Sophia and I had made a special trip to my work to get the pages from the guide book I had photocopied and next thing you know we lost them. They got left on a luggage trolly, we realized our mistake an hour before take off. We had just woken up from a surprisingly good nights sleep in each other's arms on the floor of the Kuala Lumpur international departures hall. I had to sleep sort of at an odd angle as the secret was in a money belt on my side, my special special secret cargo that only I knew about.
So then we got to the gate, they wanted to know where our boarding passes were, we had to shoot back to the counter to get them only to realize our India visas had been in the file folder that held the photo copied guide book pages. Run run run upstairs to the fancy pantsie high faluting lounge where they were able to pull up and email and reprint. Thank you thank you thank you. Run run run to the gate just before they were closing the door. You made it! smiled the Malaysian flight attendant and we were off for the friendly skies on Air Asia, the shittiest airline in Asia.
India was the place because we found a deal on skyscanner. Sky scanner is cool, you can type in your country and then it will let you do 'anywhere' as the destination and it lists by price. Go on, check it out, we will all wait for you. So cool right? So the cheap ones we found were for Trichy in southern India.
I had been to India once before, I think I wrote a blog about it. Great place not so great people I was travelling with. But the ease of travel in Kerala lead me to believe that all of Southern India was a bit easier and the 'full on' tough going India was in the North, we were going to Tamil Nadu by the way. The night before we flew an older teacher I work with corrected this misconception. 'No mate' he shook his head 'You're going to real India.' And he said it with a hint of doom in his voice.
And here I had been telling Sophia she had nothing to worry about in Southern India. Her sister was against us going, her sister was sure we'd both be raped. Her mother was under the impression we were going to Korea or Vietnam, I can't remember which. Had she known the real destination she too would have come to the conclusion that we would both be raped. I figured it would be like Kerala and now maybe they were all right about us being raped.
And maybe (in addition to or instead of getting raped) we would face all the other things I have heard about India; that it is crazy and exhausting, that everyone is trying to scam you, that beggars will attack at all times in mass, that flies carrying god knows which pandemic will collect all over your food and the noise and the chaos will drive you mad screaming for the comfort of your hotel room which will more than likely be too hot or possibly on fire for some reason. And somehow simultaneously beautiful and spiritual and wonderful. That is what I have heard about travel in India from various people over the years. While I feel like having travelled around Asia the better part of a decade at this point (yep, I left Atlanta in late 06) I felt ready for the challenge. But you know it was Sophia I was thinking of. My wonderful Chinese Gal has done Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and even America (which is the strangest country I have ever known) but nothing like the India which existed in my head. She is usually a good sport but I really didn't want to throw her in too deep. Culture shock is a real thing and I just didn't want to. I had too much riding on this junket, more on that later.
So we land, it is the first time Sophia has ever been in a plane with a back door, the first time she has been in a plane that had stairs down to the tarmac leading to a shuttle bus to the airport. We walk into a small one room airport, that has an endless line wrapping several times around the room, luckily Sophia sees a sign that reads E booking upstairs which we go to and find a delightful couple of young people from Hong Kong. The ladies at the desk look over our information and can't believe we don't have our travel itinerary printed out, I try to explain how we had it but lost it at the Kuala Lumpur Airport. Could happen to anyone I say with a smile and a shrug.
That is not an answer, sir. Said the tiny woman in uniform with her head wagging that wonderful Indian head wag. They also wanted the address of the hotels we planned to stay at along with their phone numbers, which guess what, yep also gone. Could happen to anyone, I smile again. Look at me, I am a nice guy, lost the papers.
That is not an answer sir. Again with the Indian head wag.
Finally I gave them a number, one of many that I had called a few days ago when booking hotels in India. It could have been any of a number of places but the main thing was they had an Indian looking phone number to write in their form.
I found a taxi outside the airport and asked to go to the city center, near the bus station, I remembered our hotel was near the bus station. We pulled up to the front of the hotel Guru, which I seemed to remember was in my guide book. We did find our hotel, but the guy behind the desk wasn't nearly as nice as the dude at the hotel Guru so we stayed there.
Here is just for the google traffic
Hotel Guru in Trichy was a wonderful place with a great restaurant and really nice folks running it. Highly recommend it.
Who knows, maybe that will help. Back to our story already in progress.
The restaurant in the basement of the hotel wouldn't let us sit in the main area and insisted we sit in the special air con room in the back. The dosas oh the dosas. The curries and the chutney and the flavors and the dosas. By the end of the trip I was officially on masala over-dosa but that first day sitting there eating all that stuff with Sophia I thought I was in heaven.
Trichy is cool for a day or two, there is a fort on top of a mountain in the center of the city. As we were going in tourist hunters started with their routine, same questions in the same order from all of them. What country are you from? Oh My cousin is in America, I know it well. New York or Los Angeles? How many days have you traveled? Where will you go next? Followed by come with me so I can guide you to see some blah blah that they are hawking. Not to sound cynical but every ten feet another guy with the same questions. One guy asked me what country I was from and followed it with 'Oh America. I know it well, my cousin is in America. Melbourne or Sydney?'
Each time I made an effort to smile and answer politely before excusing myself until one of them yelled at the both of us 'RUBBISH, RUBBISH' because we weren't into hiring him. After that I still smiled but didn't answer anybodies questions, at least not the ones that followed the tourist hunter script.
The temples in India you have to take off your shoes. The rock fort was on top of a mountain with tunnels cut through the middle of the rock. On top of that rock the India sun cooked down on that rock surface and the feet burned. crowds of people hopped to get to shadows of trees and structures to escape the pain of walking on the hot hot rock. There was a long incline of steps that lead up to fort on top. The steps had small mats dispersed intermittently along the way but not enough so your feet didn't burn. About half way up we decided it was a zen thing, like you had to divorce it from your mind and focus on the journey. While I think this was the concept it didn't help, I was a child without sandals hopping around pool side on a hot summer day.
We got to the top and a Hindu priest rubbed white power in lines on our foreheads. We could see the whole city and as we looked a pair of young boys hide around the corner and kept peeking at us. One of them got up the nerve to approach us and nervously he asked our names and shook our hands. We told him our name and he waited a beat then ran away to hide from embarrassment as his family howled with laughter. It is possible he hadn't met foreigners before and while this was the first time a child reacted to us this way on our trip it would be far from the last. The adults usually either reacted to us with indifference, disdain, or much more often curiosity and kindness. But the kids were almost always really curious and often requested pictures. They would wave and Sophia would holler a really big happy Sophia 'Hello' with a really big Sophia smiling grin.
I was worried about beggars in India, and sure enough they were all over the place, but they actually were never a problem for the simple reason that I came equipped with a Sophia. I don't think there was a single person who asked for money that she turned away. She didn't give anybody a lot, but everything is so cheap in India that it was something to the beggars. Enough to get a smile out of them in most cases. She also gave every tuk tuk driver a little bit more than the agreed upon price, out of ten days of drivers I think only one guy didn't get extra out of her and that guy was being an asshole. So if you go to India, at least where we were in Tamil Nadu just bring the smallest amount extra and instead of worrying about being hounded by beggars make sure you have lots of small change and bills somewhere in your pocket and a little more space in your heart. After ten years of travelling in Asia I still have so much to learn, Sophia took one look at India and was already awesome at it. Just be really nice to people who have nothing when they ask you for something.
We got lost in the endless temples in Trichy. They are so old and so unchanged and so covered with people all in bright colors beyond description. Sophia got a garland of flowers from a priest, the ladies all wear these white flowers in their hair. I tried to tie it into her hair somehow when a lady saw this and from her own hair took her own flowers and tossed them on the ground in order to use her hair pin. She then grabbed Sophia and decked her head out with these beautiful white flowers, it was a completely selfless kind act from a stranger who was so happy to have a chance to do something nice for us. It was not the first or the last time someone in India would show us such kindness. What amazing people the Indians!
So we headed out for Pondicherry, planned on going it by train. Travel in India by train is such a cool experience, a romantic way to traverse the wonderful landscape. We tried to get tickets but the man at the counter couldn't understand our questions. First there was no train until 2:30, then suddenly there was one at 12, which was two hours away. We agreed and in the meantime wondered around until finding the train museum which was sort of neat.
When the train pulled up we were sent to the very end of the thing, turned out we were in last class which meant good luck getting a seat. As we came in I noticed people were sleeping on the luggage racks, and as there was nowhere else I put Sophia up on one of them. She seemed happy enough up there. I hung by the door and watched India go by. It was actually really pleasant for most of the way until we got to one stop where a bunch of guys ran on carrying heavy boxes and plastic chairs and bags of stuff. They were screaming at people to get out of their way so they could put their stuff all over the place. They were pushing people around like they weren't people. They were ugly and I mean and they forced old people to move from their spots on the floor through intimidation and yelling. At one point I got up to check on Sophia and they took my spot, I thought about getting it back from them but at that point we were almost where we needed to go, and you know what? I don't need to get into a fight with five strange men over a spot on the floor on a moving train in India. I am getting old now and I guess old enough to know when to lose my cool and when not to.
So that night in Pondicherry Sophia went shopping in a market and I waited at the hotel. When she came back I took her out to a spot on the beach and said some cool shit and showed her the ring my grandfather gave my grandmother in 1939. Boom. She said yes and we both collapsed into the sand, I won't try to write about how that moment felt, I don't want to. Some moments are not for blogs, even on the internet some things are still sacred. She said yes and it is gonna happen. It is big and scary and I have been a bundle of nerves before and since but it also feels right, so please be happy for us. She is awesome, we are awesome, all is awesome.
So Pondicherry was uneventful with that one very notable exception. We went to the museum and a police man told it was closed on Mondays. There is a library, he told us. Really? Where? Right over there. He said. Also closed on Mondays. Oh we said.
We went to the Auraville, which is a transcendental commune turned city where all work for the common good of human understanding. It was a really relaxing place, we went to their monolithic golden dome which was sort of like a golden hippie epcot center. We found a nice tree and meditated, I should be ashamed to admit that but I ain't. Deal with it you turkeys. When we left we found a mall of very modern boutiques of stuff made and sold by locals. Some of it looked very factory manufactured but if it is all going to helping the community whatever. They had displays of alternative energy sources they were using, one of which involved marsh reeds. They had a sign for solar cooled ice cream. I bought some and was half way through trying to work out how solar power was used in making ice cream when it occurred to me that if they use solar power for the everything then they use it for the fridge too hence the solar cooling. It also occurred to me that I got taken for a ride by some hippies, but it was ok. A nice Mango sherbet on a blasting hot day in India was just fine. A very nice spot, but I think that if one were to stay long term and get involved in the farming and volunteering that goes on there it win order to get the full picture of the place one should really stay for a while and get into the volunteer farming and learning that happens there. But for one day it was a great spot with really cool vibes. I bought a book on urban farming, I want to get some veggies going.
The punchline of the stay in Pondicherry was that the nice hotel I had chosen ( I splurged owing to what I planned to do I figured we needed a decent joint. The night I proposed I told the waiter who brought me beer, he actually didn't seem to care. In the morning we sat in their garden lobby and they brought us toast and coffee, when I left I found out that they charged us more for the toast per person than it costed to fill both of us up beyond belief to where we didn't want to move at every single other Indian restaurant we visited on our journey. Toast.
But she said yes and it is happening. That is the huge part. Huge.
Tiruvanamalai was next, and we took a bus to get there. I had to put the huge back pack (with the collected junk of two people) over my lap as the bus filled, so it was a long trip. The horns on the buses are about as loud as they can be, often in several note jingles that really rattle the teeth. The driver seems unable to operate his vehicle without the horn, removing one from a bus would be the same as removing the brakes. People kept getting on, the guy next to us and Sophia entered into a who can give the other the most fruit and snacks contest. They each quietly retreated at the rest breaks to the side of the road to buy bags of grapes and crackers to offer back and forth. Meanwhile the bus ride went on and on as did the green fields and rolling horizon. Farms and villages here, towns and small clusters of concrete there, always cows cows cows and the ever present previously but her once again mentioned blaring siren of the bus horn, alerting all from dirt to heavens of our approach like the horn in a cavalry charge. In traffic the buses all blast their horns at one another while not moving and since they all have different little jangling songs it sounded a bit like really loud birds chirping, or possibly the song really big dinosaurs must have made when angry at each other.
The ride and the horn and the weight of the bag in my lap continued as did the country side as did the heat. Holy cow the heat is so intense, there is no heat on earth like that India heat, and I say that as a Southern boy. Air conditioning is rare if ever and the heat hangs on you and pulls you down, the sweat soaks the shirt until finally start feeling the drops getting in your eyes from the top of your head. At no point did Sophia and I not each hold in our hand a litter water bottle, usually we had three or four on back up in bags. So the heat was always a thing, and on the bus when moving it was ok because all the windows were down, but once we stopped there it was.
Along the way my mind wandered as my mind tends to do, I guess yours does also. Remember before smart phones when you just had to sit and think? The good old days? Well that's what I was doing and it was really nice. suddenly in the far off distance I saw a mountain, well a very tall hill let's say, and on top of that very tall rocky, craggy hill seemed to be ancient ruins of battlements or temples. I shook Sophia from sleep to show her. Bless her, she can sleep anywhere she wants to and at the drop of a hat. Then an even taller one, this was officially a mountain and it had even more structures. Then walls with archer torrents crumbling into hillsides and into nothing, then picked up again over the next ravine, first as rock piles which gradually grew and stretched into fortified structures which then fell again back into the rubble, back to where they came from.
What the hell is that??
I thought surely that must have meant we were in Tiruvanamanamanama (what was the name of that damn town again?) but no, we kept on for another solid hour or more before the bus finally pulled into town. The rest of the day I couldn't get those structures out of my mind, the came and went so fast. I was left questioning if I had actually seen it or if maybe I had allowed my mind to play with what I had seen until it grew into something, you know? I do that. All the time I do that to myself.
We visited the big temple in town, it was huge and marvellous like the others. In Tamil Nadu they seem to be large towers with gates that you walk through into courtyards with smaller buildings inside. We went into the inside of one of the temples and found ourselves in a small room where people were praying and singing around a small statue. I honestly didn't mean to get myself that deep into the sanctum and it was the only time I really felt like a poser, a peeping tom almost. We gave donations and had the powder rubbed on our foreheads. The place was solid rock with amazing carvings that seemed to tell a history or religious text or both. Families of the faithful smiled and waved at us, more people asked us to be in a picture, more cows, more heat. Outside the temple we found a gauntlet of people asking for money, Sophia wound up buying food for several of them before I tugged her arm to get us away, I could see we had drawn attention and it was time to get going. As we were walking in I was forced to buy a sarong because I was wearing shorts, which I was fine with, felt bad about coming off as disrespectful to be honest.
We spent the next day wandering aimlessly through back streets trying to find a meditation shrine, and when we did it was closed for lunch. A woman from Switzerland in her fifties ran over to offer to take us to this amazing place she had found for lunch nearby, she would lead us and we were to follow in silence. 'No talking' she proffered as a sales point with a toothy grin which for me was the item that clinched the deal. Fifteen minutes later we were up to speed with her entire 30 day stay at the mediation shrine and were becoming familiar with her relationship to the earth mother. She explained that 8 years ago she had experienced an event of some sort that changed the way she saw the harmony of all things and expanded her perceptions of realitiy. She sat with us at lunch which was in a beautiful garden where other foreigners sat sipping tea. Without ordering anything we were all brought plates of food. It was hipply cooked interesting takes on the traditional local curries and the price was almost nothing. It was a really chill place to hang out, and throughout our lunch the woman from Switzerland stared at us without speaking or blinking as we all ate in silence.
The next day we got up early and made our way to the local bus station which is chaos. We asked around five or six people how to get there, unsure of our pronunciation. We finally found one, and as we sat down a man came with an urn of smoking incense and tapped each rider on the bus what looked like a long whisk broom. We were grateful that he had done that for us so we gave him a few rupees.
The ride was about an hour or so and we were dropped off in a town at the foot of the mountain. It was a very fast climb up the first of the two, and on top we found the ruins of what must have been a palace of some kind. There were massive chambers that had stairs to the top where you could walk around on narrow ledges, two or three stories up and on top of a mountain. The view from up there was amazing, we could see little specks far off in the distance which were farmers knee deep in water tending to a rice paddy. We could see lush fields to one side of us, the sleepy town to the other and at no point did we ever climb so high that we couldn't hear the din of bus horns screaming below but the higher we climbed the more it became part of the atmosphere, like a breeze or the song of birds. Once on top we spent hours climbing around on the ancient structures, in the chambers which I imagined to be the halls of kings. All around teenage couples were sitting together, each in a hidden corner tucked away. They were the young lovers from the town below and here must have been the only place away from prying eyes of the older ones or the parents. They weren't necking, at least from what we saw, rather sitting together and enjoying the wonderful breeze up there that was chasing away the Indian sun. We did the same, Sophia and I. We found a slab of ancient rock and laid next to each other and slept for a couple of hours. I woke up early to see one of the teenage boys had jumped from the roof of one temple to the roof another below, maybe his girl was watching. He made it but was now up a good fifteen feet with nothing to hang on to to climb down. I watched as his friends (all howling with laughter) below. A nearby foreigner lounging around and enjoying the show must have confounded everyone's amusement. Eventually the poor kid managed to hang his entire body down the long end of a pillar and his buddies hung onto his ankles, knees, finally torso and he was down. I feel back asleep for a time. Sophia happily slept through the whole thing.
The next morning we went back across the street to the taller mountain. This one was a longer climb and was covered with monkeys. There are bad monkeys and good monkeys, the world seems to have become covered in the naughty ones. Good monkeys live in the jungle and are sort of like squirrels. They see people and run like hell, once a monkey tastes people food they become aggressive in your face gimmie gimmie monkeys and while often cute they are not very much fun. Each time we stopped if we weren't careful we'd have a little monkey inspecting our bags. One minute, this is a nice spot to sit with no monkeys. Look over there, what a nice view. HEY, STOP THOSE MONKEYS!
A school group of children was near the top. From far away they called to us 'Helllooooo' and Sophia called back 'HELLOOOOO' back and forth until we were with them. They were thirsty and the water was heavy so when they asked for some we both gave them one of our bottles, which they passed around among all the kids. They all wanted to know our names and what country we were from, then they all wanted pictures with us. This was right on the edge of a wooden Indian Jones bridge over a fall that you'd have time to think about as you fell it. I am not good with heights so in all the pictures I am smiling, but also sitting down hanging onto the side of the rock stairway leading to the bridge for dear life.
We set up a hammock my father gave me between the pillars of one of the structures up top. We ate pomegranates and the juice and little red popcornish bits spilled onto the rock below us. I tossed the skin into the bushes down a cliff below and we settled in for a nice nap. Pretty soon a little friend took notice of the discarded fruit smell we had a tiny monkey investigating. I pulled the bag on top of us along with or shoes, reasoning that he didn't want anything in there bad enough. Cautiously at first and then a bit braver we had this little monkey eating the fruit bits off the floor next to the hammock. We watched up until the point where a gang of his friends showed up. That was when we got up and packed the hammock and skedaddled. On the other side of the cliff was another spot in another shelter and there we had us a nice long afternoon nap in that hammock which hung next to the edge of a cliff that fell off the side of the world into nothing.
Some teenage kid came and asked for a sip of our water. Like an idiot I gave it to him and watched as he proceeded to swallow my entire water bottle. But good news, we started with six bottles and I had left one in the woods hidden as we climbed up, mainly because it was so heavy. Still there on the way down, and as it was hidden under a rock in the shade it wasn't really cold but not really hot either when I found it on the way down. As we left a whole army of teen boys of around 15 or 16 took notice of Sophia. At first they wanted to take a picture with the both of us, then one boy nervously asked if he could have his picture just with Sophia. They were looking to see if I was going get sore, I didn't, I thought it was hilarious, so they all took turns in pictures with my fiancée. The longer this went on the wilder the boys became, they started hooting, laughing, and yelling, some of them jumping up and down with happiness. When I finally gently suggested we get out of there quite some time had passed as well as several facebook pages worth of pictures taken. We politely waved our goodbyes and the boys yelled fond thank yous and god knows what else at us in Tamil. Later on the main road the entire lot of them went screaming by miraculously all balanced on one motorcycle and of course not a single helmet between them. Those boys are still somewhere looking at those pictures.
After that was another bus ride back to Trichy. I wanted to do it by train again but it wasn't really an easy thing to do from where we were and the bus saved us five or six hours. Back in Trichy we went to the same hotel we had started in, they were all very happy to see us again. In the basement restaurant they put us right in the AC room and treated us like stars.
We went back to the area that had the rock temple but neither of us felt like climbing it again. We both agreed it wouldn't be the same the second time and it was a long hike on hot rock without shoes. We wandered around shopping, I bought a text book for linear algebra that I will never be able to understand, but it was cheap.
That night next to the hotel she went shopping and I went to check out the bar, the next to last night of the trip and my first beer of the trip. Sophia makes me do good, not out of anything but wanting to be a better man, which is pretty cool to find in someone.
So I was drinking a beer in the bar in Trichy. I went in and they made me sit at the first table as you walk in, clearly the best table. They had a sign on the wall that had the liqueur licence on the board below which read 'Drinking Alcohol kills families, country, and all the person' in gigantic font. I was into my second pint when a group of four tough looking guys came in, one of them looked damn mean and had the sort of fatness that made him look stronger. He saw me and flew into a rage. He stood in the center of the room and pointed his meaty fat finger at me yelling at everyone in there. Why was this foreign scum at the nice table was what I got out of it. I sat there sipping my beer looking back at him. Two of his friends sat at the table across from me, the fat man came over and put his hand on my face patting, I pushed his hand away.
'my friend sit here, you sit there' he was smiling and it was a really scary smile, this was clearly a scary dude. I got up and started to drop my money and split, I was done with that scene. The barmen pulled me to another table across the room, brought me my beer and sat me down. I finished my beer quickly and watched as everyone in the place ran into the kitchen and returned with beers and plates and plates of food for these guys who acted like they weren't even there. So here is what the Southern Indian mob looks like. When one of the waiters had a break I waved him over and gave him my money which he took quickly. The fat guy didn't seem to like foreigners or me and I wasn't interested in how a belly full of beer influenced these feelings. I paid and legged it, and as I was out the door I glanced around to see all eyes from that table focused right at me.
An hour later Sophia and I went down the street a bit to a movie theatre to dig on some Ballywood, and if you ever find youself in India for any reason and would some serious immersion that should be on your list. We go in, again we are given very nice seats. It is a gigantic theater but an old piece of rope has tied off the front half of the auditorium so everyone is crammed into the back. Before the lights go down there is a preshow intensity that is palpable. We saw a fight break out a few rows in front of us over a seat. A brief scuffle that ended as soon as it began. A third party interceded and both men sat down and seemed to be talking with their arms around each other's shoulders throughout the rest of the show.
So the lights go down and we watch a few commercials for a local tea, then the show started. It was a comedy about a scamming street thief who goes around stealing wallets and in the first scene selling families drugged icecream so he could break into their house later finding them all passed out and drugged so he could rob them blind. It was all in Tamil but the actions were so broad we had no trouble at all following the story. The thief takes his loot back to his unbelievably nicely decked out flat, but first he meets a nice girl and one of his scams results in her getting fired he has fallen in love with her and somehow (the power of musical montage) seems to be her boyfriend in the next scene. Along the way he picks up two fat and bumbling buddies who always seem to be yelling at each other and falling down. Every ten minutes there is a musical sequence when the entire audience starts screaming at the top of their lungs. There are whistles and noises coming from the people that are in time with the melody, so the crowd is actively participating in the music.
I also noticed that while the leading lady is indeed beautiful, she is at no point even in so much as short sleeve shirt. She is often seen in flowing gowns and sari's that are traditional and brightly colored as any other respectable woman in India. Regardless of this the men in the audience would wolf whistle and make high pitched 'a yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiiii' noises when ever she came on screen as though they were all really drunk sailors in a strip club that were about to be kicked out by bouncers.
There was an intermission and it was getting late, I didn't want to be walking around with Sophia late at night in India even though we were just a couple of blocks from our hotel. So we went for the exit and found that someone had left a large piece of plywood across blocking anyone from leaving. Next to that was another door people were walking through and me and Sophia quickly realized it was the men's room. We went back to the theater, and many helpful men pulled me aside to show me where the ladies room was, thinking I wanted her to use the wrong one. About ten minutes into the second half we agreed that we really needed to get going, so we got up and left. A man in the lobby was happy to move the large piece of wood and lead us down to a courtyard below where another man slept on a bench. That man was shaken awake and he got up, rubbed his eyes and unlocked the chain padlock to open the large sliding metal wall gate so we could exit the facilities.
One more India story.
The last night there we found a guy that was cooking chickens. We ordered what I thought were two orders of food but turned out to be two whole chickens with side dishes, enough for five easily. We got most of it to go and thought We'd give it to a beggar. As we were walking out we had the idea of buying a few loafs of bread to go along with it. Pretty soon we had several loafs. I walked around with the loaf hanging from my hand for all to see like a large fish I had just caught and was proud of. The first was a group of three woman, all of whom had babies in arms. They were each given a loaf of bread. They all wanted money next, and I was about to tell them to fuck off when Sophia gave them each ten rupees, which isn't much to us but that seemed to make them really happy. We gave a loaf to another lady, then two more women with babies showed up when we had given the last of it away so we went and got us more loafs. We were on our way to the airport at this point so I had the big bag on. Loaf here, loaf there. It felt great.
We got in a Tuk Tuk for the airport and as we sped around the corner a group of people, all with loafs of bread saw us and they all waved at us, seriously.
So I've been travelling around Asia for around ten years, and I feel like I am so fancy. I was nervous about the beggars because I hate always being in a position to say no to people. Sophia has taught me the joy of just saying yes.
Sophia is from a very poor background, her family never had money especially and as a result she really seems more concerned with out money get's spent that I am. I will go and blow a ton of money on a night out on the piss with friends. But in India she could see that these people didn't have anything and she just started breaking her money down, money that she had earned by busting her ass six, not five but six days a week and passing it out happily to anyone that asked her. So I would like to be more like her, we all should. If you got something and you can spare it, you dig? I could and should do more. I never donate my time or money to anything really, but it sure felt cool to pass out that bread.
Here is something for the google traffic.
FUCK YOU AIR ASIA!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!! 7 KG BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE FOR INTERNATIONAL???? MAKING ME PAY EXTRA TO CHECK WHEN I COULD HAVE MAYBE TRIED TO CRAM THAT THING INTO AN OVERHEAD. I BET I COULD'VE CRAMMED IT IN THERE, AIR ASIA. I'VE CRAMMED IT BEFORE. I'VE CRAMMED IT ALL KINDS OF PLACES. WHAT, YOU DIDN'T THINK I'D DO ANY SHOPPING? IN INDIA??? OF COURSE MY BAG WAS TWICE THE ALLOWED WEIGHT. AND THEN WHEN I GOT IT IN HONG KONG MY PHONE CHARGER WAS MISSING, AND UNIVERSAL POWER ADAPTOR!!!!
MY UNIVERSAL POWER ADAPTOR IS ON YOUR HEADS, AIR ASIA. YOU CAN DEAL WITH THAT GUILT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES. HAVE FUN WITH THAT, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW SOMEONE IN YOUR COMPANY OR QUITE POSSIBLY SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU AT ALL THAT HANDLED MY BAGS STOLE SOMETHING? I HOPE YOU ALL DIE!!!! NEXT TIME I WILL FILL MY BAG WITH POISONOUS SNAKES, OR BETTER YET I WILL FILL IT WITH MY SPITE. BUT INCIDENTALLY THE IN-FLIGHT MEAL WAS REALLY GOOD, WHICH IS UNUSUAL FOR AIR PLANE FOOD. I WAS IMPRESSED WITH THE CHICKEN MEAL BUT THE CURRY WAS JUST SO SO. YOU HEAR ME AIR ASIA? WHILE THE CHICKEN WAS REALLY GOOD THE CURRY (ESPECIALLY AFTER BEING IN INDIA) WAS PASSABLE, BUT ULTIMATELY SO SO.
It was the best trip I have ever had in my life I think. For me that is a big deal. And hey, we're getting married.
So then we got to the gate, they wanted to know where our boarding passes were, we had to shoot back to the counter to get them only to realize our India visas had been in the file folder that held the photo copied guide book pages. Run run run upstairs to the fancy pantsie high faluting lounge where they were able to pull up and email and reprint. Thank you thank you thank you. Run run run to the gate just before they were closing the door. You made it! smiled the Malaysian flight attendant and we were off for the friendly skies on Air Asia, the shittiest airline in Asia.
India was the place because we found a deal on skyscanner. Sky scanner is cool, you can type in your country and then it will let you do 'anywhere' as the destination and it lists by price. Go on, check it out, we will all wait for you. So cool right? So the cheap ones we found were for Trichy in southern India.
I had been to India once before, I think I wrote a blog about it. Great place not so great people I was travelling with. But the ease of travel in Kerala lead me to believe that all of Southern India was a bit easier and the 'full on' tough going India was in the North, we were going to Tamil Nadu by the way. The night before we flew an older teacher I work with corrected this misconception. 'No mate' he shook his head 'You're going to real India.' And he said it with a hint of doom in his voice.
And here I had been telling Sophia she had nothing to worry about in Southern India. Her sister was against us going, her sister was sure we'd both be raped. Her mother was under the impression we were going to Korea or Vietnam, I can't remember which. Had she known the real destination she too would have come to the conclusion that we would both be raped. I figured it would be like Kerala and now maybe they were all right about us being raped.
And maybe (in addition to or instead of getting raped) we would face all the other things I have heard about India; that it is crazy and exhausting, that everyone is trying to scam you, that beggars will attack at all times in mass, that flies carrying god knows which pandemic will collect all over your food and the noise and the chaos will drive you mad screaming for the comfort of your hotel room which will more than likely be too hot or possibly on fire for some reason. And somehow simultaneously beautiful and spiritual and wonderful. That is what I have heard about travel in India from various people over the years. While I feel like having travelled around Asia the better part of a decade at this point (yep, I left Atlanta in late 06) I felt ready for the challenge. But you know it was Sophia I was thinking of. My wonderful Chinese Gal has done Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and even America (which is the strangest country I have ever known) but nothing like the India which existed in my head. She is usually a good sport but I really didn't want to throw her in too deep. Culture shock is a real thing and I just didn't want to. I had too much riding on this junket, more on that later.
So we land, it is the first time Sophia has ever been in a plane with a back door, the first time she has been in a plane that had stairs down to the tarmac leading to a shuttle bus to the airport. We walk into a small one room airport, that has an endless line wrapping several times around the room, luckily Sophia sees a sign that reads E booking upstairs which we go to and find a delightful couple of young people from Hong Kong. The ladies at the desk look over our information and can't believe we don't have our travel itinerary printed out, I try to explain how we had it but lost it at the Kuala Lumpur Airport. Could happen to anyone I say with a smile and a shrug.
That is not an answer, sir. Said the tiny woman in uniform with her head wagging that wonderful Indian head wag. They also wanted the address of the hotels we planned to stay at along with their phone numbers, which guess what, yep also gone. Could happen to anyone, I smile again. Look at me, I am a nice guy, lost the papers.
That is not an answer sir. Again with the Indian head wag.
Finally I gave them a number, one of many that I had called a few days ago when booking hotels in India. It could have been any of a number of places but the main thing was they had an Indian looking phone number to write in their form.
I found a taxi outside the airport and asked to go to the city center, near the bus station, I remembered our hotel was near the bus station. We pulled up to the front of the hotel Guru, which I seemed to remember was in my guide book. We did find our hotel, but the guy behind the desk wasn't nearly as nice as the dude at the hotel Guru so we stayed there.
Here is just for the google traffic
Hotel Guru in Trichy was a wonderful place with a great restaurant and really nice folks running it. Highly recommend it.
Who knows, maybe that will help. Back to our story already in progress.
The restaurant in the basement of the hotel wouldn't let us sit in the main area and insisted we sit in the special air con room in the back. The dosas oh the dosas. The curries and the chutney and the flavors and the dosas. By the end of the trip I was officially on masala over-dosa but that first day sitting there eating all that stuff with Sophia I thought I was in heaven.
Trichy is cool for a day or two, there is a fort on top of a mountain in the center of the city. As we were going in tourist hunters started with their routine, same questions in the same order from all of them. What country are you from? Oh My cousin is in America, I know it well. New York or Los Angeles? How many days have you traveled? Where will you go next? Followed by come with me so I can guide you to see some blah blah that they are hawking. Not to sound cynical but every ten feet another guy with the same questions. One guy asked me what country I was from and followed it with 'Oh America. I know it well, my cousin is in America. Melbourne or Sydney?'
Each time I made an effort to smile and answer politely before excusing myself until one of them yelled at the both of us 'RUBBISH, RUBBISH' because we weren't into hiring him. After that I still smiled but didn't answer anybodies questions, at least not the ones that followed the tourist hunter script.
The temples in India you have to take off your shoes. The rock fort was on top of a mountain with tunnels cut through the middle of the rock. On top of that rock the India sun cooked down on that rock surface and the feet burned. crowds of people hopped to get to shadows of trees and structures to escape the pain of walking on the hot hot rock. There was a long incline of steps that lead up to fort on top. The steps had small mats dispersed intermittently along the way but not enough so your feet didn't burn. About half way up we decided it was a zen thing, like you had to divorce it from your mind and focus on the journey. While I think this was the concept it didn't help, I was a child without sandals hopping around pool side on a hot summer day.
We got to the top and a Hindu priest rubbed white power in lines on our foreheads. We could see the whole city and as we looked a pair of young boys hide around the corner and kept peeking at us. One of them got up the nerve to approach us and nervously he asked our names and shook our hands. We told him our name and he waited a beat then ran away to hide from embarrassment as his family howled with laughter. It is possible he hadn't met foreigners before and while this was the first time a child reacted to us this way on our trip it would be far from the last. The adults usually either reacted to us with indifference, disdain, or much more often curiosity and kindness. But the kids were almost always really curious and often requested pictures. They would wave and Sophia would holler a really big happy Sophia 'Hello' with a really big Sophia smiling grin.
I was worried about beggars in India, and sure enough they were all over the place, but they actually were never a problem for the simple reason that I came equipped with a Sophia. I don't think there was a single person who asked for money that she turned away. She didn't give anybody a lot, but everything is so cheap in India that it was something to the beggars. Enough to get a smile out of them in most cases. She also gave every tuk tuk driver a little bit more than the agreed upon price, out of ten days of drivers I think only one guy didn't get extra out of her and that guy was being an asshole. So if you go to India, at least where we were in Tamil Nadu just bring the smallest amount extra and instead of worrying about being hounded by beggars make sure you have lots of small change and bills somewhere in your pocket and a little more space in your heart. After ten years of travelling in Asia I still have so much to learn, Sophia took one look at India and was already awesome at it. Just be really nice to people who have nothing when they ask you for something.
We got lost in the endless temples in Trichy. They are so old and so unchanged and so covered with people all in bright colors beyond description. Sophia got a garland of flowers from a priest, the ladies all wear these white flowers in their hair. I tried to tie it into her hair somehow when a lady saw this and from her own hair took her own flowers and tossed them on the ground in order to use her hair pin. She then grabbed Sophia and decked her head out with these beautiful white flowers, it was a completely selfless kind act from a stranger who was so happy to have a chance to do something nice for us. It was not the first or the last time someone in India would show us such kindness. What amazing people the Indians!
So we headed out for Pondicherry, planned on going it by train. Travel in India by train is such a cool experience, a romantic way to traverse the wonderful landscape. We tried to get tickets but the man at the counter couldn't understand our questions. First there was no train until 2:30, then suddenly there was one at 12, which was two hours away. We agreed and in the meantime wondered around until finding the train museum which was sort of neat.
When the train pulled up we were sent to the very end of the thing, turned out we were in last class which meant good luck getting a seat. As we came in I noticed people were sleeping on the luggage racks, and as there was nowhere else I put Sophia up on one of them. She seemed happy enough up there. I hung by the door and watched India go by. It was actually really pleasant for most of the way until we got to one stop where a bunch of guys ran on carrying heavy boxes and plastic chairs and bags of stuff. They were screaming at people to get out of their way so they could put their stuff all over the place. They were pushing people around like they weren't people. They were ugly and I mean and they forced old people to move from their spots on the floor through intimidation and yelling. At one point I got up to check on Sophia and they took my spot, I thought about getting it back from them but at that point we were almost where we needed to go, and you know what? I don't need to get into a fight with five strange men over a spot on the floor on a moving train in India. I am getting old now and I guess old enough to know when to lose my cool and when not to.
So that night in Pondicherry Sophia went shopping in a market and I waited at the hotel. When she came back I took her out to a spot on the beach and said some cool shit and showed her the ring my grandfather gave my grandmother in 1939. Boom. She said yes and we both collapsed into the sand, I won't try to write about how that moment felt, I don't want to. Some moments are not for blogs, even on the internet some things are still sacred. She said yes and it is gonna happen. It is big and scary and I have been a bundle of nerves before and since but it also feels right, so please be happy for us. She is awesome, we are awesome, all is awesome.
So Pondicherry was uneventful with that one very notable exception. We went to the museum and a police man told it was closed on Mondays. There is a library, he told us. Really? Where? Right over there. He said. Also closed on Mondays. Oh we said.
We went to the Auraville, which is a transcendental commune turned city where all work for the common good of human understanding. It was a really relaxing place, we went to their monolithic golden dome which was sort of like a golden hippie epcot center. We found a nice tree and meditated, I should be ashamed to admit that but I ain't. Deal with it you turkeys. When we left we found a mall of very modern boutiques of stuff made and sold by locals. Some of it looked very factory manufactured but if it is all going to helping the community whatever. They had displays of alternative energy sources they were using, one of which involved marsh reeds. They had a sign for solar cooled ice cream. I bought some and was half way through trying to work out how solar power was used in making ice cream when it occurred to me that if they use solar power for the everything then they use it for the fridge too hence the solar cooling. It also occurred to me that I got taken for a ride by some hippies, but it was ok. A nice Mango sherbet on a blasting hot day in India was just fine. A very nice spot, but I think that if one were to stay long term and get involved in the farming and volunteering that goes on there it win order to get the full picture of the place one should really stay for a while and get into the volunteer farming and learning that happens there. But for one day it was a great spot with really cool vibes. I bought a book on urban farming, I want to get some veggies going.
The punchline of the stay in Pondicherry was that the nice hotel I had chosen ( I splurged owing to what I planned to do I figured we needed a decent joint. The night I proposed I told the waiter who brought me beer, he actually didn't seem to care. In the morning we sat in their garden lobby and they brought us toast and coffee, when I left I found out that they charged us more for the toast per person than it costed to fill both of us up beyond belief to where we didn't want to move at every single other Indian restaurant we visited on our journey. Toast.
But she said yes and it is happening. That is the huge part. Huge.
Tiruvanamalai was next, and we took a bus to get there. I had to put the huge back pack (with the collected junk of two people) over my lap as the bus filled, so it was a long trip. The horns on the buses are about as loud as they can be, often in several note jingles that really rattle the teeth. The driver seems unable to operate his vehicle without the horn, removing one from a bus would be the same as removing the brakes. People kept getting on, the guy next to us and Sophia entered into a who can give the other the most fruit and snacks contest. They each quietly retreated at the rest breaks to the side of the road to buy bags of grapes and crackers to offer back and forth. Meanwhile the bus ride went on and on as did the green fields and rolling horizon. Farms and villages here, towns and small clusters of concrete there, always cows cows cows and the ever present previously but her once again mentioned blaring siren of the bus horn, alerting all from dirt to heavens of our approach like the horn in a cavalry charge. In traffic the buses all blast their horns at one another while not moving and since they all have different little jangling songs it sounded a bit like really loud birds chirping, or possibly the song really big dinosaurs must have made when angry at each other.
The ride and the horn and the weight of the bag in my lap continued as did the country side as did the heat. Holy cow the heat is so intense, there is no heat on earth like that India heat, and I say that as a Southern boy. Air conditioning is rare if ever and the heat hangs on you and pulls you down, the sweat soaks the shirt until finally start feeling the drops getting in your eyes from the top of your head. At no point did Sophia and I not each hold in our hand a litter water bottle, usually we had three or four on back up in bags. So the heat was always a thing, and on the bus when moving it was ok because all the windows were down, but once we stopped there it was.
Along the way my mind wandered as my mind tends to do, I guess yours does also. Remember before smart phones when you just had to sit and think? The good old days? Well that's what I was doing and it was really nice. suddenly in the far off distance I saw a mountain, well a very tall hill let's say, and on top of that very tall rocky, craggy hill seemed to be ancient ruins of battlements or temples. I shook Sophia from sleep to show her. Bless her, she can sleep anywhere she wants to and at the drop of a hat. Then an even taller one, this was officially a mountain and it had even more structures. Then walls with archer torrents crumbling into hillsides and into nothing, then picked up again over the next ravine, first as rock piles which gradually grew and stretched into fortified structures which then fell again back into the rubble, back to where they came from.
What the hell is that??
I thought surely that must have meant we were in Tiruvanamanamanama (what was the name of that damn town again?) but no, we kept on for another solid hour or more before the bus finally pulled into town. The rest of the day I couldn't get those structures out of my mind, the came and went so fast. I was left questioning if I had actually seen it or if maybe I had allowed my mind to play with what I had seen until it grew into something, you know? I do that. All the time I do that to myself.
We visited the big temple in town, it was huge and marvellous like the others. In Tamil Nadu they seem to be large towers with gates that you walk through into courtyards with smaller buildings inside. We went into the inside of one of the temples and found ourselves in a small room where people were praying and singing around a small statue. I honestly didn't mean to get myself that deep into the sanctum and it was the only time I really felt like a poser, a peeping tom almost. We gave donations and had the powder rubbed on our foreheads. The place was solid rock with amazing carvings that seemed to tell a history or religious text or both. Families of the faithful smiled and waved at us, more people asked us to be in a picture, more cows, more heat. Outside the temple we found a gauntlet of people asking for money, Sophia wound up buying food for several of them before I tugged her arm to get us away, I could see we had drawn attention and it was time to get going. As we were walking in I was forced to buy a sarong because I was wearing shorts, which I was fine with, felt bad about coming off as disrespectful to be honest.
We spent the next day wandering aimlessly through back streets trying to find a meditation shrine, and when we did it was closed for lunch. A woman from Switzerland in her fifties ran over to offer to take us to this amazing place she had found for lunch nearby, she would lead us and we were to follow in silence. 'No talking' she proffered as a sales point with a toothy grin which for me was the item that clinched the deal. Fifteen minutes later we were up to speed with her entire 30 day stay at the mediation shrine and were becoming familiar with her relationship to the earth mother. She explained that 8 years ago she had experienced an event of some sort that changed the way she saw the harmony of all things and expanded her perceptions of realitiy. She sat with us at lunch which was in a beautiful garden where other foreigners sat sipping tea. Without ordering anything we were all brought plates of food. It was hipply cooked interesting takes on the traditional local curries and the price was almost nothing. It was a really chill place to hang out, and throughout our lunch the woman from Switzerland stared at us without speaking or blinking as we all ate in silence.
The next day we got up early and made our way to the local bus station which is chaos. We asked around five or six people how to get there, unsure of our pronunciation. We finally found one, and as we sat down a man came with an urn of smoking incense and tapped each rider on the bus what looked like a long whisk broom. We were grateful that he had done that for us so we gave him a few rupees.
The ride was about an hour or so and we were dropped off in a town at the foot of the mountain. It was a very fast climb up the first of the two, and on top we found the ruins of what must have been a palace of some kind. There were massive chambers that had stairs to the top where you could walk around on narrow ledges, two or three stories up and on top of a mountain. The view from up there was amazing, we could see little specks far off in the distance which were farmers knee deep in water tending to a rice paddy. We could see lush fields to one side of us, the sleepy town to the other and at no point did we ever climb so high that we couldn't hear the din of bus horns screaming below but the higher we climbed the more it became part of the atmosphere, like a breeze or the song of birds. Once on top we spent hours climbing around on the ancient structures, in the chambers which I imagined to be the halls of kings. All around teenage couples were sitting together, each in a hidden corner tucked away. They were the young lovers from the town below and here must have been the only place away from prying eyes of the older ones or the parents. They weren't necking, at least from what we saw, rather sitting together and enjoying the wonderful breeze up there that was chasing away the Indian sun. We did the same, Sophia and I. We found a slab of ancient rock and laid next to each other and slept for a couple of hours. I woke up early to see one of the teenage boys had jumped from the roof of one temple to the roof another below, maybe his girl was watching. He made it but was now up a good fifteen feet with nothing to hang on to to climb down. I watched as his friends (all howling with laughter) below. A nearby foreigner lounging around and enjoying the show must have confounded everyone's amusement. Eventually the poor kid managed to hang his entire body down the long end of a pillar and his buddies hung onto his ankles, knees, finally torso and he was down. I feel back asleep for a time. Sophia happily slept through the whole thing.
The next morning we went back across the street to the taller mountain. This one was a longer climb and was covered with monkeys. There are bad monkeys and good monkeys, the world seems to have become covered in the naughty ones. Good monkeys live in the jungle and are sort of like squirrels. They see people and run like hell, once a monkey tastes people food they become aggressive in your face gimmie gimmie monkeys and while often cute they are not very much fun. Each time we stopped if we weren't careful we'd have a little monkey inspecting our bags. One minute, this is a nice spot to sit with no monkeys. Look over there, what a nice view. HEY, STOP THOSE MONKEYS!
A school group of children was near the top. From far away they called to us 'Helllooooo' and Sophia called back 'HELLOOOOO' back and forth until we were with them. They were thirsty and the water was heavy so when they asked for some we both gave them one of our bottles, which they passed around among all the kids. They all wanted to know our names and what country we were from, then they all wanted pictures with us. This was right on the edge of a wooden Indian Jones bridge over a fall that you'd have time to think about as you fell it. I am not good with heights so in all the pictures I am smiling, but also sitting down hanging onto the side of the rock stairway leading to the bridge for dear life.
We set up a hammock my father gave me between the pillars of one of the structures up top. We ate pomegranates and the juice and little red popcornish bits spilled onto the rock below us. I tossed the skin into the bushes down a cliff below and we settled in for a nice nap. Pretty soon a little friend took notice of the discarded fruit smell we had a tiny monkey investigating. I pulled the bag on top of us along with or shoes, reasoning that he didn't want anything in there bad enough. Cautiously at first and then a bit braver we had this little monkey eating the fruit bits off the floor next to the hammock. We watched up until the point where a gang of his friends showed up. That was when we got up and packed the hammock and skedaddled. On the other side of the cliff was another spot in another shelter and there we had us a nice long afternoon nap in that hammock which hung next to the edge of a cliff that fell off the side of the world into nothing.
Some teenage kid came and asked for a sip of our water. Like an idiot I gave it to him and watched as he proceeded to swallow my entire water bottle. But good news, we started with six bottles and I had left one in the woods hidden as we climbed up, mainly because it was so heavy. Still there on the way down, and as it was hidden under a rock in the shade it wasn't really cold but not really hot either when I found it on the way down. As we left a whole army of teen boys of around 15 or 16 took notice of Sophia. At first they wanted to take a picture with the both of us, then one boy nervously asked if he could have his picture just with Sophia. They were looking to see if I was going get sore, I didn't, I thought it was hilarious, so they all took turns in pictures with my fiancée. The longer this went on the wilder the boys became, they started hooting, laughing, and yelling, some of them jumping up and down with happiness. When I finally gently suggested we get out of there quite some time had passed as well as several facebook pages worth of pictures taken. We politely waved our goodbyes and the boys yelled fond thank yous and god knows what else at us in Tamil. Later on the main road the entire lot of them went screaming by miraculously all balanced on one motorcycle and of course not a single helmet between them. Those boys are still somewhere looking at those pictures.
After that was another bus ride back to Trichy. I wanted to do it by train again but it wasn't really an easy thing to do from where we were and the bus saved us five or six hours. Back in Trichy we went to the same hotel we had started in, they were all very happy to see us again. In the basement restaurant they put us right in the AC room and treated us like stars.
We went back to the area that had the rock temple but neither of us felt like climbing it again. We both agreed it wouldn't be the same the second time and it was a long hike on hot rock without shoes. We wandered around shopping, I bought a text book for linear algebra that I will never be able to understand, but it was cheap.
That night next to the hotel she went shopping and I went to check out the bar, the next to last night of the trip and my first beer of the trip. Sophia makes me do good, not out of anything but wanting to be a better man, which is pretty cool to find in someone.
So I was drinking a beer in the bar in Trichy. I went in and they made me sit at the first table as you walk in, clearly the best table. They had a sign on the wall that had the liqueur licence on the board below which read 'Drinking Alcohol kills families, country, and all the person' in gigantic font. I was into my second pint when a group of four tough looking guys came in, one of them looked damn mean and had the sort of fatness that made him look stronger. He saw me and flew into a rage. He stood in the center of the room and pointed his meaty fat finger at me yelling at everyone in there. Why was this foreign scum at the nice table was what I got out of it. I sat there sipping my beer looking back at him. Two of his friends sat at the table across from me, the fat man came over and put his hand on my face patting, I pushed his hand away.
'my friend sit here, you sit there' he was smiling and it was a really scary smile, this was clearly a scary dude. I got up and started to drop my money and split, I was done with that scene. The barmen pulled me to another table across the room, brought me my beer and sat me down. I finished my beer quickly and watched as everyone in the place ran into the kitchen and returned with beers and plates and plates of food for these guys who acted like they weren't even there. So here is what the Southern Indian mob looks like. When one of the waiters had a break I waved him over and gave him my money which he took quickly. The fat guy didn't seem to like foreigners or me and I wasn't interested in how a belly full of beer influenced these feelings. I paid and legged it, and as I was out the door I glanced around to see all eyes from that table focused right at me.
An hour later Sophia and I went down the street a bit to a movie theatre to dig on some Ballywood, and if you ever find youself in India for any reason and would some serious immersion that should be on your list. We go in, again we are given very nice seats. It is a gigantic theater but an old piece of rope has tied off the front half of the auditorium so everyone is crammed into the back. Before the lights go down there is a preshow intensity that is palpable. We saw a fight break out a few rows in front of us over a seat. A brief scuffle that ended as soon as it began. A third party interceded and both men sat down and seemed to be talking with their arms around each other's shoulders throughout the rest of the show.
So the lights go down and we watch a few commercials for a local tea, then the show started. It was a comedy about a scamming street thief who goes around stealing wallets and in the first scene selling families drugged icecream so he could break into their house later finding them all passed out and drugged so he could rob them blind. It was all in Tamil but the actions were so broad we had no trouble at all following the story. The thief takes his loot back to his unbelievably nicely decked out flat, but first he meets a nice girl and one of his scams results in her getting fired he has fallen in love with her and somehow (the power of musical montage) seems to be her boyfriend in the next scene. Along the way he picks up two fat and bumbling buddies who always seem to be yelling at each other and falling down. Every ten minutes there is a musical sequence when the entire audience starts screaming at the top of their lungs. There are whistles and noises coming from the people that are in time with the melody, so the crowd is actively participating in the music.
I also noticed that while the leading lady is indeed beautiful, she is at no point even in so much as short sleeve shirt. She is often seen in flowing gowns and sari's that are traditional and brightly colored as any other respectable woman in India. Regardless of this the men in the audience would wolf whistle and make high pitched 'a yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiiii' noises when ever she came on screen as though they were all really drunk sailors in a strip club that were about to be kicked out by bouncers.
There was an intermission and it was getting late, I didn't want to be walking around with Sophia late at night in India even though we were just a couple of blocks from our hotel. So we went for the exit and found that someone had left a large piece of plywood across blocking anyone from leaving. Next to that was another door people were walking through and me and Sophia quickly realized it was the men's room. We went back to the theater, and many helpful men pulled me aside to show me where the ladies room was, thinking I wanted her to use the wrong one. About ten minutes into the second half we agreed that we really needed to get going, so we got up and left. A man in the lobby was happy to move the large piece of wood and lead us down to a courtyard below where another man slept on a bench. That man was shaken awake and he got up, rubbed his eyes and unlocked the chain padlock to open the large sliding metal wall gate so we could exit the facilities.
One more India story.
The last night there we found a guy that was cooking chickens. We ordered what I thought were two orders of food but turned out to be two whole chickens with side dishes, enough for five easily. We got most of it to go and thought We'd give it to a beggar. As we were walking out we had the idea of buying a few loafs of bread to go along with it. Pretty soon we had several loafs. I walked around with the loaf hanging from my hand for all to see like a large fish I had just caught and was proud of. The first was a group of three woman, all of whom had babies in arms. They were each given a loaf of bread. They all wanted money next, and I was about to tell them to fuck off when Sophia gave them each ten rupees, which isn't much to us but that seemed to make them really happy. We gave a loaf to another lady, then two more women with babies showed up when we had given the last of it away so we went and got us more loafs. We were on our way to the airport at this point so I had the big bag on. Loaf here, loaf there. It felt great.
We got in a Tuk Tuk for the airport and as we sped around the corner a group of people, all with loafs of bread saw us and they all waved at us, seriously.
So I've been travelling around Asia for around ten years, and I feel like I am so fancy. I was nervous about the beggars because I hate always being in a position to say no to people. Sophia has taught me the joy of just saying yes.
Sophia is from a very poor background, her family never had money especially and as a result she really seems more concerned with out money get's spent that I am. I will go and blow a ton of money on a night out on the piss with friends. But in India she could see that these people didn't have anything and she just started breaking her money down, money that she had earned by busting her ass six, not five but six days a week and passing it out happily to anyone that asked her. So I would like to be more like her, we all should. If you got something and you can spare it, you dig? I could and should do more. I never donate my time or money to anything really, but it sure felt cool to pass out that bread.
Here is something for the google traffic.
FUCK YOU AIR ASIA!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!! 7 KG BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE FOR INTERNATIONAL???? MAKING ME PAY EXTRA TO CHECK WHEN I COULD HAVE MAYBE TRIED TO CRAM THAT THING INTO AN OVERHEAD. I BET I COULD'VE CRAMMED IT IN THERE, AIR ASIA. I'VE CRAMMED IT BEFORE. I'VE CRAMMED IT ALL KINDS OF PLACES. WHAT, YOU DIDN'T THINK I'D DO ANY SHOPPING? IN INDIA??? OF COURSE MY BAG WAS TWICE THE ALLOWED WEIGHT. AND THEN WHEN I GOT IT IN HONG KONG MY PHONE CHARGER WAS MISSING, AND UNIVERSAL POWER ADAPTOR!!!!
MY UNIVERSAL POWER ADAPTOR IS ON YOUR HEADS, AIR ASIA. YOU CAN DEAL WITH THAT GUILT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES. HAVE FUN WITH THAT, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW SOMEONE IN YOUR COMPANY OR QUITE POSSIBLY SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU AT ALL THAT HANDLED MY BAGS STOLE SOMETHING? I HOPE YOU ALL DIE!!!! NEXT TIME I WILL FILL MY BAG WITH POISONOUS SNAKES, OR BETTER YET I WILL FILL IT WITH MY SPITE. BUT INCIDENTALLY THE IN-FLIGHT MEAL WAS REALLY GOOD, WHICH IS UNUSUAL FOR AIR PLANE FOOD. I WAS IMPRESSED WITH THE CHICKEN MEAL BUT THE CURRY WAS JUST SO SO. YOU HEAR ME AIR ASIA? WHILE THE CHICKEN WAS REALLY GOOD THE CURRY (ESPECIALLY AFTER BEING IN INDIA) WAS PASSABLE, BUT ULTIMATELY SO SO.
It was the best trip I have ever had in my life I think. For me that is a big deal. And hey, we're getting married.
