Off on the wild roads of Tamil Nadu
I've left Chennai for a few days, and decided to tour through the southern state of Tamil Nadu. I hired a car and driver (actually an SUV and driver - despite my dislike for large vehicles, if you saw the state of the roads here, you'd understand why I want a big vehicle, sometimes driving the highway is offroading).
I went to Mallahapuram (okay, I'm confident that I spelled that wrong), where there are really cool stone temples and carvings. This one series of 5 rathas is a set of 5 small temples, each apparently carved from a single block of stone. These things are huge in scale when you realise that one slip up and everything has to be replanned.
From there I went off to Pondicherry. Pondy is an old French colony south of Chennai. The guidebooks tell you that there's something subtlely different about Pondy. I put my finger on it within 2 or 3 minutes of trying to check in. Instead of broken English, the hotel staff spoke to me in accented French. I wasn't ready for it, and I wasn't paying close enough attention at first to realise what was going on. In the end, the staff are amazed that I, unlike most of the tourists, can converse with them in French (although our conversations are pretty rudimentary).
I went wandering around the streets to soak in the pseudo-French feel of the city. Unfortunately the darkness comes quite quickly (especially when coupled with the rain). By 6pm it was pitch black. The streets here aren't really lit by anything other than the headlights of the cars and rickshaws. The street signs are just painted onto the side of buildings at the intersections. Needless to say, I spent a good 45 minutes or so stumbling around in the dark trying to find my hotel (I should have done something simple like remembered its name or the street that it was on). Eventually, I found my way back to the hotel, changed out of my soaking clothes for the second time in a day, and sat down to warm up and read a book that was just given to me. The book is engrossing... but more on it in another post. (BTW, books are incredibly cheap here... I'm getting paperback books for less that Rs. 100, which puts them at about $2.50 CAD... not bad for the entertainment, I'll try to grab some on my way back that would be suitable for my coffee table... That's right, no illustrated Kama Sutras).
Now here's the fun part of the past few days...
What I didn't' know, because it hasn't happened in the past 4 or 5 years, is that this part of India gets hit by a second monsoon season, right about now. The reservoirs in Chennai had been so depleted by the failure of this monsoon, that the city had discontinued daily piping of water to most places. You'd get running water every 3 days or so. This meant that people would have to conserve water, and store water when you could (which probably did nothing for controlling mosquito populations with everyone having pots and buckets of standing water around). Just before my arrival, the monsoon hit the city, and caused chest deep floods in some parts. Now that the flooding has subsided, the monsoon rains are continuing.
Last night it looked like the rain was coming down in sheets. This morning, some of the same. When I left the hotel this morning, the streets were water filled. It's all pretty interesting. It would be cool if the rain was sudden, hard, and done, so that the sun could come out, but apparently this monsoon gives hard rain for short periods of time, and then constant rain for a lot of the rest of the day. Today while wandering around the Shore Temple and the 5 Rathas in Mallahapuram, I was soaked to the bone. My new orange kurta was soaked, although my Tilley hat (ugly as it may be) was amazing at keeping the rain off my face.
Thankfully before I left, I read a photography site that recommended that I not baby my camera in conditions like rain. As long as I don't allow it to get pelted by direct rain for long periods of time it should be fine. If I had remembered, I would have grabbed a shower cap from the hotel before I left, but since I forgot, we'll find out how the camera reacts to the water (hopefully no worse than it did to the sand that got all over it when I did the night shot of the Taj). If I hadn't followed the advice, today would not have been nearly as fun. If I took a couple of days off the life of the camera it's worth it (if the camera dies before the end of the trip, I'll be writing an angry letter to Canon and deleting this part of the blog).
The scenery here is amazing. Tomorrow, I've told my driver that he'll have to pull over a couple of times so that I can photograph the countryside. With my cold still kicking around I wasn't overly interested in doing anything today, so other than the big sites, I just contented myself with seeing things from an SUV window and sleeping during the long driving stretches.
I should be back in Chennai on Tuesday night. I'm thinking about flying to Cochin (Kochi) on the morning of the 9th to meet up with a friend's sister, but that plan hasn't been confirmed yet. I'll be in Delhi for the 11th for the conference, and then after that... It's all about Goa (and a quick return to Mumbai). There's just a touch of office work that has to be done still, but that's coming along quite well, so it shouldn't get in the way of my rest and relaxation.
So long for now, I'm heading back into the light rain to find a restaurant that serves something comforting.
dilip
I went to Mallahapuram (okay, I'm confident that I spelled that wrong), where there are really cool stone temples and carvings. This one series of 5 rathas is a set of 5 small temples, each apparently carved from a single block of stone. These things are huge in scale when you realise that one slip up and everything has to be replanned.
From there I went off to Pondicherry. Pondy is an old French colony south of Chennai. The guidebooks tell you that there's something subtlely different about Pondy. I put my finger on it within 2 or 3 minutes of trying to check in. Instead of broken English, the hotel staff spoke to me in accented French. I wasn't ready for it, and I wasn't paying close enough attention at first to realise what was going on. In the end, the staff are amazed that I, unlike most of the tourists, can converse with them in French (although our conversations are pretty rudimentary).
I went wandering around the streets to soak in the pseudo-French feel of the city. Unfortunately the darkness comes quite quickly (especially when coupled with the rain). By 6pm it was pitch black. The streets here aren't really lit by anything other than the headlights of the cars and rickshaws. The street signs are just painted onto the side of buildings at the intersections. Needless to say, I spent a good 45 minutes or so stumbling around in the dark trying to find my hotel (I should have done something simple like remembered its name or the street that it was on). Eventually, I found my way back to the hotel, changed out of my soaking clothes for the second time in a day, and sat down to warm up and read a book that was just given to me. The book is engrossing... but more on it in another post. (BTW, books are incredibly cheap here... I'm getting paperback books for less that Rs. 100, which puts them at about $2.50 CAD... not bad for the entertainment, I'll try to grab some on my way back that would be suitable for my coffee table... That's right, no illustrated Kama Sutras).
Now here's the fun part of the past few days...
What I didn't' know, because it hasn't happened in the past 4 or 5 years, is that this part of India gets hit by a second monsoon season, right about now. The reservoirs in Chennai had been so depleted by the failure of this monsoon, that the city had discontinued daily piping of water to most places. You'd get running water every 3 days or so. This meant that people would have to conserve water, and store water when you could (which probably did nothing for controlling mosquito populations with everyone having pots and buckets of standing water around). Just before my arrival, the monsoon hit the city, and caused chest deep floods in some parts. Now that the flooding has subsided, the monsoon rains are continuing.
Last night it looked like the rain was coming down in sheets. This morning, some of the same. When I left the hotel this morning, the streets were water filled. It's all pretty interesting. It would be cool if the rain was sudden, hard, and done, so that the sun could come out, but apparently this monsoon gives hard rain for short periods of time, and then constant rain for a lot of the rest of the day. Today while wandering around the Shore Temple and the 5 Rathas in Mallahapuram, I was soaked to the bone. My new orange kurta was soaked, although my Tilley hat (ugly as it may be) was amazing at keeping the rain off my face.
Thankfully before I left, I read a photography site that recommended that I not baby my camera in conditions like rain. As long as I don't allow it to get pelted by direct rain for long periods of time it should be fine. If I had remembered, I would have grabbed a shower cap from the hotel before I left, but since I forgot, we'll find out how the camera reacts to the water (hopefully no worse than it did to the sand that got all over it when I did the night shot of the Taj). If I hadn't followed the advice, today would not have been nearly as fun. If I took a couple of days off the life of the camera it's worth it (if the camera dies before the end of the trip, I'll be writing an angry letter to Canon and deleting this part of the blog).
The scenery here is amazing. Tomorrow, I've told my driver that he'll have to pull over a couple of times so that I can photograph the countryside. With my cold still kicking around I wasn't overly interested in doing anything today, so other than the big sites, I just contented myself with seeing things from an SUV window and sleeping during the long driving stretches.
I should be back in Chennai on Tuesday night. I'm thinking about flying to Cochin (Kochi) on the morning of the 9th to meet up with a friend's sister, but that plan hasn't been confirmed yet. I'll be in Delhi for the 11th for the conference, and then after that... It's all about Goa (and a quick return to Mumbai). There's just a touch of office work that has to be done still, but that's coming along quite well, so it shouldn't get in the way of my rest and relaxation.
So long for now, I'm heading back into the light rain to find a restaurant that serves something comforting.
dilip
posted by Dilip Andrade at
10:10 a.m.
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