Kanchipuram to Chennai to Madurai

January 18, 2010

We visited two more temples in the morning on the 18th. There are fewer pictures from today...that's definitely a result of the "wow...another temple" syndrome. I mean, they were still amazing (and the one on the 19th was just RIDICULOUS), but you can only take so many pictures, and I was already well across the 1,000 picture mark haha

The first was having some reconstruction/restoration work done or something, hence the coverings all around it.

The juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern caught my eye.

I think this statue is this guy on a horse trampling someone...lol

Another of the lake shrines. I love the reflections.

I don't know what this guy is doing: all i know is the carving is AWESOME. I mean, just look at his expression!

Continuing on the theme of Lewis references, this altar reminded me of the Stone Table.

Tim got asked by a huge group of pilgrims (identifiable wherever we went by their dark clothing and forehead markings) to take a photo :)

The fact that these carvings have survived thousands of years is just mind-blowing.

After visiting the two temples we went back to the hotel and had lunch. Unfortunately Grayson was feeling terrible that day: he was throwing up and couldn't keep anything down. The worst part is that he was in no shape to travel and we were going back to Chennai and then flying to Madurai that evening.

After talking to his parents, Tim and Norbert decided to leave him in a hotel for the day that we'd be in Madurai. So before going to the airport we dropped him off at the nicest hotel I've ever seen (seriously-all the 4 star hotels were booked so Grayson ended up staying in a 5 star hotel! haha) and headed to Chennai.

I finished two books on the 18th: one at the airport and one on the plane. the first was Shadow of the Hegemon and the second was Ragamuffin Gospel. I liked both of them (but not as much as Midnight's Children or Ender's Shadow).

We checked into our hotel and got ready for the next day. Tomorrow: the most impressive temple complex of the trip! Reflections on the trip so far! Only three days left in India?!?!

Pondicherry to Kanchipuram

January 17, 2010

I had some pretty weird dreams the night between the 16th and the 17th-what's weird about them is I don't remember them now. Usually when I write down dreams I'll start to remember having them and kinda be able to see them in my head, but as I read the journal entry for the 18th and read about these dreams I don't really remember any of them. In one of them I was working at Blockbuster and my boss looked like one of my professors and in another we (I don't remember who "we" were aside from myself) were fortifying a house against an alien invasion. I had a lightsaber and was dueling or sparring with two other lightsaber-wielding figures (one of which had a HUGE lightsaber that made a figure-8 in the sky).

During the morning we drove to Kanchipuram. On the way we stopped by an abandoned Mughal fortress that bordered a lake. Like, right next to it the view looked like this:



You could hear the water lapping at the shore before you could see it-I felt almost as if we were in Prince Caspian rediscovering Cair Paravel or something :)



On the other side you can just barely see another town. There's a BMW factory over there on the right actually lol.



A random pillar standing right next to the lake.

The ride was an interesting one-it was the first time on the trip that I felt carsick the whole time so I couldn't read. Instead I just laid back and tried to sleep through the slight nausea. I didn't throw up or anything, but it was definitely unpleasant.



This is the inside of the hotel we stayed at. I just liked the way the lighting and the lines came together.



We visited two temples before the end of the day. This is Nandi, Shiva's "vehicle" that he rides around on. You'll always see Nandi sitting outside a temple or shrine to Shiva.



work it, Nandi!



The silhouette of the temple. They wanted to charge us something ridiculous (around Rs. 200 or around $3.75) to take pictures of the inside so I passed. Most places would charge you a tenth of that.



One of the figures on the outer wall.



The temple from the other side.



The second temple that we visited was larger: this is just the gate!



That in the background is the main structure.



A shrine outside the main structure but inside the enclosure.



Most all of the temples that we visited in the south had these really neat shrines in the middle of artificial lake/pond/pools that were just beautiful.



Nandi! And this time he's all dolled up ;)



The lighting isn't the best cause i had the flash off, but that's Norbert taking a picture of a group of Indians.



Apparently it was "clean the temple" day. How does one clean an ancient Hindu temple? The answer is simple: pour bucket after bucket of water on the floor and then furiously sweep it around with brooms until you feel like you're done.



I love love LOVE this picture of Grayson walking ahead of me. The hallway plus the pillars and lighting and perspective...just too cool for school.



I'm not exactly sure what it was for, but this was on the ground in the center of the hallways.



I took this picture to document one of the weird things we encountered in India: there were swastika's EVERYWHERE! However, it doesn't have anywhere close to the same connotation in India that it does for those of us familiar with recent European history and not much else. The swastika is actually a very ancient religious symbol that is very important to Hindus, Jains, and many other religious groups. So if you ever find yourself in India, don't just assume that there are Nazis around every corner ;)



This is the sacred mango tree in the temple. Every year hundreds of people just show up here on a certain day and get married to complete strangers here. Yup, complete strangers.



For dinner I had paneer tikka, which is one of the most delicious meals I encountered (Zack pretty much at paneer tikka and nothing but paneer tikka for the second half of the trip haha). Paneer, as you may recall, is hindi for cheese and tikka refers to the style of cooking. So this is basically cheese cubes with cooked vegetables and a mint sauce. It is fantastically delicious!



Here's a cow that has its horns decorated for Pongol!



I just liked the way these stairs wound around and thought it might make a cool picture.



At the end of the day we visited a place where we could buy silk-Kanchipuram is famous for its silks, and anyone you ask in India about silk will tell you about Kanchipuram. Upstairs they had a guy actually making silk saris and scarves and stuff.

It was somewhere around this point in the trip where I realized that we really didn't have that much time left in India-by the end of the week we'd be getting back onto Singapore Air and be LAX-bound! It was definitely a weird feeling knowing that I'd be back in classes in less than a week's time...but it was also nice to know that I 'd be back to familiar sights, sounds, and smells.


Tomorrow: more temples in Kanchipuram! One of our group gets REALLY sick! And we head back to Chennai to fly down to Madurai!

Pondicherry: Day 2

January 16, 2010

So the thing about Pondicherry is that it was not a very fun place. Interesting? Yes. Fun? No.

This was a completely free day in Pondicherry. We didn't have anything on the agenda to see or to do as a class. Now of all the places in India to have a free day...well let's just say that I would have rather had a free day in ANY other city.

We started out to day following our professors for a bit-they wanted to see the bazaar so we tagged along.

We stopped at a beautiful cathedral on the way there-this was at the gateway.

Just beautiful. I love how the gold and the blue highlight the white!

Jesus! Definitely a bit weird to see Jesus almost literally around every corner when we hadn't for the past two weeks.

The bazaar was a maze of alleys and vendors that seemed like it stretched forever! The lighting was really cool too because they used the blue tarps as shade which case a bluish tinge on most everything.

These guys just walked up to me and asked me to take a picture of them. When I turned it around and showed it to them the grinned to each other and thanked me-apparently it was enough to take the picture because they didn't ask me to send them a copy or anything haha

A large portion of this particular bazaar was made up of fish sellers (makes sense for a beach town, right?).

I was really surprised because these chickens/ducks are all alive (yes, even the duck with the twisty neck at the bottom of the photo) and they just stayed there-no escape attempts or anything!

The flower section was pretty neat-o (and smelled great too)

This guy's expression is classic! haha

After leaving the bazaar our professors continued on but Zack went back to the hotel because he wasn't feeling so good-he already was feeling a bit queasy but all that raw meat in the fish section must've gotten to him. So that left Andy and me. Our hotel stay didn't include breakfast for this particular day so we hadn't eaten and were really hungry so we walked over to Le Cafe for some food.

Big mistake. Basically my most frustrating experience in India.

First of all there was nowhere to sit. Second of all, once we actually FOUND a table we ordered one at a time. Andy got some sort of sandwich and I thought that sounded good so I asked for the same thing. His came out in like ten minutes along with his soda and my milkshake. So we waited. And waited. And WAITED. Finally, after about 20 minutes I told him to just go ahead and went up to see what was taking so long. I asked the guy at the counter and he said my food would be ready soon.

I should mention that even the Indian citizens in Pondicherry speak at least some French. So as I'm talking with this guy he's talking to his buddies in French. I go back to sit down because I assume that "ready soon" means "ready soon."

Silly me. We must have waited at least another 15 minutes before I got fed up. I went up to the counter to ask for my sandwich one last time. The guy looks at me as if he's annoyed and says "ok" then turns to the guy next to him and says "sandwich." This second guy walks back into the kitchen. I turned to the first guy and asked "Did that guy just go back there to start making my sandwich?" The response was one of those blank stares that's a "yes-but-i-don't-want-you-to-know-that" sort of thing. At this point I was just ready to leave.

I asked for my money back. The guy pretended that he didn't know what that meant. I asked for my money back probably three more times before asking for the equivalent amount of food from the baked goods on the counter. I got a chocolate scone and a brownie for the same price as my sandwich would have cost and walked out of there.

Wait, no-I had to pay 20 EXTRA rupees to get those. Now that's only $0.50, but still...

Andy and I spent the next hour or so walking around the city looking for something to do.

Basically, we just wanted some way to make the time pass (I took the photo because it matched so perfectly with the situation haha).

We ended up just hanging out at a bakery for a while. We struck up a conversation with a local and asked him "What is there to do in Pondicherry?" His answer: "Not much...drink, I guess."

Way to go, Boozeicherry. Way to go.

Andy and I decided to just go back to the hotel. On the way we passed a cool temple.

Right there on the street.

With traffic.

When we got back to the hotel I showered and then took a nap. A group of us went out to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant and as we were leaving one of the girls who had gotten up to use the restroom came back to the table and said "I need 500 rupees (a little more than $10)." Someone gave it to her and she disappeared, only to reappear with a bag full of beers and whiskey.

It seems our friend from the bakery was right. Way to go, Boozicherry. Way to go.

Welcome!

If you're reading this, you're in the right place! This is my not-so-elegant solution to having TWO google accounts and having my blog on the WRONG one...just make a new one and import everything over here.

Unfortunately I can't seem to get the comments to follow everything else, so we're starting with a new slate (although the comments are still there on the old blog).

So yes, add THIS blog to google reader, your list of blogs that you follow on blogger, or whatever else you use to check up on me and my adventures in India haha. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it had to be done sooner or later-I just opted for sooner!

(Non-India Related Thoughts)

I've been reflecting on this blogging process and my experience for the past two weeks as I've updated regularly and come to the conclusion that this is definitely something I need to continue. Now what that WON'T mean is the daily updates about what happened a month ago to the day continuing-most of you have been with me for the good majority of it and would find a retread of all of it of little interest.

But I want to make writing here a habit and not an exception. So the plan is to continue writing after this little project of mine wraps up in just over a week.

I've got a few songs and parts of songs in the pipeline too, so you just might see those pop up here in the not-immediate-but-not-TOO-distant future :D

Mamallapuram to Pondicherry

January 15, 2010

To start out today, I thought I'd take 5 minutes to talk a little about the names of the various places that we visited or stayed in India. Some, like Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow, were pretty simple. However, a TON of the other places have multiple names. We didn't visit Mumbai, but it used to be called Bombay. Calcutta is now Kolkuta. Of the places WE visited, Chennai used to be called Madras, Mamallapuram is also called Mahabalipuram, and Pondicherry is also known as Puducherry. Just a BIT confusing lol.

So on the 15th we drove down to Pondicherry. On the busride I finished Ender's Shadow and started Shadow of the Hegemon, which (although I didn't know this previously) takes place largely in India and Pakistan. How's that for external alignment? haha

The french quarter of Pondicherry, which used to be a French city before joining India in the 40's, is a MUCH different place than the rest of India. When we got there we took a walking tour around the city, and at least twice I COMPLETELY forgot I was in India. We were walking down a certain street and I looked over at a poster that had some advertisements on it. One of them was for a Bollywood movie and had the word "Bollywood" written on it: I remember thinking to myself, "Why is there an advertisement for a Bolly....OHHHH!" :)

This is a photo of the main street in the French part of the city-on the left is a lighthouse and on the right is a statue of Ghandi.

Le Cafe-if you are ever in Pondicherry, DO NOT go to Le Cafe. More on that tomorrow...

Gandhi is hidden in there-you can see him better in a later picture

They had some cool colors for the buildings in this section of town.

The French value their peace and quiet a bit more than the Indians do-I don't think I've mentioned it before, but the honking in India is CRAZY! Honking is the rule rather than the exception and if someone honks at you it's just to let you know that they're there more than anything else. This results in a cacophonous assault on your ears...the French would prefer to avoid that (as this sign hints at).

We got to go inside a cathedral on part of the tour and it had some really cool lighting resulting from its stained glass windows.

We arrived in Pondicherry during Pungal, or the Harvest/New Year Festival. As part of the festival people decorated their cows/dogs/pets and drew all sorts of designs on the ground in chalk. Some were a bit messed up by the time we saw them...

...others were in better shape...

A very very select few were immaculate and looked like they had JUST been finished!

"Don't jump, Jesus!" was the first thought that went through my head lol

Ghandi again!

Another view of the lighthouse.

For dinner we went to a French restaurant-due to the service, this was one of the worst dining experiences of the trip. First of all, on that particular day because of Pongal no one in the city was selling alcohol-so no beer or wine. Strike 1: no wine with French food. Then our waiter took FOREVER taking our order, bringing the food, and calculating the bill. Because of his delays, it was three hours from the time that we arrived before we were actually leaving the restaurant. Strike 2: SUUUPER slow service. Lastly, for desert they didn't have any crepes AND didn't have any of the flavors of ice cream that were on the menu. Strike 3: NO crepes!!! At a FRENCH restaurant! lol

So that was Day 1 in Pondicherry. Tomorrow: Zack gets sick! An interesting conversation with a local! And the only real thing there is to do in Pondicherry.