is essentially a really bad way to repair roads. I then following Lonely planets rough walking tour came across a cafe they have listed and while looking at their very uninspired menu came across Rosie again, who was reading the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a good book in my opinion. So we ended up just wandering around the town talking. It turned out that she was perhaps the tenth person I'd met from Melbourne so another in a line of an established pattern. We grabbed some food at the beach and then separated for a bit to get our own things in order then met again to grab some food, but first we went over to the beach and just sat and talked, no sunset to see as we were on the east coast of India, but then made a journey looking for food. Food was harder to find than you might think as most of the Indian seemed very tourist oriented and the rest was simply places that had too much of everything, essentially indecisive menus in my opinion are generally signs of bad food in all areas. We finally settled on an Italian joint and split two Pizzas also continuing a long pattern on this trip. The pizza though not amazing was actually surprisingly good. We then decided to meet in the morning and grab some breakfast and then decide on where to go. I then gave Rahul a call and we decided that we would meet in Delhi and he told me that he would talk to his aunt, but that he thought that the news was probably over reacting and that Darjeeling was safe.

In the morning we went back to the French cafe and quickly decided on going to Auroville and that we would ride bikes out of the city and Into the moving traffic jam. I have a masala chai and a crepe du formage et champagone, this is Pondy's duality in a meal.

Saddled up, and ready to ride into the storm, we don't yet know what craziness awaits us. Beginning the journey things go quite well, for me the only challenge is acclimating to riding on the left, which isn't too much of a problem and the calmness and order of the French quarter is simply like riding in a very quiet suburb in the U.S. but with more interesting sites. Well once we hit the outer ring as I noticed the previous day while walking we suddenly were in a totally different world of madness and chaos. Now instead of feeling like every auto rickshaw driver was harassing me for a fare I felt like they were all trying to kill me. The most bizarre part of the ride was simply how many people in India ride their bicycles against traffic. Now this isn't everyone, but the rate of Salmoning in India is much higher than in NYC. We just kept going and occasionally we would stop to consult my phone to see how much further we had to go, but it can some times be hard to when in a new environment directly translate scales to action. We were looking for a decent sized road, it turned out we should have been looking for a tiny alley. The entire ride we were continuously being honked at passed very closely, at one point a bus that was honking came with inches of Rosie. Well we road right past our turn and went quite a few km well out of our way until we checked my phone and discovered our folly. Well this was quickly remedied and this time I lead the way and we made the right turn. We ended up a on a very nice quiet road that wound up and down through some nice fields and very little other than one bakery with questionably looking goods next to a little resort hotel and eventually we made our way to the main road to Auroville. We then after a brief stop made our way to Auroville. At this point I'll explain what Auroville is, it is supposed to be a Utopian community, but like so many supposed Utopian communities is comes off as being a bit cultish, but they seem to do some good. They also built a huge temple type place that honestly to me was simply ugly and seemed quite wasteful. Such useless structures always seem to make me question any true positive ideals for any such community, but everyone did seem quite nice. Though one observation that I made was that all of the western members seemed to be following very idyllic pursuits, but only a few of the Indian members seemed to be pursuing and thing other than the manual labor related tasks. Well both myself an Rosie were a bit disgusted by what we saw and it was starting to get late so we decided to head back so that we wouldn't have to ride in the dark. The ride back was no better.

On returning we tried to get Rosie a ticket to Bombay, which was unsuccessful, they told her to comeback the next day. We then went to dinner to a place that was recommended as having good Indian food and it did, though for India it was a bit pricey, but it was certainly good. Towards the end of dinner I decided to check my ticket for the next day that for some reason I had convinced myself departed Chenai at 7pm, but on looking at my ticket I realized it departed at 6am. This sent me into a panic requiring me to figure out how to get to Cheni that night instead of the next day. Luckily I was quickly told that I could get a bus at 11 so Rosie and myself part ways and went to the bus station for a three hour ride to Chenai.

On getting to the station I literally kept hopping from Chenai bus to Chenai bus looking for the correct route taking the ECR (East Coastal Road) and ended up hoping onto the correct bus as it was already backing out of its space, I did this while wearing both of packs. The bus ride wasn't too bad though it was long, but I suppose that was to be expected, I pretty much just tried to read a book that Rosie had given me by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Marquez “one hundred years of solitude”, but with the lack of light and with the bumpiness of the ride so I ended up just trying to read some stuff on my phone. Finally we arrived and I got an auto rickshaw to the train station where I would wait 'till my train departed. The station was swarming with insects specifically mosquitoes due to the pools of water due to the half assed cleaning that was currently taking place. The cleaning consisted of a group of women sweeping dirty water around the station and occasionally one women would run through the water with a squeegee. The craziest thing about this whole scene was the large number of Indians that were walking through the mess bare footed and sleeping on the floor while the women were sweeping this dirty water just around them while the insects swarmed. After a little bit a settled down next to a Singaporean who ended up preaching to me about veganism and about Jesus being Indian and how such a truth had been revealed to him by an enlighten guru in the mountains of Kashmir.

Well the train eventually came and I hoped on board and went to sleep, finally.

Serene Path,
Disturbed by desire,
Tainted thought,
No more peace of mind.