My first two days in Chennai

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Place: Chennai, India

MARCH 6th---

Here I am. I’m in India. Wow! So I’ll run through my first day with you…so around 7:30 I am looked out my window and saw land in the distance. Crazy part is that the air had a thick line of dirt in it…so I knew we were getting close. My room started smelling like rotten eggs…gross!

But I decided to be optimistic and not think about it. I determined the best thing to wear was safe attire. I wore long leggings, a plain white Hanes t-shirt and sneakers. I only brought money, my ship id and my passport and put it all in my money belt. After breakfast, we had customs and immigration. My passport is starting to look really cool. I have all my visas and stamps filling out almost every other page!

We were finally allowed off around 8:30. The first thing in port is a huge car manufacturing plant. All you could really see in the distance was buildings and temples. This has been the strictest port so far in terms of safety and documentation. We have to show our passports at least four or five times before we can get back to the ship. We even have to put all our bags and souvenirs through an x-ray screening, go through several metal detectors and get patted down once or twice. It takes forever! Also, we aren’t’ allowed to walk from the ship to the port exit, which is weird because it is only 5 seconds away…oh well. So they have a 24 hour shuttle that comes and picks you up for free.

A group of us went to find some flee markets……..but first, you have to get through all the crazy taxis that always wait for us at every port right at the gate. This was like no other though. They were soooo persistent and I was surprised at how long they went before giving up. We were all pros by now so we knew the drill. No eye contact, straight up NO’s and walking away fast. They sort of get right up in your face, like five of them at a time, and just start yelling at you to get in all their taxis and will follow you in their taxis for a few blocks. We finally got through the gateway and most of them backed off. After having a few seconds to actually talk as a group to figure out where we wanted to go, we found a taxi and headed out. Something you should know (well I guess I should have just written this before), they have taxis here, but they are not the main form of transportation. They use rickshaws. They are kind of like small clown cars that have two wheels in back and one in front. They look like old fashion carriages just molded to look somewhat like a motorized taxi. They have no doors, just a front seat for your driver and a small booth in the back to fit about three people. The steering wheel looks like it was supposed to be on a motorcycle. Anyway, they are really cheap and actually really fun to drive around in. You get a nice breeze and well…it’s an adventure.

Which leads me to my next topic, driving. India is completely crazy when it comes to driving. Basically, there are NO rules! They have lanes but you don’t stay in them. We swerved the entire time we were driving. Our rickshaw can go about 35 mph at max and decided to go on the highway (oh yah this is not legal….not like the cops here care)! There were horses, sheep, cows you name it all in the street. People will drive buses, bikes, motorcycles (which had children hanging off the side of them----crazy!), and my all time favorite after today….a motorized wheel chair (on the highway)! There were so many motorcycles. A lot of women have them and drive them wearing their sari….I have no idea how they do that? If a whole family has to go somewhere, I noticed that the mom will sit in the back with a baby on her lap, the dad in front with a small child in front of him, holding on to the steering wheel. It’s absolutely crazy to see. Some women even ride with their husbands and will sit saddle side. Also, don’t put any part of your body out of the sides, because people literally just turn right into you (and might snatch your purse). I’m surprised I survived some of the turns we made, a bus almost hit us. Also, none of the taxi drivers actually know where you want to go. Most of them will lie to you, or end up taking you to their family shop and force you to buy stuff. You have to bargain your price before you get in the cab too. If they get lost, they will stop and ask directions and it takes forever. You have to be mean sometimes and tell them that if they don’t know where they are going that you don’t want to pay them anymore ugh! There was a ride today that I almost had to take out pen and paper and draw a ship to explain to them that I wanted to be taken to the port/harbor.

So anyway, we survived our first ride to the bank/ATM. I got my first amount of rupees, which has Gandhi all over it. Next we got back in our rickshaw and asked to be driven to a particular flee market we had written down. And of course, we were taken somewhere else. The place we were taken actually ended up being pretty cool. The best part of that flee market was going into a sari shop. You are in a room filled with piles and piles of beautiful colored fabric. There are thousands just piled up on shelves and you pick one, they wrap it on you and then you either buy it or not. I bought a blue one with gold beading. It was hard to choose they were all so pretty. The fabric is sooo long; I don’t know how they wrap it. We then found a restaurant to eat lunch in. They eat all the food with their hands here, so purell was our best friend! We got some rice, noodles and some chicken massala dish. I basically have no idea what I ate. It was spicy, but really good! I admit it…I did take 3 pepto before and throughout eating, but I didn’t have any stomach problems all day.

After lunch, we thought we could try to go across the street into the stadium to see some of the cricket world cup tournament. Sadly, you need a ticket to see anything, but it would have been pretty cool. Oh, ya if you didn’t know, cricket is a huge sport in India and they are hosting the world cup for it today. They were playing South Africa (how convenient for SAS).

We got back in a rickshaw and went to the local beach. There was a giant flee market that lasted for miles there. We got starred at a lot there because we were the only white American people in the entire shopping place…oh and my friend Kristina who is from Shanghai (she got the most looks). Every time we stopped walking kids would come up to us to shake our hands and people would take pictures and videos of us just talking and hanging out. Some girl thought we were filming a movie hahahah!

I headed back after an hour and half because I had an SAS trip that night. The only bad part was when I took a rickshaw back to the ship. The ride was fine, but once we got to the outskirts of the port, we took out our money and handed it to the driver. The minute this girl on the streets saw us hand him the money, she sprung into action. She and a group of other small naked children ran up to our rickshaw. She kept putting her hands all over us and literally grabbing at our money. We ignored her until she decided that she didn’t like being ignored so she hit me (not really hard like a slap on the face). I got pissed so I pushed her off of me and said, “NO….get the hell away from me!” She pointed to the naked child who was now grabbing onto my leg (ewww) and said, “He is hungry, give him money and food”. I told her that she better back off and just keep firmly saying no. We had trouble paying the taxi driver at this point, because he started changing the price and I couldn’t focus with these people constantly poking and touching me, begging for money. I couldn’t even take out my money to get change with because at this point one of the children saw my money belt and starting reaching into my pants. I got really pissed at this, stood up, pushed him out of the way and just angrily stormed away. You can really only tolerate so much. I mean you even see girls with babies and they just beg and beg, but they are sooo annoying and really pushy. Sometimes you have to be really mean.

Thank god there was clean water to shower in when I got back to the ship. After rushing, I went out to the end of the port and caught the bus to go to the Welcome Reception. It was hosted in a hotel reception room with college students. They performed drum music for us when we got there and gave each of us a flower necklace. It smelled amazing! Then they gave us some food and painted henna on all our hands. Mine is on my left hand. It starts on my index finger and had vines and flowers all the way till halfway to my elbow. They were sooo good at it and it looks amazing. I also purchased some souvenirs. They then showed us some traditional dances. It was overall a really fun trip and I met a lot of nice people. I forgot to mention this before; all the Indian people shake their heads like bobble-heads. It can mean yes, and it can mean no…sooo confusing! And they just do it while they talk…we love it, it’s hilarious!

Then a huge group of us decided to go find a bar and hang out for a while. It was really fun, but we had to get back to the ship because we all have early morning activities tomorrow. Yet again, I’m no longer sleeping while at port. It is 2:30 am right now and I have to wake up at 5:45 am to go on my SAS trip.

So overall, India is hectic and insane, if you have never traveled before (especially to a place where begging, poverty and cultural differences weren’t present) you WILL freak out! But I have loved every minute of it so far. I can’t wait for more tomorrow!


MARCH 7th---

So this is when writing about India gets difficult. The next day I went on a field trip for my archaeology class. We visited Kanchipuram and Malappuram. Basically we drove around on a bus and saw lots of Buddhist temples and ancient archaeological sites. It was really cool and interesting.

The only annoying part was the vendors. I honestly couldn’t even hear my tour guide or take pictures/just enjoy the sites because I was constantly followed or bothered. Literally it got to the point that I would move and they would just go and stand in front of me. When we say we don’t have any money, they always say, “of course you do”. And it’s true but they don’t realize that we don’t have unlimited funds or want to buy those objects. It’s a really hard thing to be mean to the vendors but you really have to be. You learn to become mean, but in a forceful way.

Literally by day 3 in India, I felt completely comfortable. If they come up to you, you just don’t make eye contact (that’s when you get a follower) or ignore their presence. Or, you can just play around with them. They say, “mam..mam…mammm….how much?” and You just say, “50 ruppees”. Then they say, “2,000 rupees”. Then I say, “Hahah, that’s ridiculous. You realized that I will only ever give you 50 rupees, so you’re out of luck….and that’s ashame because I really wanted one”, or something like “my friend just got one from some guy up the street for cheaper, I’m going there after the tour”. Basically it’s all insane! I almost can’t explain it; you have to just experience it. My other favorite part is when we get on the bus to leave and they will jump up to the windows, knock and bargain with us through the windows. We have to lock the door at some point, or the tour guide has to physically push them away, so they stop coming on the bus. They will also jump onto your carriages or taxis and stay with you for your whole drive until you buy anything.

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