Bon Soir a Pondi

Well, Tiruvannamali didn't work out quite as I'd hoped. To be honest the place is a tip, and the only thing worth going there for is Ramanasramam (which was amazing). Every 100 yards or so along the Giripradakshina (circumnambulation of holy Mount Arunachala) we were accosted by a beggar of one form or another (old woman, young child, "sadhu"-type) - which is fine every now and then, but not every few minutes of a 3+ hour walk!!! Even Chennai was easier than that place!

So we decided to escape into the lap of luxury and ended up here. What a fortunate wind that was, eh?! Pondicherry is quite nice, a welcome relief from the hustle and hustle (no typo there) of Tiruvannamalai. Strolling down the Promenade at sundown, sitting around eaiting spinach and tofu croissants and sipping cool pineapple lassi's - we may well find it difficult to make it back to Chennai tomorrow as planned! Only 2 sleeps to go (Tuesday will be a no-sleep night) so watch this space for the final intrepid adventure of the Wild Rovers...

It's over!

:-(

I am so sad, the course is over - we chanted for Desikachar tonight, which went excellent. But now it's just some sad goodbyes, then a trip to Tiruvannamalai for me and Colin. Still, we have 5 full days so it's time to blow some rupees on prezzies. It is unlikely I will have any updates for the next few days, and then it's time to head back to the snows of Ol' Blighty, but on my return I'll sort this blog into shape and post about all those things I haven't had time for.

International Contact Scott Day

I've been doing all this work on my blog and had very little contact from most of you who are giving my site about 20-30 hits a day. So I've deignated today "International Contact Scott Day" - which means exactly what it says on the tin.

If you check up on the site today, you have to either leave a message on the tagboard, leave a comment on a post, or even send me an email (especially if it's something private that you don't want to share). After all, it's only fair...

Siva's Dance

Ana's birthday party was excellent, a nice easy-going (and sober) affair, thanks in general to the Latin contingent. There was music, Salsa dancing (yes I did disprove the theory that white men can't Salsa) and lots of singing. This was mostly down to the skills of Edgar, who had us all singing along to Cuban songs about cats creeping about looking for rats and other such stories. He's doing a 'storytelling' show on Tuesday night which we're all looking forward to.

But still, as we enter the last week of the course there is a sense of closure creeping in. Unlike most "holidays" (as I told my dad the other day, it's been a strange 'holiday', more like working except with a higher fun quota), I don't feel so sad that it will be over. This is largely due to how much I miss everyone back home, so I think when it's time to go I will do so happily, knowing that I am moving towards people I love as much as I am moving away from something I enjoy.

Although I can see Nataraja (Siva) putting on his ankle bells to prepare for his dance, now it is so obvious that Bramha is waiting round the corner to start it all over again. Or to start again anway - what "it" will be is anyone's guess, though mine is it will be something quite different. Watch this space!

Lunchtime

We have about 3 hours for lunch, but all of the Confundito's are taking the Vedic Chanting course, and 3 of us are also doing an extra Yoga Sutra chanting class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Usually we would arrange for Suresh to take us back to the hotel, but on those days we don't have time, so we need a local place for food.

Originally we went to a place called Melaa - which was very, how can I put it, 'authentic'. It was cheap, but quite soon the dubious food and hygiene put us off in there (though I must say nobody got sick). Others have been going to Sangeetha's (part of a local chain of restuarants), but it's in the wrong direction and I've also been warned off it in terms of hygiene and poor service.

Luckily we found a new place near to the flats of some of our classmates, SR Foods (address to follow). It's an interesting walk there from Vedavani (the Vedic Chanting school of KYM), through some real Indian streets, narrow and bustling with life of all sorts. It also passes a sort of slum area, sarcastically named "Guru Street" according to the sign.

But SR Foods itself is excellent (above photo shows Daphna and Baxter eating there). It's only been opened a few weeks, everything is shiny and new and the food is great. Even better, the manager speaks good English and is eager to please, offering to cook to your specifications. It's clean in here, so even the salad is safe to eat (falling sick here is a big worry, especially when you could so easily miss a big chunk of the amazing yoga course). The occasional plain cheese and salad sandwich works wonders when you just can't face another curry dish stoked full of chillis. A recommendation from me is the banana lassi, and I'm sure the other fruit lassi are excellent too. The thali here is excellent - very light compared to others, with light spicing and low on the chilli factor, such that I can even pour the whole sambar thali onto the rice without fear. Dishes are often freshly chopped vegetables, a delight when you're used to fried foods. Even the tea is very nice, with a hint of cardamom to settle the stomach.

To finish it all off, the food here is very cheap - usually about 70 RS (less than a pound) for the whole meal. If you're nearby, go and try it, you won't be disappointed.

New Photo Gallery

I've uploaded loads of photo's (from my photo CD) to my gallery, but now it won't let me post more so I've set up a new one.

Flash! Aaa-aaaaah! Saviour of the Universe!

So, you may have noticed technical difficulties of late. These started acouple of nights ago when the card reader in here kept crashing, so I could only upload 3 of the 100+ photo's I took last weekend. I thought nothing of it, a mere technical fault in the cafe, no biggie.

Then yesterday I got out my camera in class to show Edgar his photo from Ciao Bella. Immediately the thing starts pinging like a WWII Submarine flick, and the message "format error" keeps flashing. It was then I realised that something had gone wrong with the Sony Memory Stick. The sickening thought that all my 223 photo's might be gone was my food that afternoon, and it was worsened by the fact that I knew I couldn't do anything about it for a couple of days.

Last night I checked in here, and to my relief I could access at least 100 of my photo's (the first lot). But for some reason it couldn't read all the ones I did since I last updated the photo gallery. So I'm thinking they've been corrupted by the system crash in here. But what can you do?

Well, off to Camera Citi tonight, on nearby Radhakrishnan Salai - a photo shop that doubles as a money-changing place. And there the fun begins.

I walk up to the counter with the Memory Stick and show it to one of the sales assistants. It says I can transfer to CD for a mere 60 Rs (80p), but I know better than to assume this. I ask one of the many sales assistants.

He head-wobbles, then walks away out of sight.

I wait a few minutes, customers being served all around. Another moustachioed assistant comes up and sees the Stick, asks me what I think is "Do you want to transfer that to CD?", though in not so many words.

I tell him, "Yes."

He walks away and disappears.

Now, we're used to this by now. The words piss-up (UK parliance for a drinking session for you International readers) and brewery never come together in India for sure. As Colin later reminds me, it is a worry that this country have nuclear weapons - not that I think they'd use them intentionally, but...

So eventually Moustache comes back and leads us to another sales counter with a computer, where we stand for a few minutes before number 3 comes along. Within a minute he has transferred the images to CD and Praise ! the images are all intact!!!

So that's it, we're done, time to pay and get out of here, right? WRONG!

Having crashed through the 110m hurdles of obtaining desired services, it's time to approach the pole vault that is the bureaucratic process of retrieving goods from salesperson and paying for same.

First I stand about a bit as the Moustache has disappeared again. Still, no probs as Colin is now getting his card burned to CD. And a few minutes more. Colin is now finished, and a fourth salesman is waving an unmarked blank CD at me and asking me if it is mine.

I consider my possible responses:

a) surrender to a higher power, hoping that it is in fact my CD, and say, "Yes"

b) unleash the full extent of my sarcastic powers and ask him to turn it over so that I can read the CD with my laser vision

c) politely explain that it's really not that simple a question to asnwer, and could he pop it into a computer to check.

So, I decide to go with the flow and say, "Well I guess so".

After all, how many blank CD's can be getting burned in the shop at one time? Of course I'm forgetting Colin's, but no biggie if we have swapped disks. Number 4 runs about with his CD and eventually finds Moustache, who chastises him in Tamil over some infringement that sounds along the lines of, "You moved my cheese".

Then I must fill out my name on an envelope, and after I tell him I don't have a phone number he disappears for another few minutes. Salesman 5 then bar-code scans the envelope, which I suspect contains my CD by now. Number 4 asks me to pay the 66 RS (10.2% tax added) and I give him a 100 RS note. He looks aghast and hands it back, asking, "No change?"

To quickly explain, having no change here can be a big problem as shopkeepers pretend to have none in the hope you won't care about the paltry amount of change and leave it for their retirement fund. So you keep as much small change as possible. I have about 70 Rs in change in my pockets. So I lie.

He then points to number 6, standing at a computerised till. He hands me the stub from my envelope, gives the envelope to 6 and walks away. 6 then adds my bill and Colin's together and asks for 132 RS. We point out we are separate (a frequent restaurant battle-cry is "bill separate") and he head-wobbles. He takes our 100 Rs notes and hands over our envelopes with CD's.

Colin's has a Tamil name written on it, nothing like his name at all. "Excuse me, that's not my name," he says. Number 6 looks puzzled, then takes out the blank CD inside. "Is that yours?" he asks.

By now we are about wetting ourselves in laughter. The options are presented again, but Colin chooses option C, and the guy seems to realise how dumb his question is. He finds number 4, who wrote the name, and points out the problem. 4 has a classic(ally Indian) solution.

He takes a pen, scores out the Tamil name, asks Colin his name and writes in a close approximation. He hands the envelope to Colin, and 6 gives us our change. We can only stop ourselves bursting into laughter as we leave, resigned to the probability that we have CD's of a Madras graduation and a Bombay wedding in our clutches. Which of course we don't, as fine detail and precision are not the problem in India.

Bureaucracy, on the other hand, is a fish that is yet to be fried.

The (Multi) Talented Mister Edgar

As the sun sinks down into the western sky, with a final flurry of tout activity our bus drives us away from Mahaballipuram. A short while along the road we stop the bus to take this photo. The sun is fading too fast to really capture the scene, but maybe you can get some sense of how beautiful (say it all together now, "Beeee-aaauuuuuuuu-ti-fuuuuul") it was. The eagle-eyed amongst you may even spot the men in the middle playing cricket.

It was time to go back to Chennai, but not time to part - the day needed a suitable venue for closure, so we stopped at Bella Ciao Italian restaurant at Krishna Enclave, Valmiki Nagar (just off New Beach Road). This place is run by an Italian couple, and although prices are quite high for Chennai (maybe 300 or 400 Rupees per meal, without any alcohol) the setting is nice and the food is good and reliably safe.

And then the fun really began! Edgar, from Costa Rica, is not only a yoga teacher but also a storyteller, singer, dancer, juggler, all-round performer. He starts with some Salsa dancing with Vanessa, and then joins the band to sing us a couple of Cuban songs to dance to. The atmosphere was amazing, even the pale-blue Scottish blokes are dancing, and the tiredness of a full day trip seems to melt away.

Eventually though even Edgar's amazing talents cannot keep us awake and it's time for a bit of mad bus driving back to our hotels, where bed never seemed so comfy (and safe).

Low Tide near Shore Temple

Low Tide near Shore Temple

I am early in getting to the meeting place and go down to the beach to look for the others, but still no-one to be seen. We didn't realise when we went to Mahabhallipuram that it was a holiday that day, and the place was teeming with people, mostly Indians. The atmosphere at the beach is quite enrgetic, with people (mostly children) running in and out of the crashing waves. Then it is time to leave and somehow we all met up, returning to Chennai with a beautiful sunset to accompany us.

Rather than head home at a reasonable hour we go to the Ciao Bella Italian resaurant in Valmiki Nagar (address to follow), which is great. We eat pizza, enjoy the music, dance a bit of salsa and Edgar joins the band for a song or three. All this in one fun-crammed day, but boy did we suffer for it!

Time for a Siesta

The streets between Arjuna's Penance and the Pancha Ratha's are lined with dozens of statue workshops, with the buzz of circular saws and the crack of hammers filling the air. Some of them are massive, like this Reclining Ganesha statue - I didn't even bother to ask how much it cost (and am sure that at least one of you will be delighted to know that ;-).

Pancha Ratha's

I wandered about the other sites near to the Penance, then went to the Pancha Ratha's. No sign of Pedro and CLaudia, but I did find these 5 temples in the shape of chariots.

Patanjali again

We had breakfast at Tina Blue's Rooftop Terrace, which was reasonable enough. After so much Indian food it was nice to have some western dshes, but a word of warning. I decided on the Masala Ommelette, not wanting to go too far west in my thoughts. Now Masala means a mixture of spices, so I imagined something "interesting". WHAT I got was quite simply a green chilli ommelette - which wasn't a problem, but if you try hard you can imagine just how HOT my mouth got. If you're having difficulty, just stick a lit blowtorch in your mouth.

Still, it didn't damp my enthusiasm for some bananan fritters, followed by some chai. The others arrived, along with the "guide" you had followed them to the restaurant and pointed at it insisting, "You eat me!" They decided for a few rupees they could do so.

We waited there a couple of hours to avoid the worst of the sun, and soon we filled the whole place. I was watching the street life, and must admit there are so many westerners in Mahabs that it looks like I imagine Goa to be (or perhaps Goa a few years ago). I reckon I saw a western guy walking down the street toking on a joint, which is quite disappointing.

I also saw a couple of young girls who had pestered us for ten minutes on the way to Tina Blue begging for money. It was interesting to watch them run into shops and buy things like bottles of Coke and suchlike, then hide them as they ran up to Westerners to beg more money. Maybe I'm making assumptions here, but I don't reckon if you're starving you go buy a Coke, even if it is "The Real Thing!"

We then headed back to Arjuna's Penance, but I stopped to buy a pair of yogapants. Claudia and Pedro headed on as I waited to get them altered and we never managed to collide again. On the way over to the Pancha Ratha's I found this statue of Patanjali, and decided it was the one for me.

Hmmm, that looks good...

This is little Rosa from Portugal, who has been travelling for several months with her parents Ana (on the KYM course) and Gonzalo. She's a bundle of fun, always smiling and laughing, seems to have missed all the moody bits that 3-year-olds usually do. It is often great to have her around when I am missing Beth, but at other times it just makes me sad that my own little angel isn't here with me.

The ice-cream here will be kind of familiar to UK readers, but the spelling of the "Kwality Walls" brand is decidedly Indian. It was just right for the blistering heat in Mahabs.

Arjuna's Penance

Second stop was a series of carvings and old temples, including Krishna's Butterball and Arjuna's Penance itself. I seem to have taken a lot more video than stills, so apologies for the lack of coverage. Here, we desperately needed to get something to eat. Funny thing is the others stayed here and hired a gui, who it then transpired couldn't speak English - LOL.

The frieze in this picture represents the story of how the sacred river Ganga was created. The cleft in the left middle used to have water running down it, representing the river itself. To its centre left you can see a sage performing yoga, I think his name is Bhagotra or similar.

Garuda Watching

They say that when you find Garuda, Vishnu is always nearby...

A very wise man told me a few weeks ago that it is also Garuda who will take us to Vishnu (via Lakshmi)through yoga practice. Don't know if that's true (i.e. the symbolism) but I loved this statue at the Vishnu Temple in Mahabs.

Mahabhallipuram and Shore Temple

So a group of us from KYM decided on a daytrip to Mahabhallipuram, meaning another early start. Colin had a bit of a dodgy tum and we were under the misapprehension that it was a 3 hour journey, so he decided against the possibility of putting himself in a well, em, 'difficult' situation. It was only an hour and a half but it think he made the right decision in the end.

On the bus, Jasna's International Penguin made its first appearance. It was originally destined to make a visit to the Andaman Islands with her husband, but the tsunami put an end to that plan. Now he is touring with Jasna, being photographed wherever he goes.

Our arrival at Mahabs brought my first REAL experience with touts. Selling everything from sandals to stone carvings to guiding services, they pestered us constantly from the moment we stepped off the bus. I must admit they soon got the message from me. My approach went something like this.

"Buy elephant."

"Oh no, I've got waaaay too many elephants."

"Not like this, good quality, elephant inside elephant."

"Do you have any idea how much these things eat? Right now there are a dozen elephants stomping about my back garden and I just can't afford another one."

(Puzzled look, a sure sign that I'm winning)

"And the noise!!! Do you have any idea how much noise htese things make? Then you fall out with the neighbours, who keep calling the police, you can't sleep for all that trump-trump-trump, so you're rubbish at your job, then you get fired. And you want me to buy another one!"

At this point he decides (realises) I am mad and leaves me alone.

Sylvia had another tactic that worked, well, beautifully. You just have to totally ignore everything that they shove in your face, at the time yelling you, "Beeeeeeeaaaauuuuuuuuuutiiiiiiiiifuuuuuuuuullllllll!"

Repeat this a couple of dozen times and they move away. If you have a dozen foreigners all wailing it at the top of their voice, after a few minutes' appreciation of something new, it seems to have the same efffect on touts as the aforementioned tsunami. Understandably, this has now become something of a catchphrase on our course.

So on we moved to Shore Temple (which, strangely enough, is an old ruined temple down by, yes you guessed it, the shore).

Now don't get me wrong, Shore Temple was pretty nice - I just expected it to be a mite bigger. It takes a few minutes to walk around, and I have to say a bit on the inside smells like it's been used as a public convenience. The carvings were slightly disappointing, but I guess it's more than a couple of years old so it can be forgiven for the decay.

Besides, it makes a great backdrop for a photo, so they are, Team KYM in full effect:

Back Row (L to R): Claudia (Chile), Vanessa (Argentina), Jasna (Slovenia via Sweden), Alessandra (Italy), Pedro (Spain or Turkey or wherever takes his fancy), Sylvia (NY NY), Edgar (Costa Rica and Cuba).

Front Row: Antonio (Costa Rica), Lili (Argentina), Rosa and Ana (Portugal).

Crosstown Traffic

As I mentioned before, traffic in Chennai is fascinating. I am having doubts about my theory of the 'look forward' rule, but it still seems to hold good 99% of the time. Last week on crossing over to Vedavani I was almost creamed by a motorbike driving on the wrong side of the road - and I don't mean just over the line, I mean I had just stepped away from the kerb.

Of course, I hadn't actually been walking on the pavement beforehand, as no-one here uses the pavement. Of course they don't. That's because the pavements are for crapping and pissing on! Once you work that one out, the side of the road becomes a much more pleasant prospect every time :-)

We've done a little bit more walking about of late - it's really much safer than it feels when you arrive. Everyone drives around you, at least I've only once seen someone who wasn't going to (another biker, coming towards me - at least he was going the right way this time). It's also worth bearing in mind that the traffic here does travel much closer, although the fact they squeeze into places with about a millimetre to spare can make things seem a lot more dangerous.

Red lights are also fascinating. The ones here have a timer to show how long until they turn green, and also how long until a green turns red. Sometimes, about 30 seconds before, the red light suddenly goes from meaning "stop" to "okay ifthere's nothing much coming just go ahead the crossraods anyway". Sometimes it happens about 20 seconds, sometimes about 10, though I haven't figured out what determines the exact figure. Maybe it's to do with the phase of the moon or something.

I've already mentioned u-turns, but they're kinda tame compared to my new favourite traffic manoeuvre - the pending-green queue jump. As the timer clicks down to about ten, stuck about 200 yards from the red light, Suresh has a cursory check that a 10-ton truck isn't bearing down on him from the wrong lane and moves out. He speeds up past the 200 yards of standing traffic, then cuts across the front end of it (often over a zebra crossing). By this time, the light turns red and off we go. And NOBODY bats an eyelid at this!

Zebra crossings are interesting. I suspect they mean nothing, and are useful for only one thing - spotting who the tourists are. I reckon the locals must wonder why the foreigners are drawn to the strange white markings on the roads. Maybe they're some sort of tourist trap that just hasn't been activated yet ;-)

But these examples, extreme though they may seem when taken out of context, do not prortray the truth of the traffic situation. Like all matters, you really need to look holistically at the subject in order to gain such an insight. After a few days of wide eyes at near-hits and narrowly-avoided-catastrophe's, you calm down and start to see the flow of the situation. And from the chaos, a sort of pattern appears. And a theory (unproven).

It seems to me that there is one simple rule here. You are responsible for moving out the way of everything that is in FRONT of you, and have NO responsibility of anything BEHIND you. Nobody uses their mirrors, in fact I notice many cars without any wing mirrors (by design, not accident). So if the guy in front of you decides to stop suddenly and do a u-turn without signal or warning, it is your responsibility to get around him or to stop. Drivers will hit their horn at such a sudden action, but rarely in anger, in warning of their presence.

And this would never work back home in the UK - traffic moves so much faster there, but in Chennai you rarely get much above 20 in the city streets, usually much less. Only the proximity of traffic coming from all angles and directions create the illusion of impending doom behind this highly logical and evolved driving scheme.

I mean, think about it! What dullard ever conceived of a driving system where you are responsible for the safety of drivers BEHIND you? Where are your eyes? At the FRONT of your head. Is it comfortable to turn round and look behind you? Does a cursory glance behind give you a good view of the road? Are rear-view and wing mirrors reliable, when distance distortion and blind spots are taken into account? So why do we do it? Just form the intention to turn right, indicate your intentions (optional phase) and, as Nike say, "Just Do It!"

Maybe when I return to the UK I'll form a campaign to enact forward view driving and more horn warnings. I hope not.

Personal, Not Universal

Today has a story, a funny story that might be embarrassing for some people. Oh how we laughed and laughed and laughed. I could change the names, but you'd guess who they were anyway. Best to say nothing at all

;-)

You know you've been in India too long when...

You are sitting in a restaurant with your friend (let's name him Colin for the sake of arguement) and he's just finishing a strawberry milkshake, which the waiters had forgotten and brought at the end of the meal. You ask him if it was worth it (meaning the wait), and he replies, "It was okay, but it was a bit expensive!"

I am not exactly sure what was more worrying - the fact that he now regards a 56p milkshake as being expensive or the fact I could see his point and didn't see how ridiculous that comment was for several hours!

It's kinda different here, for sure.

Universal, Yet Personal

Okay, to start with, I'd better explain that "Universal Yet Personal" is the title of the course we are doing at KYM.

So tonight we were meant to have a lecture at 6pm so we told Suresh to come at 7.15, but then it was cancelled. Claudia had a consultation at 6pm with one of our teachers, Shridharan, so we decided to leave the arrangements with Suresh for Claudia and walk back to the hotel with Les (photo above).

This became an exploration, as Les tried to find a new way back, a more (in his words) "scenic route". Scenic indeed, it gave us a look at street life in Chennai away from the bustling traffic (for a while), with sights (and smells) that can only be described as, welll, 'authentic'.

As we wandered along the backstreets, the light fading fast (and street lighting barely adequate to see the potholes beneath our feet) there were children playing with a cricket ball in the street, throwing it up in the air to each other and catching it.

As we approached the group, one of them took his eye off the ball - and was rewarded with a sound smack in the cojones from the flying cricket ball. We immediately felt his pain, and I turned to Les, Colin and Pedro saying, "You know, there's just something Universal about a smack in the nuts."

"Yeah," said Les, so quickly that a flash wouldn't have a look-in. "Universal. Yet personal."

I now have an intense desire, nay need, to go and work out a profound and meningful yoga story that I can tell to a class based on this incident. Something that starts with, "You know, yoga is like the crushing pain of a kick to the bollocks..."

More Photo's

Just to let you all know, as well as new photo's on my Buzznet Gallery, Colin has also uploaded photo's to his Buzznet gallery.

Just in case you're wondering

I thought it was quite confusing as to what I was doing each day, since the posting dates have been up to a week after the dates of the events (quite a problem when you're writing 20 pages for each days' events, but I will catch up as I reach the start of the course). So...

I have gone back through my posts and re-dated them to reflect the times/dates they occurred. So now you can read through them in date order, remembering of course that blogs post the pmost recent events first. I have left undated comments and technical posts at the time of posting. And if you're thinking I've not posted anything of interest today, just scroll down to 'Chennai Sunrise' below.

In Espanol

If anyone wants to read about our trip in (Chilean) Spanish, Claudia has now started writing her experiences in her blog.

La Familia Confundido

Let me introduce you to my Chennai family. This photo is Pedro, Claudia, Me and Colin after a visit to Anjaneya Temple (Hanuman) yesterday. Tikka marks and photo by Suresh, our auto driver. Our classmates think we are a family because we tend to go everywhere together, so we have christened ourselves "La Familia Confundido" (The confused family). Apparently in Spanish "we fall well on each other" (literal translations of our local terms are a great source of amusement to us - this, for example, means that we get on well together. Which I guess you have to if you're going around falling on people.).

We have the Technology!!!

After much ado I went to a different Internet Cafe (Reliance Webworld on TTK Road) and had my photo's available within 5 minutes (tech guy just put it onto the main server via a card reader).

So, a little treat for those vicariously Seeking Darshan at my photo gallery today. They are in reverse order, haven't quite figured out how to get them put up in the order I uploaded them, but it'll do for now.