These Feet Can Take Us Anywhere

We were thrilled to score a great plane fare from Istanbul to Chennai on Air Arabia, but the cost of our savings was dealing with the following flight schedule:
We left Istanbul at 2:40am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, landed in Sharjah (in United Arab Emirates) around 7am local time. After a thirteen hour layover we left for Chennai, India, around 8pm and landed in India at 3am local time on Friday. So, a good 24 hours of stay awake travel.

It wasn’t so bad, our main concern was having enough food with us so we wouldn’t be at the mercy of the airport gift shop. The night of the flight, after we got home from playing music with Sonar’s friends, he helped us whip up a batch of hummus with some chickpeas we’d cooked earlier. We put the hummus in a gallon size ziplock bag and packed it in our carry-on along with some yoghurt, crackers, cucumber and dried fruit. Sonar put us on the right bus and we got to the Istanbul airport with only a bit of time to spare and were the last to check in for the flight meaning we didn’t have seats together on the plane. Adding to our confusion the posted security information was unclear as to whether or not you could take liquids through. We decided not to chance our hummus – the linchpin of our nutrition for the next 24 hours – to the whims of security and so Christine valiantly smuggled the hummus through security by stuffing the gallon sized bag in her bra (thereby increasing her cup size to the proportions of a porn star or a circus freak, depending on your angle). We flew through security without incident (thankfully, because how can you really explain why you have a large bag of hummus in your bra) and when we boarded the plane Jon was seated next to a nice single woman who didn’t mind switching seats with Christine and so we got to sit together in the end.

The airport at Sharjah was most fascinating for people watching. For the first time, en masse, we saw people dressed as only we’d seen in pictures. Women in every style of Muslim dress from just the hijab (head scarf) and tunic, to the full black burqua cloaking their body from head to floor, to the even more encompassing chadri which veils the eyes too and makes the wearer look like a floating black ghost of material. Some Muslim men wore all white tunics with matching head long flowing head scarves, some Muslim men wore black tunics. Other cultures were represented too – Philipino, Indian, African…all people seemed to be in high cultural dress and it was very few and far between that anyone was dressed as a westerner. Needless to say, we stuck out like sore thumbs with our light hair and (gasp) pants! We were stared at but it was soon equalized as everyone in the airport got comfortable for their respective layovers (we gathered that lengthy airport sitting time is a common Air Arabia practice for some reason) and the waiting area took on the appearance of a sort of benevolent refugee camp. Here’s Christine in our little space we staked out, prime real estate underneath the chairs meant we could stretch out.

One other thing to note about the Sharjah airport. We could have bypassed the long and dull layover by purchasing a short term visa and taking a tour of nearby Dubai, which we would have enjoyed. The idea was dismissed once we found out that Sharjah would require us to submit to a retina scan in order to pass from the holding area into the United Arab Emirates. Yes, a scan of our retinas for their permanent records. No thank you, Big Brother…we’ll just hang tight until our flight leaves. Interesting to note that this retinal scanning is already standard practice at London’s Heathrow. What a world!

We arrived in Chennai, passed through immigration and customs and were thrilled to finally be standing in India! Jon’s pack arrived promptly at luggage pickup (we checked Jon’s pack which is bigger and used Christine’s pack for our carry-on), we changed a 20 euro note at the exchange booth and soon we were on our way out into the sultry Indian night. Luckily, amidst the cab drivers vying loudly for your business, there’s a state run pre-paid taxi service which is great for taking a taxi the first time when you haven’t a clue what it should cost. The answer was 250 rupees to go from the airport to the door of our couchsurfing hosts, roughly a thirty minute ride for less than five euros. We arrived at their lovely home around 3:30am and, luckily, Anushka was awake and working on a project so we didn’t disturb them too much. She graciously showed us to our private room with an adjacent bathroom that was all prepared for us and left us to sleep.

The next day we woke up around 11am and found our hosts, Anushka and Rajiv, working from home. We visited for a while and then Rajiv offered to take us out for a traditional South Indian meal which excited us greatly. We left the house and the fun began.

The view from Rajiv’s front balcony:

Words fail in describing India. It’s colorful and loud, crazy and confusing, people are sweet and kind and pushy and in your face all at the same time. People use their horns instead of turn signals and don’t drive on any one side of the road but all over it. Women calmly ride side-saddle on the back of mopeds with their colorful sari scarves flying behind them while their husband plunges through potholes and careens around other drivers. No westerners were in Chennai, it’s not on the tourist path and therefore we were quite interesting to people though they didn’t stare too much (or maybe we’re used to it). The walk from the house to the restaurant was the most sensory indulgent, fascinating walk we could have taken and we were amazed and delighted.

The restaurant Rajiv took us to was a second floor walk up in a maze of streets I probably couldn’t find again. It was a small restaurant with a fixed meal and patronized by locals which we took as a great sign. We sat at the table and soon a “vazhaillai” – or a large banana leaf – was put in front of us which was to be our eating surface. Food in South India, or in the Tamil Nadu region, is generally classified into six tastes: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent & astringent. Traditional Tamil cuisine recommends that you include all of these six tastes in each main meal you eat as each taste has a balancing ability and including some of each provides complete nutrition, minimizes cravings and balances the appetite and digestion. This was definitely true in our meal. Waiters kept coming around holding small metal containers into which they would dip a ladle and spoon onto the vazhaillai a portion of sambar, dry curry, rasam or kootu. Of course we were each given a large portion of steamed rice and curd (yogurt) to mix with as we liked. The food was out of this world, the flavors stunning, fresh and delicious.

During lunch Rajiv, who is a professional theater director in Chennai, mentioned that there was a record release function that evening that he couldn’t attend and would we like to go in his place. Of course we would! After lunch we parted with Rajiv and went into a little boutique Rajiv and Anushka had told us about, FabIndia, to buy ourselves a few pieces of clothing with local flavor. The loose fitting, lightweight cotton was excellent for keeping us cool and keeping the mosquitoes away. A side benefit was that we looked very fashionable at the event that evening!

The album is called The Blue Divine and it is a mixture of western classical influence piano with traditional Indian Carnatic singing along with tabla. The musicians were excellent and the evening was quite a classy affair with delectable hors d’oeuvre and mocktails from the 5 star hotel staff.

The next day we took a walk and Christine had to take a picture of these construction workers as they made use of the classic assembly line method. They’re moving the pile of bricks from the ground to the top floor…by throwing them up, up, and up. Quite effective (if not exhausting).

We walked down to the market and met the most enormous throng of people we’d ever encountered. This picture doesn’t do it justice, but the Saravana is a shopping center (one of many along this particular road) and people are streaming in droves in and out of the doors, completely unaware of the elbows and feet flying and the mad chaos it’s creating. And this wasn’t for anything special…it was just a regular shopping day. Walking through these streets was truly as a fish swimming upstream.

Not long after this overwhelming experience, we’d just gotten used to the idea of a throng of people when we saw our first accident. Jonathan had been thinking to himself that this was bound to happen with the chaos that ruled the roads. Here it is although the men are standing in front of the collision spot, you can see that we didn’t want to stand around for too long. See the horse-drawn carriage?

On Saturday evening, Rajiv and Anushka invited us to a book reading and art exhibition for the book Zero Degree by Blaft Publishing. Another exciting night on the town! Excerpts from the book were read in Tamil and English, and after the reading we zeroed in on the other two Westerners in the room: Anthony from Seattle and Adam from Washington D.C.! We enjoyed comparing notes and discovered that Adam writes for Lonely Planet and was doing an update on the Tamil Nadu region. We got some great tips from him!

The next morning we happily agreed to play frisbee on the beach at 6am, a tradition for Rajiv, Anushka and their friends. What a great treat for us to visit the ocean at sunrise (Bay of Bengal).

Afterwards we were taken to Anushka’s mother’s house where we meet her lovely sister and mother and were treated to coffee and a delicious home cooked breakfast with sprouted beans, egg torta, chipati, and fruit salad.

Rajiv and Anushka took great care of us. With them we got to experience so much of the Chennai art and music scene, things we never would have known about otherwise. The next night we were with them we all went to an Indian Ocean concert, an excellent band which we highly recommend you check out, and the last night we were all together we went to see a Bollywood film and had a light dinner at a local walk-up Indian stand. Our introduction to India through them was outstanding, and in a final show of friendship Anushka sat down with Jon the final evening to share her talent with him playing the Saraswati Veena, a classic South Indian instrument…

and then helped him discover a new talent of his own…

We very much enjoyed our long weekend with our new friends but it was time to start heading towards the outskirts of Pondicherry to Auroville which was to be our home for the next three months. We decided to go from Chennai to Mamallapuram (along the way to Puducherry) and spend a few days there enjoying the coast and the temples it’s famous for. When we woke up the morning of our departure we were surprised to find that the monsoon had done its bit during the night and Chennai was now knee-deep in flood waters. Life went on as usual though (this is monsoon season after all)…

Here was our view from the balcony first thing in the morning:

There was nothing to do but jump right in…

…and try to keep from getting splashed too badly!

She seemed to be doing alright!

We made our way across town in an autorickshaw with the help of Anushka’s sister who then lead us to the correct confusing bus stop to wait for a bus to Mamallapuram which arrived every 10-15 minutes. We ended up lucking out with a super deluxe A/C bus with hardly anyone on it and cushy seats to spread out (virtually unheard of) and made the express trip in an hour. We arrived in Mamallapuram, relieved to see that it was relatively dry, and took off down the road to try and find a room for the night.

Our Indian Adventure was well under way!

Tags: Chennai, India, Oct 2008, What's New, Tag Index

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