Day 10: Pondicherry to Chennai

Day 10

The hard part about staying in any part of India that comes close to resembling home or Western standards of hygience is that it gives you something to compare the rest of India to. Pondicherry, like all of Tamil Nadu so far, is disgusting. Once you leave the 3 blocks of "vintage" stuff, it is rank. The smells have been the worst in India.

The city is dense and poor. Even by India standards.

We got up early and wanted to get some shots on the beach at sunrise.

The fishing boats out in the Indian Ocean looked amazing at dawn. The beach had the first trash cans I've seen in this country. They are 3 foot tall white rabbits holding cans. They'd turn out to be a theme throughout Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh. What they do with the trash once it is in a trash can, I don't know. There is no trash service or trash dumps here. All trash in everywhere. On fire. I guess they burn it somewhere outside of the bunnies.

The beach is actually just big jagged black rocks. Even at dawn there was a good many people out. Many seemed to not have an "in" to go to, so the beach was as good as anywhere to be.

The cameras and lights were magnets as always. It was a little easier for this scene as the ocean was the backdrop. It meant less crowd rangling.

The second set up was for a shot with a sign. It was an iconic representation of a "no swimming" sign. I guess because you can catch the plague.

Micheal found some cheap water wings and a inflatable swim ring that we thought would be funny. This began the one of the more uncomfortable shots of the trip as we had Michael strip down to his undies and socks with the swimming paraphenalia. His boxers weren't made for this kind of action and the horse kept leaving the barn, if you know what I mean. The guide books mentioned that shorts might be considered offensive in some parts. I couldn't imagine what this would be considered - corporal punishable?

We lived.

I tried to hit the post office later in the morning to mail back a package of loot. In order to mail something you have to package it up. India doesn't have packaging stores. At least not where we were. They didn't even know what we were talking about. It took an hour, asking many people, to find a place that we could get our stuff sewn up into a cotton bundle.

Unfortunately the store, dubbed "Mother's Package Store" for al the nonEnglish speakers was closed until 10am.

Around the corner was a big Hindu temple, nestled amid a sea of stalls selling religious stuff, flowers and trinkettes, all packed into a narrow street.

In front of the temple was an elephant. A real, live, painted up in hindu style and adorned with brass bells, Indian elephant.

If you bought a mini banana or bunch of grass and gave it to the elephant, it would raise it's trunk, touching you on the head and "blessing" you. Naturally I did just that. It was amazing.

Mother's opened and we were asked to sit down out front and watch as our packages were bundled. The shop keeper assured us that our bundler was the fastest around. 35 minutes later we left for the post office with packages in hand.

The post office can only be discribed as contained anarchy. It is indicative of India - bureaucratic, ineffecient and dirty. There were 4 tellers at there posts with no signage as to what teller was responsible for what. They all had different assignments which you had to gather from the people yelling at them at moment. Lines existed but they were of a nebulous quality. The post office was shallow, so the distance from the tellers to the outer wall was about four feet. This doesne't allow for many of the 40 or so people trying to vye for the attention of any of the given tellers. Everyone somewhat started lining from each teller towards the right, diagonalish. This was hard since within 3 people you were infront of the next teller to the right, and there associate mob of customers. The layers of "lines" continued to the right until the far wall. About 30 feet. Where all heck broke loose. The last foot of free space was devoted to arguing and shoving.

To hold your place in line you had to press yourself against the four to six individuals surrounding you and try not to lose your place.

This was like nightmare Soviet bread line.

Michael gave up about half an hour into the shoving and waiting. I wasn't going down that easily.

Another 15 minutes later I realized that I was in the travel visa "line" but was easily able to "transition" to the line next to me without really losing any ground.

Finally I made it to the front. My joy was hard to contain. The to find a packaging store, the elephant blessing and getting my souvenirs sewn up in a pillow case was finally going to culminate in a successful posting.

I was way premature in my happiness.

To mail something internationaly you must fill out a form in duplicate. I steadfastly held my ground near the front, shoving and pushing, all the while managing to right the address, return address and fill out forms in duplicate.

Weighed with fee and forms ready, my tired postal worker decided to take a walk and chat with his coworkers for awhile.

This gave me time to really look about the place. There were cabinets stacks to over flowing, in some cases completely overfollowing on to the floor, with paperwork. India lives for paperwork. There were books and ledgers full of paper, crammed to the ceiling in every nook and on top of every cabinet. All covered with dust. India is drowning itself in bureaucratic nonsense.

My teller returned only to tell me that my forms must be pasted onto my pillowcase package for delivery. I asked him where I could get some paste and he looked at me like I road the short bus to the post office.

He didn't know or care. Probably at a paste store, if such a thing existed. All he knew is that it had to be that way and it wasn't going to happen right there holding up his line. "Next!"

I went back to the hotel, 1 hour older with my package under my arm. I still haven't successfully mailed it.

We decided to ditch Pondicherry and head for Chennai.

Entering Chennai was like driving into the pit of hell - at rush hour.

The air tasted like a moving bus full of monkeys on fire with your mouth on the tail pipe.

It doesn't get any harder then ending an exhausting, full day by risking your life and the lives of your teammates every 3 seconds in an auto rickshaw. Our nerves were completely frayed as we desperately tried to find a recognizable street sign.

India abhorrs street markers in favor instead of Bollywood movie billboards or advertising for jewelry. Road indictors of any kind aren't available. If they are in fact present, they are hidden in Tamil only.

Billboard and store signage is in English. Only the rich, which don't talk to rickshaw drivers like ourselves, understand English. Instructional signage is in the local language only, which makes perfect sense since only your cab driver needs to be able to read it.

This reality explains easily why we found ourselves going the wrong way on a crowded 4-lane city road. Even if it was the "wrong" way, as it was, but only during rush hour we discovered, everyone else here does it. The traffic cop at the intersection we stopped at didn't like it one bit. He started yelling at us in Tamil which probably would have scared the average auto rickshaw drivers.

As it was we only smiled and tried a diversion tactic by asking for the Grand Orient Hotel. He wasn't getting tricked so easily and started asking for our license and paperwork.

Switching gears we acknowledged our mistake and asked if there was a fine. This was where we were eventually heading it turned out and saved all parties involved a lot of hand gesturing and yelling. The cop appreciated this and after he heard us mention we were breaking laws in India for charity, dropped our fine down to 400 Rs. or about $8.

He took the first 200 Rs. and seemingly started to feel bad about fining the charity workers and didn't ask for the other half. He instead motioned us to go through the intersection as our hotel was just off to the left. He stopped many lanes of traffic and walked us through the intersection. Part way down the street we realized there was no side entrance to the Grand Orient and made a u-turn. Back at the intersection the cop came back and walked us up the wrong side of street to the front of the hotel. We had to make our way slowly since the street was pack with cars going the other way.

The irony of it all wasn't lost on him since we'd been fined for going the wrong way and now he was directing us to do the same.

At the front of the hotel, the resident auto rickshaw driver called our cop to task for letting us go the wrong way up the street. Our cop fined us another 200 Rs. for again breaking the rules. This makes about as much sense as it sounds.

Cop paid and gone, we started to unload as Michael booked us a room. My patience was shot and when the resident auto rickshaw taxi driver tried to make nice, I let him have all of my frustration. I pointed out that if he was so friendly and wanting to be pals with fellow rickshaw drivers, as he was saying, he wouldn't have had us fined again be the police.

He was outraged that I would suggest he was anything but honest and tried to get the bellhop to vouch for his character. The bellhop just rolled his eyes and walked away.

Despite directly asking him, this guy wouldn't go away until I acknowledged that I'd made a mistake and he was a brilliant fellow with a heart of gold. Anything to get inside and get some rest.

Later in the evening Michael and I decided we wanted to walk to a bar and have a couple of King Fischers. Our cabbie friend was waiting outside and gave me a hug, remembering our names and offering to take us anywhere we wanted.

What the heck we thought and gave him instructions to take us to a local bar. Nothing gross and nothing with loud techno and tourists at.

We ended up nearby at a all male bar with blasting techno and blue lights. The beer was cold and they served a bowl of hot beans as a bar snack on every table. We'd learn over time that this is typical of most bars.

Our cabby sat with us and had a Pepsi. The conversation was nonexistant even if we could have heard and the music was terrible so after one beer we split. The cabbie said that the next day he would be our personal guide taking us to all the tourist spots including the museums and the beach. He wouldn't hear about us not needing a guide as we were driving and going to go take photos. We switched to saying, "yes sure," as most guide books tell you to do and then planning on avoiding him the next day.

Anthony //

Day 09: Pondicherry

Day 09

Villupuram looked better by daylight. But just barely. The night before turned out to be a shopping holiday because of the New Year and explained the thousands upon thousands of people milling about everywhere.

Just infront of our hotel, actually in the entrance, was a Hindu shrine of some sort. The kind you see everywhere in Hindu country. The flowers decorating it and the freshly put out trash were too much of an attractant to the local monkey population. Monkeys were fighting over and picking through the trash right infront of our rickshaws. Bizarre.

We thought we might be able to try some early morning photography just down the block. Michael and I had scouted out a location looking for some coffee.

We envisioned him reading a newspaper, out in the street just in front of a corner shop. Seemed simple enough.

We hauled one rickshaw over, loaded with all the gear and set up.

Lights and cameras in India are like throwing chum to the sharks. We were mobbed. It was impossible to try and direct hundreds of guys all wanted to have there photo taken. Harder still to explain what we were even doing there. About 2% if the locals speak 20 words of English. This doesn't give you much of basis for communicating.

We'd been going with the story that we were from Canada which was working for us for a bit. Today the story back-fired a bit when it turned out the people we were talking to were from the local paper and news service. Seems like we will be in the news all over Tamil Nadu.

When the crowd reached near riot the stage, the cops showed up. They are used to dealing with the surly locals so commenced to yelling at us. We had created, unwittingly, a traffic jam. We were informed that in the future the help of the police would be required for such activities and for a nominal charge they could beat the locals heads and achieve some sense of order.

We broke set quick and set our sights towards Pondicherry. It was only about 35KM away and we knew we could make it easily and put this unpleasantness behind us.

There was some hope that is would be a good place to rest for a couple days in European style. Most of our collection of guide books describe Pondicherry as having a quaint French colonial feel.

I guess we could see a little of that. Almost none though. Yes, the coast had a couple of old buildings that could be Frenchish, but it was hard to see. They were trying hard and replacing some Indian styled fencing at the local park with some fence that in a way look Euroish.

We decided to stay at the Promenade right on the beach, which is one of the hottest spots in Pondicherry. Like much of upscale India it was right out of the pages of Wallpaper magazine until you went to the bathrooms or started to look closely at the details. People seem to mop in the nice hotels but miss the corners where grim just builds and builds.

It dangerous to get lulled into a feeling of safety around Westernized hotel surroundings. The sumptuous buffet tempted us for all our meals but turned out to be the only time any of us felt ill. Micheal and I both didn't feel quite right after both dinner and breakfast the next day.

We've decided that upscale India is all smoke and mirrors. The fanciest store or hotel still requires hopping over an open sewer to get to. Fact.