What a day this way! An assault on the senses in almost every way.
It was air conditioned and cool in here. We sat for a while after finishing regrouping and figuring out where to go next. It was on the walk from here that the best part of the day unfolded.
We woke up in time to just get brekkies. The breakfast here is fabulous. Many Indian delights, different curries, various noodle dishes, rice varieties, vada, sambar, chutneys, fruit, yogurt, omelets, eggs, pancakes, waffles, toast, cereal, congee, salads, poori, dosas, uppadums, iddly, and the list goes on and on. We will unlikely get a spread like this again in our travels!
We finished up and headed out to Fort George. It took a while to negotiate with our driver for the fare, but we, well, Bill, got the fare he was comfortable with and off we went.
Fort George is the original English outpost here in Madras. This was founded in the late 1600’s and took on various forms and sizes until just around Independence in 1947. The site is the seat of government for the region. So you have these crumbling sites and big Mercedes Benz driving around in the same place. The Fort Museum was quite small and full of vaguely explained artifacts as well as some history. We left the museum and walked around the building.
What was interesting and fascinating on a health and cultural level, was that on the back side of the building the cars were much smaller and the grounds more squalid. There was a mountain of trash piled between two wings of the buildings with a stray dog mid-way up the pile rooting for some tidbit. That sight was to our right, on our left were derelict buildings that served as a public urinal. As we walked on, there was another public urinal on a wall as we made a right turn.
**Rant: Every hunk of crumbling wall became a defacto urinal. We saw men in business dress, hop off their motorbikes and unzip and take a leak! Has me scratching my head, the country is banging out internet companies and churning out programmers by the thousands, there is obviously a good deal of wealth, and someone who can afford a motorbike has some wealth, but it is clear that men can just take a leak anywhere they feel the urge. I have yet to see a woman squatting at the side of the road! So, what’s up with that? I know, this sounds culturally insensitive, but, Jeez, how can a country on the verge of becoming 1st world still have this sort of thing going on? Bill would say that this is what makes India India, meaning the dichotomy of all of this and its existence together.**
We escaped the tang of urine, and walked to the north in order to cross under a clot of railroad tracks to get to a lunch place. Again, the food at this vegetarian place was excellent. I ordered a plain dosa and Bill got a paneer masala.
We started wandering on a street parallel to a main road to avoid the exhaust from the cars. You can’t avoid the noise. As we walked all around us was noise. There were multiple levels of the noise. High pitched beeping from auto rickshaws, louder, more aggressive auto horns, jingling of bicycle horns, and best of all bicycle rickshaws whose horns were a pair of cymbals that tinnily clanged when the driver (pedaller?) pulled a string which was attached to the top of the pair of brass cymbals and when he released the rope the cymbal dropped making a soft “dung” sound. How anyone who wasn’t right next to it heard it, I don’t know. Also sharing the road was a large ox, who would not be moved from his appointed rounds. I was just hoping to get out of the way before I got run into a large smelly dumpster. I made it!
As we walked we took a left turn onto the main road and there all along the sidewalk were women selling vegetables, flowers, trinkets, etc. The gradations of colors was phenomenal. The saris alone, hit every color in the rainbow. The vegetables were gorgeous, the cauliflower, large sparkling white heads with bright green leaves in piles around the “stall” where they had been shaved off the head. The varieties of eggplants of all colors lined up in neat rows caps all pointing in the same direction. The pyramids of oranges, limes, and other citrus fruits that I couldn’t identify stacked neatly on a colorful cloth on the sidewalk. Each seller yelling the merits of their wares. This is all on our left, on our right are various micro shops dispensing chai, kitchen knick-knacks, assorted car parts, tires, cloth, dried beans, crazy amounts of jewelry shops.
Every once in a while there would be a woman who was weaving jasmine buds into hair ornaments for women. This explains the smell of jasmine all over the place. It’s intoxicating! She would take a single unopened bud and tie it gently with a thread so as not to cut through the thin stem, and then pick up the next blossom and tie it close to the previous one. In the end, there would be several strands of jasmine blossoms, perhaps in assorted colors, (probably dyed) woven together into a hair tie. i saw women all over the place with them in their hair.
After walking through the streets, we consulted a map to see where we were and how do we get back to our hotel. I knew we had been walking almost due west, but couldn’t be sure if we had overshot our hotel and in what cardinal direction. Turns out, it was more north north west that we had walked and we needed to cross over the rail yards to get to a street where we could hail an auto rickshaw.
There was a road that ascended over the rail yard. As we climbed the gentle rise, there were shanties to our left and the train repair yard to our right. In the shanty town there was a herd of cows tied up, a group of goats, and some roosters and hens. All milling about in the afternoon heat. Of course, there were cow pats everywhere! Watch your shoes!.
It was descending this gentle rise over the yards that we encountered the aforementioned urine wall. Men in scooters in business clothing, dress slacks and shirt, pulling over and walking over to the wall and peeing! So strange and in juxtaposition to this, the underpasses under major roads, were spotless and no stink of urine....In NYC, these would have been places you held your breath. Perhaps the reason is that here peeing in the open is accepted as natural where in the US, it is seen as a dirty thing. So our stinky places are “in secret”.
We walked down the main road for a bit, and it was clear that we were now in the lumber yard area. All around us were stores that sold timber, lumber, and their products. The only time this has happened in our trip, thus far, a man who was engaged in conversation with another person, both seated, jumped up and stuck out his hand which appeared to be wanting to shake Bill’s hand. He then turned his attention to me and grabbed my wrist. I was not afraid, but it was strange. This act was more akin to Vietnam or Thailand rather than India. No one else has touched us.
We hopped in a rickshaw and headed to our “favorite” bar, Majarajah Bar, near Egmore station. After a few beers, snacks, and a ton of Bollywood videos, we called it a night and caught another rickshaw back to the hotel. Oh, how tired I was, I fell fast asleep, only to wake up around 8 am and
Every once in a while there would be a woman who was weaving jasmine buds into hair ornaments for women. This explains the smell of jasmine all over the place. It’s intoxicating! She would take a single unopened bud and tie it gently with a thread so as not to cut through the thin stem, and then pick up the next blossom and tie it close to the previous one. In the end, there would be several strands of jasmine blossoms, perhaps in assorted colors, (probably dyed) woven together into a hair tie. i saw women all over the place with them in their hair.
After walking through the streets, we consulted a map to see where we were and how do we get back to our hotel. I knew we had been walking almost due west, but couldn’t be sure if we had overshot our hotel and in what cardinal direction. Turns out, it was more north north west that we had walked and we needed to cross over the rail yards to get to a street where we could hail an auto rickshaw.
There was a road that ascended over the rail yard. As we climbed the gentle rise, there were shanties to our left and the train repair yard to our right. In the shanty town there was a herd of cows tied up, a group of goats, and some roosters and hens. All milling about in the afternoon heat. Of course, there were cow pats everywhere! Watch your shoes!.
It was descending this gentle rise over the yards that we encountered the aforementioned urine wall. Men in scooters in business clothing, dress slacks and shirt, pulling over and walking over to the wall and peeing! So strange and in juxtaposition to this, the underpasses under major roads, were spotless and no stink of urine....In NYC, these would have been places you held your breath. Perhaps the reason is that here peeing in the open is accepted as natural where in the US, it is seen as a dirty thing. So our stinky places are “in secret”.
We walked down the main road for a bit, and it was clear that we were now in the lumber yard area. All around us were stores that sold timber, lumber, and their products. The only time this has happened in our trip, thus far, a man who was engaged in conversation with another person, both seated, jumped up and stuck out his hand which appeared to be wanting to shake Bill’s hand. He then turned his attention to me and grabbed my wrist. I was not afraid, but it was strange. This act was more akin to Vietnam or Thailand rather than India. No one else has touched us.
We hopped in a rickshaw and headed to our “favorite” bar, Majarajah Bar, near Egmore station. After a few beers, snacks, and a ton of Bollywood videos, we called it a night and caught another rickshaw back to the hotel. Oh, how tired I was, I fell fast asleep, only to wake up around 8 am and
Begin the packing process to head to Mamallapurimam.
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