Some Pictures from tamil nadu and Rajasthan.
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
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Mamallapuram
Friday, January 18th, 2008Try and say that five times, try and remember how to pronounce it so you know when to jump off a chennai bound bus – I had a little difficulty executing this last simple task and ended up having to walk from the local motorway (sound familiar, cough cough 😉 into the small fishing village and only true travellers enclave on the eastern coast of india. I was on the antibiotics at this stage so I wanted to find somewhere middlin fast to stay so I could hole up and get rid of the chest infection.
The first place I saw, I took it. I managed to negotiate a price down from 300 rupees per night down to 200 on the proviso that I would be staying there for a week. Now if you saw this room you wouldn’t put your suckler calfs into this place, had enough after one sleepless night and moved down the road to a much nicer place that was just a tiny bit dearer. It had tv, hot water, it was clean and had access to the swimming pool next door – so I decided to make this my home for a week.
To be honest I didn’t nothing all week – the most strenuous activity involved heading to the back of the town to see the caves, the wonderful rock carvings and watch the sunset over the deccan plains. In the town itself there is a world heritage listed temple that lies just on the shore. It was beautiful – I managed to visit it one evening just before sunset and it trully was a fantastic setting.
For the rest of the week I hung out with the two english girls, invariably getting up at about 12 in the morning before going for some porridge, heading to the beach for an hour or so before grabbing lunch reading a book before getting even more food that night. Sounds like pure slothery and it was but I feel that given the condition I was in that I should be forgiven at least a little bit.
There is this really great medical clinic in mamallapuram which I went into 3 or 4 times to get myself sorted. The main doctor there was this young woman called Indira Gandhi who really went out of her way to look after me. Her nurses were gas, they were all tiny, one of them was micro small. They were running around the place, giving out to each other, dramatically putting hands on hips and stomping their feet. At one stage there was one of them putting drops in my eyes, another taking my blood pressure and another one sticking a thermometer under my tongue. Because my eyes were persistently sore the doctor took a blood test incase I had dengue fever which was pretty common in that area, its a nasty but treatable disease so it was definitely better to be safe than sorry. They had the results in a couple of hours and they just showed up a bacterial infection that I had picked up from either a fellow traveller or an insect bite. Back onto the antibiotics this time for 7 days along with various other pills to protect my stomach and drops for the eyes. I was better within a couple of days.
Paying for this kind of service was also inevitably a unique process. There is no fixed price. The clinic was set up in a travellers enclave intentionally so that they could over charge tourists so that they could treat the poorer more needy people of which there are so many in this country. They were completely honest and upfront about this and their service equalled if not totally surpassed any experience I have had back at home – so I paid them enough to cover the costs of my own medication plus the same amount again which I thought was fair and was gratefully accepted.
The poverty is something which just doesn’t go away – its omnipresent – you see such shocking examples of depravity on a daily/hourly basis, from kids defacating on the streets to whole familys sleeping on the poor excuses for pavements, in mamallapuram it is just as obvious as anywhere – you are never allowed to hide away in your travellers bubble for very long and neither should you. In one of the books I am reading about india the author talks about people developing city eyes where they gloss over this pitch black darkest of elements, I find myself doing this time and time again. It frustrates me sometimes but I reckon its just a defence mechanism, to allow yourself to absorb all that is happening in your environment would be suicide, it would drive you crazy? How can you reconcile yourself with the fact that I am probably carrying enough cash in my money belt than they will see in many many years of living on the streets but biving money to these people is not the best way to deal with the situation, there is a dark sinister element at play which you don’t see or consider when a small child is tugging at your hand and pointing at their malnourished mouth. The sad truth is that this child is just being pimped out by its boss, a slave to some gangster who takes all what they can gather and gives them maybe a handful of rice at the end of the day so that they can go back out on the streets again the following day. I try as a result to give them some food instead, an opened packet of biscuits or a sandwich – something that they cannot sell back to the shop owner in order to garner more rupees for their boss. Its difficult to think of a proper solution that could help these people, they are stuck in a vicious circle to be dependent on these monsters, they may have been kidnapped or orphaned and have no other way of surviving. I have thought about volunteering my time to help at some stage and hopefully I will get the opportunity to give back at some stage. I feel I need to learn a bit more first…
I left mamallapuram with the girls last sunday on the way to chennai. I booked my train up north. In order to get to Rajasthan I would have to get 1 24 hour train to Jalgaon in the state of maharastra, north east of Mumbai – there are some funky caves there that are meant to be really worth the stopover. After one night there I will grab another train this time for 12 hours to the city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujurat state, before finally jumping on another train to Udaipur which is the southern gateway to the magnificence that is Rajasthan…
Later,
Phil
Pondicherry
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
There is definitely more than one way to skin a cat in this country. Yesterday when I arrived in tanjore I made it my business to find out when the bus to pondicherry left, the guy told me 3.30 and ... [Continue reading this entry]
Tanjore
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Tanjore was but a short hop up the road from trichy. It is however a goodbit off the beaten track and doesn't attract that many western travellers, infact no where I have been since Varkala have I seen more than ... [Continue reading this entry]
Trichy
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
I left madurai on the second of january, grabbed a public bus (yes one of those buses) to a town called trichy which is about 120 km north of madurai. I had the option of going to a place called ... [Continue reading this entry]
Madurai
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
I arrived into madurai after dark, as I said before its a bad time to arrive anywhere especially when you need to find yourself somewhere to stay and something to eat. Madurai is a big town, the second biggest in ... [Continue reading this entry]
KanyeKumari
Monday, December 31st, 2007
When it seems like you have all the time in the world and a budget that is a step or two above miserly you don’t mind waiting for trains. Sitting in the shade listening to my creative zen throw out ... [Continue reading this entry]
Ooty and the Road to Cochin
Monday, December 31st, 2007
I decided to go for the seated option on the night time bus to ooty. Its actually not a bad way to travel here in India where the roads are pretty shocking. For about 10 minutes I sat with what ... [Continue reading this entry]
Phil Gill