Day 08: Trichy & Villupuram

Day 08

We got the heck out of Dindigul and high tailed it for Trichy, which is short for a very, very long India version of the town's name, Tiruchchirappalli. Names in India are all shortened or given odd acronyms.

We found a restaurant to eat lunch at and took turns guarding the stuff and eating. The resturant had a air conditioned room off the main dining room which they automatically shuttled us into.

This was our introduction to eating off of bananas leaves and the concept of "meals". The "Meals" is an all inclusive entree with loads of cups around a large platter. In the middle of the platter they pile high with rice. You then mix whatever sauces you want with your rice, eating with your right hand. It was fun and really tasty. It would become our standard to order.

Outside we decided to try and get a shot of Michael navigating a busy street. We had to cross the road to get to our autos and it seem quintessentially Indian.

Besides nearly getting Michael hit by a bus, the set up also attracted quite a crowd. In the crowd was what can only be described as a eunuch. I've never seen a eunuch, but this person seemed like what you'd imagine one would look like. They are spiritual people here and ours was babbling in the eeirest high and then low pitched voice. He/she would point to the bright sun which I could only glance at for miliseconds. Then he/she would stare directly at it for 2 minutes none stop! Adam got the whole thing on film. For the performance the eunuch only wanted some water, which Adam happily indulged him/her in.

Much to our dismay this place seemed a lot like the Dindigul side of Tamil Nadu - dirty and sad.

After much driving, which at the end of the day is the worst possible way to maintain your living status, we found someone we hoped would be able to help us.

We pulled over at a small shop on the opposite side of town from the highway after unsuccessfully trying to randomly find a hotel and talked with a cabbie there.

As we are discovering, most advertising signage, which is omnipresent, is in English. No one speaks English. At least not in the circles we run. These autorickshaws attract the lowest common denominator. The are the bluest of collar vehicles that we've found, just above no collar, which would be a pedirickshaw or ox cart. We gain instant enthusiasm and interest from the locals when we pull up, but no one can help us.

We found a older guy on a bike that spoke some manageable broken English and plied his position as "helper" by stating adnauseum that he had a daughter in California and the USA was great.

He wasn't so.

We were convinced, as we had no our recourse, to load him in my rickshaw and he would take us to a place he knew of. On the way he told us about the bank he worked at that he insisted we'd visit him at in the morning. He wanted a time.

We have learned and somewhat perfected the promise of future activities that no one expects will happen. This in mind, we said, "yes, we'll see you at 8am."

He promised breakfast at his house, as 8am is his break and a day of sight-seeing. We tried to explain that we were leaving the next day but he wasn't having it.

Bad turned to worse when he turned us down a dark alley and into a dank courtyard. It seems that his "bank" was ajoined to a filthy lodge. He had a buddy that was going to show us around and take some money from us. We knew instinctually that there was no way in hell that we were going to stay in this place.

Our guy was way insistant. Seriously instant. The kind of jabbering, constant insistant that you can't break into with normal levels of protest. Such that on the way to the "lodge", at a frantically busy intersection, he went so far has to smack my throttle arm and yell, "go" when he deemed I'd been overly cautious waiting out traffic.

We agreed to look at a room and proceeded into the bowels of the hotel. It was obviously for the truckers that frequent the major roads in India. It looked and smelled like a porta-potty at Lollapalooza. Betel spit was everywhere. The room was disgusting with bugs on the walls and years of grim everywhere. There was no way we were going to stay, much less remain in place in a hole like this.

The problem remained of our insistant friend. He'd abandoned his bike on the outskirts of town to ride along and shove me to this "lodge".

He was forcefully insisting that we book the room, NOW. We said that we might look around at other places first, which he understood to mean we were hungry.

See we've figured out that very familiar English words appear all over India but they take on different meanings depending on what native language is about.

For instance in Kerla, "hotel" means hotel. In Tamil Nadu it means restaurant. If you want a hotel, you find a "lodge". Also "meals" is rice or a whole set up meal with sauces, dips and assorted veggies stuff.

"Coolie" means cold, when a beverage is the topic. But only in Kerla. In Tamil Nadu we have no idea what to ask for to get something cold.

"Auto" is autorickshaw and "car" is car.

"Petrol" is the fuel we use but "gas" is something all-together different. I'm not sure how.

Back to our lodging problem. We convinced our friend that his hotel was fine and that what we were going to do was drive about and take some photos. Thereby we'd need all our luggage and would be returning in the near future to secure our spoke in said hell hole.

He bought it. So much for broken communication. The ability to sign your way through a lie is amazing.

We took him back to the outskirts of town to his bike. He was repeating the whole time that he would get his bike and we'd follow him to get a drink, or some such nonsense.

When we got to his bike he hopped out and I yelled back to Adam to "GO!" We peeled out and did a u-turn back towards town and Adam stalled out.

We thought we'd lost him.

Somehow we escaped and found someone else to take us to a hotel that we reasonable. You'd be surprised what you learn to tolerate when you have to.

Unpacking the autorickshaws, Adam noticed Michael drinking some water from a bottle. He asked him where he got the bottle. Michael it was under the seat and we both laughed as that had been the eunuch's water. Michael was aghast.

After getting settled we ventured out to find a bar. There was a neon sign for a bar not too far way that we locked bearings on. Adam wanted to run to a store to get something first and said that he join us soon. When we got to the place with sign there was a long, long, enclosed hallway down to a where the bar was supposed to be. Not like an enclosed hallway in a hotel or something, but like the entrance to an abandoned moped parking structure - dark, crumbily, oily and frightening. It kept going back and getting darker. It looked like where you'd meet if you were running guns to the Afghani underground.

Michael and I went in the "bar" and looked around. I'm not sure how to describe it. If you seen the seediest tire repair shop on the SW side of Chicago in an all Mexican neighborhood, you'd start to get the idea. Barely. There was about 80 guys, somehow baring the incredible heat and stink, gathered around tables looking up at the lone source of light - a TV. Some Bollywood tripe was blasting away. There was counter right by the door where a waiter was grabbing fistfuls of fly-covered bar snacks and putting them in bowls.

We questioned what we were doing not only in this place but also in the country and silently contemplated the fact that if anyone wanted they could make us "disappear" there and then.

Saying something noncommittal to the waiter, we gracefully ran out of there and made for the street.

Roadside there was no Adam in sight and no other bar. We needed a bar. We discussed our option and agreed that we should buy some beer from the gun-runners bar and go back to the hotel. We did just that.

Adam actually found us in the bar and had a fun time walking the hallway trying to figure out if this was the kind of place we'd have gone to. Turns out it was.

Anthony //