Day 14: on to Vijayawada

Day 14

January 7th, Sunday. You get completely disoriented traveling through India like this. We were confused that some stores were closed and didn't realize that it was Sunday for quite a while. I couldn't have told you the date.

We got up early anxious to get a traffic shot accomplished before the rush of the day really got to full swing. Michael and I needed some coffee and braved the restaurant off the lobby in our hotel. It was a popular in the morning as in the evening with the locals so that was a good sign. You just had to try and ignore the dirt everywhere.

There were small round tables, high enough for you to stand and drink a small coffee. Like the India version of the cortado in Spain - a quick, small, strong morning coffee. You had to go to a small desk on one side and pay a guy 5 rupees for a ticket. You then took the ticket to the other side to a guy at a waiter's stand and the coffee. India loves paperwork.

The stand was a large aluminum table with high sides. It was covered with various puddles, goblets, pitchers and such.

You hand him the tickets and he fishes out small dirty espresso-sized glasses from a big plastic tub. He rinses them in a dirty bucket, sets them on the aluminum table and then fills them to overflowing with boiling water. I waits for 45 seconds, dumps the water then adds fresh, tar black coffee.

The pouring of the coffee begins with a back and forth frothing in aluminum pitchers. The froth is achieved by pouring the coffee from the height of a full arms length to the a pitcher held low. This happens a couple of times and then into your cup. Some milk and a spoonful of the froth and you are good to go.

We liked it so much, we had 2. Lack of coffee has been one of the many challenges on this trip. We've been managing so far, but recent coffee availability has made our need even greater. In the beginning you couldn't get coffee or we didn't trust it. Now we can get it usually in our hotel, but never on the road. We purchased a small electric pitcher that boils water. This will be our back up plan if things look grim.

Now caffinated we grabbed Adam and all the photo gear and piled them into the unpainted Rickshaw. The idea was that we'd set up shop in the middle of a traffic circle and get Michael driving around and around it. I didn't think it was possible, but Michael was sure that we'd be in and out before anyone really caught on.

Unrequested by us, the Rickshaws had been washed in the early morning neccessitating just one of the many, many ways we have to give up Rupees in this country. Not only will someone do something that you didn't ask for or want and demand a "tip". They'll also tell you the tip was too little. It happens all the time.

The repressed anger gets worked out as Rickshaw road rage.

We had the perfect traffic circle in mind right near our hotel. It had a median leading to it on one side and allowed for partial cover for out gear. We started to set up the light and people started to crowd. Just parking the rickshaw at this point draws a crowd of cabbies. They have rickshaws in town that are Bajaj, but they are yellow and diesel. Ours is black. For the locals rickshaw jockies it looks to have landed from outer space and provides no end of fascination. They pull up next to us or stick half their body inside ours and all ask the same question, "diesel? petrol?".

We've answered this question so many times that we often resort to a preemptive strike. When a cabbie pulls up next to us we just start saying and pointing down to the rickshaw, "petrol, petrol, Kerla, Cochin." It seems to satisfy most of them. They give a once over, look at us, our stuff and you can see the questions swimming around in their minds. If we follow it up with, "English?" it usually ends the interaction as everyone only speaks Telagu.

The crowd was getting big and cabbies were slowing down in the middle of the driving circle to get a look at what was going on. We were going to cause a major accident. Just wrangling the crowd was hard enough much less trying to shoot Michael who was driving around and around. I had to wait until he was right in the right spot for the strobe to hit him correctly. Someone always choose just then to walk out from the sides, bend over and look right in the lens trying to figure out what it was. People would run across the street, stop ox carts, push in besides me. It was madness.

Meanwhile hundreds of speeding vehicles were zooming past in every direction, all honking at once.

Final the cops showed up and started yelling at the crowd and making threatening gestures. People started yelling back. We were on the verge of riot in the middle of the road. We literally picked everything up, not bother to close it down and pack it, ran across the street into our rickshaws and sped off.

I managed to get about 4 frames off. We'll see if it comes out.

After packing up and checking out of the hotel, we drove straight through to Vijayawada, stopping only to get more Petrol and oil. Vijayawada is a big, ancient town on the banks of the Krishna River. There are lots of ruins, temples and history here so we are hoping to get some photos of the spiritual and quiet side of India that we'd been lacking so far.

Our quide books recommend one hotel, the Quality Inn DV Manor. We missed it on our way into town and drove around for a long time. Eventually we hired another rickshaw and after he attempted to take us to a different hotel, probably where he'd get a kick-back for the business, we made it to our destination.

The logo looks just like the Quality Inn chain in the US. Exactly. It has nothing to do with them though. Trademark laws here are rather soft.

Settled in our 3rd story room we noticed out the window a huge square hole in the road. It looks like they dug it to get to a pipe and left it open for months. The piles of dirt around it had very tall weeds that had taken root some time before.

It seemed like it would be funny to try to get a shot out the window with Michael in the hole and traffic going around him.

We managed to get it set with Adam manning the light at street level and with me on the camera up and out the window. The lack of a clearly visible camera confused people and we only drew limited crowds.

Some begger children (they are omnipresent in the large cities) somehow noticed me hanging out the window. Not getting satisfaction from Adam and Michael, they were attempting to beg from me, three stories up. If not for the caste system, that kind of go-gettedness could take them far.

We got the shot and broke down for an early dinner. The restaurant wasn't open yet so we order from room service. We hadn't eaten all day and it was some of the best Indian food we'd had so far.