India

Greetings from India....

Flying in to India was great, I had 2 flights one better than the next.  The first one was from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.  While I didn't get to go the the Malaysian rain forest at least I got to see lots of it!  Most was beautiful, you can see winding rivers and imagine all the life below!
The next part was lots of clearcuts. Huge! Giant!  Sad!  But we like our forest products...
Leaving KL for Chennai, India they bumped me to business class.

This was quite swell and I lived like a king for 3 or 4 hours!  My chair turned into a bed, they brought food and drinks every 15 minutes and my TV screen we pretty big...

When I landed it was already 10pm and I had no idea what to do!  Coming out of the airport there are thousands of peole waiting for arrivals with signs of all sizes and shapes....I exchanged some money and got a cab.  I had a man from the company walk me to the cab and he really wanted to carry my bag. I figured this was a service and said OK.  When we got there he wanted a tip and all I had was a 50 rupee note...My 25 minute cab ride was prepaid at 250rs so I had to tip this guy a lot of money....
I had the name of one hotel I found online and asked the cab to take me there.  When I arrived I found it more expensive than it was advertised and found another spot.  The next morning my adventures began.

So far I had no problem on the trip without a guidebook or any city maps...Most hostels had maps of the local town and there were always people around to help... In Chennai it was very different! I didn't even know what part of the city I was in...nor how big it was...I thought I was flyin into a small city, not a giant busy 'metropolis'.  I headed out not knowing where I was going or what I was doing, but it was exciting!  New sights sounds and smells all around....  The idea of lanes in the roads are slightly different than what I am used to and cars and Tuk Tuks go everywhere while scooters and bikers weave through them... Being a pedestrian is a good challenge and son to be part of the Pan Asian games!

There were so many food stands and restaurants and I wanted to visit them all...but how many breakfasts can you have in one morning?  If you read that as a rhetorical question than you have misread.  The answer is three.

Breakfast in south India is usually a Dosa, this is a large thin pancake often with some potato curry inside and one or two dipping sauces as well...A red one and a white one made from coconut.  You use your right hand to eat and it is hard to learn to tear the pancake with only one hand!  But it is apparently a learnable art as millions of people succeed at it even as you read this!

I noticed some guys staring at my yellow Crocs so I went to say hello and we spoke for an hour...

 

He is putting something akin to chewing tobacco in his mouth...

I wanted to find the MRTS, I didnt know if it is a subway or a train but either way it passed not far from where I was and not far from where I wanted to go..(according to the internet)

So I went about asking folks where the nearest station was.  One man very surely told me to walk 10 minutes in a certain direction and I would be there.  I did so and when I arrived I asked where it was.  Someone else pointed back the way I came and said 10 minutes that way.  Then the next person said go two streets and take a left.  I did and was introduced to a dead end....Apparently this is about as fast as you can get around in cities here!  So I hopped in a tuk tuk...3 wheel taxi and headed to the Sivananda yoga center for a class....  This helped ground me but the teacher was tough and did things to my body that I felt for the next 3 days...  He did not adjust me gently...

The folks at the yoga center we very kind, maybe they noticed my unease at ebing in the city... They fed me and then suggested I head to Tiruvannamalai, a nice town on the beach with some ancient temples and carvings and this is what I did the very next day....