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Published: November 21st 2010
Travel Blog notes:
November 21, 2010
This introductory blog will probably be long- just be warned!
Also, so you know, I will not be sharing research info on this blog- this is for sharing impressions and telling stories (and the boring mundania) of everyday life so I can say in touch with my peeps back home. I will alternate between journalistic and narrative styles as suits my whim.
Most of you know we were delayed getting to India by a couple months. Visas finally in hand we bought tickets and headed out on the evening of the 11th of November. The flight was long, with a delay in London due to a passenger on our flight passing out as we were taxiing for the runway. We left Heathrow an hour and a half late. We arrived in Chennai airport only 45 minutes late however: therefore we arrived at 1:45a.m. We had had no email contact with AV in that time since a day before we left on the 11th of November. It was now the morning of the 13th. We knew we had a taxi waiting, and that we were expected somewhere, by someone, in AV at some time.
Now, "they" (well meaning friends, travelogues and such) tell you that one of the first things to hit you in a major Indian city is the smell. We had been warned, in fact- one friend told us several times of the horrific smell saying "Wherever you look on the ground- there is shit there, there was shit there or there will be shit there!" and an author (of the book Happy Yoga- a very nice book), Steve Ross, recounts a similar idea to illustrate the importance of accepting things as they are- sharing a story of a diaper-less baby suffering from diarrhea in a crowded temple, being held and aimed away by its mother. Any Indian city (such as Chennai) would be overwhelmingly pungent with the smells of shit, various foods both questionable and delightful, garbage rotting in the heat and even, we were told, corpses.
Another friend had advised us to take some Vicks vapor rub, and dab it under our noses before disembarking, to deaden and hopefully overpower the unbearable (we had been assured) odor. I had decided even before we had bought tickets that I would not do this- reasoning that we were going to be there a year, so the sooner I got used to it the better. Also, I have an acute sense of smell and Vicks would, I reasoned, only compound the assault, if there was to be one- I would be smelling Vicks + India! As we waited for the 'remove seatbelts' announcement I caught the distinct whiff of Vicks from elsewhere on the plane- as if someone else had received the same advice and was now diligently following it (I had not smelled it on the plane before). I was looking forward to the odors, really. Reading classic novels of Old India one is often told that the air is distinct, as if the land itself is breathing out a heady exhalation of spices and exotic scents. I suspected that the truth was probably somewhere in-between the divine breath of heaven and the festering abyss, although either would probably make a better story.
The reality is that even after a week, and having traveled a couple hundred klicks of coastline and countless walking hours in AV itself, is that the air does indeed seem faintly scented, spicy. It is subtle, but present, even when other more palpable and less pleasant odors (of which there are also plenty) are present. I have since smelled other, less pleasant things here, but the trend- if a week can be a trend- is pleasant.
Even at 2 a.m. Chennai airport was swarming with people outside, waiting for arrivals of fares, hotel guests, relatives and perhaps victims as well. Inside the airport it was not overly busy. B & I suspect that international travel may be best arranged so as to arrive in the early am to save crowding and hassle: security and baggage went quickly- with us so eager to leave, and overtired, that we didn't change any $ to Rs. Since then I have learned that the American dollar may be worth more than the Indian Rupee, but it is no more likely to be taken as currency than, say, a Euro would in the US.
Our driver spent most of his time singing along quietly to music on his stereo, although we stopped once for coffee and water at a roadside shed/store. We reiterated to him that we had no rupees, and he told us we could pay him back- it would be about $5 (240Rs)- I suspected he would be making a profit, but right then $5 seemed good for coffee at 4am! We agreed, and watched as the man behind the counter in a stained "Bomb Squad- if you see us run, try to keep up" T-shirt deftly pour scalding liquid through the air from one cup to another. It was hot, creamy and spiced like a chai- it was amazingly good coffee.
When we got to AV it was about 4:45-5am, and we still had no place to stay. Our taxi driver went out of his way to get us lodging, going from one guest house to the next, until he finally called his boss, who put us up for a couple hours in his guest room. We showered, slept and then left to find a place to live.
Due to our visa-oriented delay, we had lost our room at the international dorm, and the house rental we were keeping in backup was not answering emails (had not for some time). We found guest services, where a pleasant young Chinese woman told us that the housing situation was really as bad as it seemed. It is tourist season, and everywhere is booked up. We called Housing Services, and I spoke to the gentleman with whom I had been corresponding. He gave me the phone number of the person who had not been answering emails. I called, not knowing what to expect.
We were lucky- a room had opened us unexpectedly just that day before, even though the people in it had said they would be there until January. We looked at it, and then took it. Turns out, the person we are now renting from, is the original person we were supposed to rent the house from. She had gotten a computer virus and lost everything on her computer. Now, she makes back-ups.
Our room is in Ganesh Guesthouse, part of Ganesh Bakery. Yeah, there is Ganesh everywhere. We were to find out later that He is very popular, and is present many places, here in AV- from the trays of copy and fax machines, stickers in windows, statuary & even postcards. Rent is twice what we expected to pay, but we are thankful we have a place, and furthermore a place that is both attractive and affords privacy & a view. Also, there is a seated Ganesh statue hidden on a corner of the building. It is hidden by overgrown trees, as it is at least 2 meters tall! We are here until mid-January, then we are again uncertain as to what we can do for housing.
Talking with guest services we have discovered that while we are not overpaying for our room, there are better deals out there in the off-season. We were concerned, since we had been told the house rental was half what the room rental is. Our host explained that our contribution (AV asks 100Rs a day from visitors) is part of that, and that the house rental was not an ‘official’ guest house, thus cheaper.
People love to talk here, so I have already made a couple contacts for getting to know others in AV. Boy, this place is a hotbed of projects- if you had an idea for an ethnographic, energy, agricultural, artistic, education, feminist or other research project, AV is the place for you! That being said, I didn’t get any leads on the project I am supposed to volunteering for until Friday. Furthermore, the people I need to find are scattered everywhere, sine the farms and forests are scattered everywhere… I am going to be learning AV geography rather rapidly I suspect.
After getting a room we developed an agenda:
1 Open a financial account (could not do until we had a ‘home’ at AV)
2 Get internet so our family and friends know we are safe
3 Take care of residency paperwork with the Indian government (there are fees if it is not in on time)
3a Get bikes (this was added in after the third day of walking)
4 Get a phone- our phones from home have a locked sim card, so we are in process to get a cell phone here with a sim card that will work. The paperwork is intense. Visa, passport and photo i.d. is needed. It’s extreme, but apparently terrorists were buying cell phones and using them to coordinate attacks, so now each one must be traceable to a specific individual.
5 Find our volunteer project people and coordinate our work schedule. After we have worked a month at so many hours (unknown as of yet) our contribution fee to AV is reduced. Money is tight since we spent more than we expected traveling and waiting in the US, so this is good.
At this point I would like to fill in a bit about the daily things we have been dealing with. One, is the ants. They are everywhere. miniscule reddish ones and large black ones, like carpenter ants back home. We have developed a kind of lassiez-faire attitude about them, considering them to be a sort of maid service that cleans up any crumbs we may have let fall (it is also good impetus to refrain from eating in bed!). The awesome thing is the host of lizards we have living with us- four geckoes, one of which is very tiny. Two seem to live exclusively in the bathroom, which has its share of bugs for sure.
Water. You need to drink a lot of it. We were warned (over and over again) not to drink the water, not to open your mouth while showering or swimming, & etc. So, I bought for B the same filter I have- one that is a reusable ceramic filter that filters out all bacteria, pollutants, minerals and parasites. We are pumping, with our hand operated super micro filter, about 3-4 liters a day (each liter requires 400 + pumps- that’s a lot of pumping). We take turns, although since B is going to be the laundry person I may take up this job to keep things fair.
We finally got the key to the locking cabinet thursday, and two women, one of whom is our hostess’s sister, and a thin young boy, climbed about and stowed away the items that had been inside. We also got a fridge- it is a small promotional fridge from Red Bull- and this is a blessing as we have been craving some juice, and produce, but don’t want to buy it just to have it go bad. this leads to another thing- we have only one outlet, so if the fridge is plugged in, then the computer cannot be, and vice-versa. We also received some bananas from the tree outside- they are small, but flavorful and very welcome. We will manage the power issue, but it is something that we could have prepared for better by bringing a solar charger (although the cost of them for a laptop is currently prohibitive ~$200+).
The bathroom has a western-style toilet, with a bidet. The shower is simply sticking out of the wall halfway between the toilet and the sink ,and there is a drain in the corner of the tile floor. this is amazingly convenient, but also this means that often when going to the bathroom it is easier to leave your trousers on the floor outside the bathroom, as the floor is always wet. Also, I almost forget to remark upon this, but we have no hot water. Since we camp frequently, and it is so warm here, it doesn’t even cross my mind, except that split second after it hits you at 5am…
Oh yes, we were told that during rainy season nothing dries. This is pretty much true. There are plenty of sunny hours, but the humidity, while not always thick, is still present enough. We have camp towels, but they even remain moist most of the time. This leads to laundry- we haven’t done it yet- or, rather, our first load has just begun. This isn’t a problem except of course they don’t have driers out here. In fact, there is a 2-hour per day blackout period, plus we have had unexpected blackouts that last for hours almost every day so far. So, for a while, our things are going to be out on the deck hanging and getting caressed by the moist breeze and Indian sun. Hopefully, the sun will win out before too long.
We take off our shoes before going in anywhere, and sometimes I don’t even put them back on if we are going to be in the same area for any length of time. Barefoot in India is a good way to be, although we discovered it is good to wear shoes so as not to drag in the dirt that clings to feet and sandals. Of course, it is also good to wear shoes to avoid the amazing amount of thorny plants, cow-pies, possibly angry insects and other, less identifiable things.
We have discovered that our host family is very busy and invested in many projects not only in AV but also in the surrounding villages- She and he both run the bakery, but they also have a farm, and he started many of the schools in the area for AV and local villages (he has tried to get me to come teach English- we will see). He had also started an AA project but he was too stretched out to keep it going. Alcohol is apparently implicated in some domestic troubles in the villages around AV. On a related note, our hostess teaches at and helps run the AV kindergarten, and is part of a women’s group to help empower abused and neglected women from the villages around AV.
We have found a few places to eat aside from our bakery (which makes a limited number of local dishes) including a French-run café with fresh fish and vegetarian dishes (B eats the fish, I don’t). Our WIFI connection is at La Terrace, which also serves snacks, various light dishes, coffees, teas and gelato. Very nice. We can Skype from there too, although the video eats up too much bandwidth, so it is mostly voice only. Still, if you’re up late keep it open- we just may be on line, time, power lines and Gods willing. We also have eaten at the Solar Kitchen, a cafeteria type place that serves food cooked in part with energy from a tremendous rooftop solar dish. Meals cost anywhere from 40Rs to over 200Rs each- that is, less than $1.00 to almost $5.00 depending on quality, quantity and location.
We have visited the outside distant viewing path to the Matrimandir, and expect that we will go in (you need a pass) sometime soon. While there we met the huge Banyan tree- of which you can see pics on Google Earth, and hung out there a bit before moving on to see the Matrimandir (pics also visible on Google Earth). There is a reason a lot of the pics of the Matrimandir look like they are taken from the same angle: they probably are. The landing to view the temple from is at the end of a path, and is not more than 15m long, although you can see it from the path too. When we walked back we hung out with the banyan tree again for a bit, until the mosquitoes started to tell us that our bug lotion was wearing off. Leave it to Pagans to stop at the tree _outside_ the temple…
On one of our many walks this week we encountered a large (over 5' long) sort of dusty green colored snake with a dirty tan-yellow belly. It slithered across the path in front of us and was gone quickly so I did not see its head. I could estimate its body because the path is about 5' wide and its body, with head hidden in the brush at the side of the path, covered the entire dirt part of the path.
We've seen a bit of wildlife- mongoose are everywhere, as are the three-striped ground squirrels, and many, many noisy birds. There are often genuine jungle noises out here- its pretty cool. Our hostess couldn’t identify the snake for us, although she speculated it was a rat snake, or maybe a cobra. For her, all snakes are scary- just snakes. We have a colony of geckoes in our room, which is cool, and an occasional tree frog too. They are welcome, as the bugs are ever-present: mostly ants but also flying gnat-type bugs and of course, mosquitoes. Thankfully, we are not in a malaria area!
Divali had just ended when we arrived, and the children are buying up the remnant firecrackers, so the noises of birds, conversation, our neighbor's guitar, cows and motorbikes is punctuated by sudden loud "boom" and "crack" noises. This Saturday just past was another holiday, but thankfully not a firecracker one.
We went shopping in Pondi (Pondicherry) Saturday evening with our hostess, she helped B get: 2 pillows, some fabric for 3 sets of Indian clothing (yes, there will be pics), an electric kettle so we can have tea or noodles without paying retail, and a plug adaptor for our camera batteries. All for about 2400 Rs (less than $60.00), including cab fare there and back. Thus are we saved from having to rely on the post for supplies from home (I believe our address through mid-January is simply: Us, C/O Ganesh Bakery, Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India- I don’t know the numerical code. DHL or FedEx is better than post I understand). By the way: traffic is at least as bad as you believe. Also- smog, in Pondi, but not consistently. It is great to see the randomly present temples strewn about the ruins and modernizing of Pondi, too. There is a fantastic Shakti shrine outside of AV on the way to Pondi which has a large statue of Shakti lying on her back, longer than two school buses.
Saturday, after arriving back at the guest house B went in with our hostess to learn how to do a flower blessing- I carried our goods upstairs. We have been invited to help with the ghee lighting tomorrow, part of a holiday celebration that some Indians celebrate by attending a huge ghee fire on a mountain, but one she spends with her family. I am pleased and honored that we have been invited in to share this event.
B is going to get her measurements taken, and soon-ish she will have three sets of cooler and very pretty clothes to wear about. We see quite a range of clothing, from Western eco-hippy wear to spandex and artfully torn t-shirt, to traditional clothing from a few different regions. It is interesting to note that already we are more aware of local norms. This morning, Sunday, we saw a Caucasian couple actually kissing and kind of hugging-caressing each other in public, and we were both rather astonished. It is the first public display of affection we have seen while here, aside from an Indian tourist couple, both in their twenties and from elsewhere, who were publicly holding hands.
While we sit here at La Terrace drinking Ayurvedic tea (her) and cappuccino (me) we have been approached by casting agents for French channel #2. They are filming a period fiction piece of the 16th century here in South India, during the hot season. They asked us if we were interested in being extras for 2000Rs/day + expenses (travel & food) for 2 days. We refused, as they are not obviously associated with AV and I really am not interested in wearing 16th century garb in the hot season!
As of today, our phone has not arrived (more paperwork- I feel like I’m applying for citizenship not a phone), but all the other goals are in process or taken care of. Our jet-lag is pretty much done, and we are both thriving in the sultry climate. Temperatures are not extreme, although humidity is high. On Monday, B & I are going in to work at her office- me for research on this project and her to work. B has posted pics related to our 1st weeks’ adventures on her FaceBook. Next week we will be going into Pondicherry to drop off our paperwork for the Foreign Resident Registration Office, and to poke around a bit more too.
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Kamala
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Thanks!
Thanks so much for blogging, River! It makes me so 'homesick,' but I love it. I always felt 'at home' in India and crave going back. I look forward to hearing more from you guys. Stay well and happy! Love and hugs, Dana/Kamala