I went to bed Friday night almost wishing I would've stayed back in Michigan this summer. I knew deep down that this is a good and interesting experience but I was getting very frustrated with my unfamiliar surroundings.
My most uncomfortable bus ride
The frustration began to elevate when we walked to the bus station to catch our bus to Pondicherry but no one was helpful with telling which bus we had to get on. We were told it would have closed windows and say "to Pondicherry." We saw one with closed windows pull up and Evan ran up to ask if it was going to Pondicherry. It was but there were no seats, only standing available. So we just got on because we were told by a friend that it only gets more crowded as the day goes on.
We awkwardly stood in the aisle towards the front, confused what to do with our big back packs. After a while most of us were able to lean against some sort of edge and I sat on a ledge up to seats where a mom, a baby and a toddler sat. This was quite uncomfortable with my boney butt but standing would've been more uncomfortable.
The swerving was also uncomfortable but the continual honking of the horn was even more annoying. It just makes no sense to me how often every driver, especially bus drivers, use their horns. I understand warning that they're entering a blind spot but continually honking the horn for a solid 2 minutes or so is another thing. Luckily I had my music so I tried my best to ignore that and enjoy my music.
No hostel reservations after all
Once we got to the bus station we wanted to order bus tickets on the way back but were pushed around between various counters and then found out we couldn't order them until the next day.
Then we didn't know how to get to our hostel really and walked quite a while to our hostel. Once we got there we found out they never received our reservation through hostelworld.com so they had no room for us. After much convincing, we had them call another hostel for us to stay at and it wasn't the best but it had AC and the bathrooms didn't look too bad. We did see some small bugs in Morgan's bed that probably would've been fine but then Morgan got moved to what we called the "Love Suite" because it was the room with just one single full bed that we shared.
Our relief for the night - western food
Then we were quite hungry, roamed for a restaurant and luckily got to this very nice, small restaurant with western food and a cocktail menu. We ended up talking to the owner who went to Penn State for his undergrad and gave us a few recommendations. Once we left we felt good that we had at least one friend in Pondicherry, Upendra.
Later we sat on the rocks if the water for a bit which was very relaxing and soon walked back through the seemingly ghost town to the hostel. It was very quiet with only auto-rickshaws (autos), dogs and cows roaming the streets. Soon enough we arrived to our hostel and returned to our very firm beds.
Beach Day
Saturday began as a very hot and sunny day. We found a breakfast place that serves an "English breakfast" with a lot of stuff. We then made a quick stop at the tourist office because half of us were interested in a tour and the other half visiting the beach. I chose the beach because I had a hunch the tour of the city would involve much aimless walking in the sun which I did not want to do.
Evan, Mike and I then grabbed an auto to the beach because the boys wanted to rent surf boards and after we got dropped off we found out we had to walk 2 km south...on the very hot beach. We then got there to find that the surf school wasn't open yet so we waited on some rocks against the beach to chill.
This was the day that I discovered one of the things I appreciate most in India when it happens - a nice breeze. The humidity and high temperatures can be quite tough on my sweaty, white self so a nice breeze, especially when my hands are on my hips so a breeze can get to my sweaty pits, is an incredibly nice feeling.
I continued to sit on the beach watching the guys kind of fail at surfing for 2 to 3 hours, a few small crabs move on the beach, fishermen coming in and out of shore and I loved every moment of it. I even spent some time trying to form the shape of India with shells and spent nearly an hour making a weird design in the sand and at one point and old Indian women came up to me to see what I was doing and smiled, seemingly enjoying my artwork.
The seed of my
evolving opinion of India
When we left the beach we picked up a friend who has been in
India for nine months and as nine weeks or so left. Her name is Paula and she’s
been teaching English in a town basically in Chennai during this time. She
chose to do this as her gap year between high school and college and will
return to her home in Germany for college. Evan, Mike and I began to ask her
about Chennai and we explained how we had a difficult time adjusting during our
first week and were not super pleased with Chennai. She had a very different
opinion about India and the culture which we found quite enlightening. She
mentioned how she’s found everyone to be friendly and a unique community. She
later explained how she can’t believe she’ll be back in Germany in nine weeks
and will miss the business of the streets of Chennai. This confused us at first
but she continued by saying she’s going to feel so alone as she walks in cities
in Germany compared to the very populated city of Chennai.
I think this comment stuck with all of us and made us
realize there is no reason to keep complaining about the culture and systems of
India and comparing it to American culture. It has a very long history and with it a very rich culture of ideas and ways
of doing things. For this reason, it will never be like America, nor any other
Western country. I think the confusing part about this fact though is that it
seems like India is trying to become
Westernized in a few ways but I am positive the Indian roots will always stick
no matter how modern the country becomes.
I’m jumping around here a bit, but I’d like to bring up
another discussion I had today with a friend Tim made at a hostel in Prague two
years ago who we met today. His name is Ram and we asked him many questions
around the way the Indian government works. He explained first how India is
very unique because of its large range of diversity and also the language
barriers that exist within the country. The northern countries mostly speak
Hindi but southern countries mostly speak Tamil which makes even natives of the
country have a difficult traveling. Each state and community however does have
their own variety of the language which makes it more difficult to work with
others in some instances. Luckily (or not), English is considered a national
language and is understood and spoken across basically the entire country which
helps Indians communicate across state lines.
With these various states comes varying political views
which makes their government unique for providing a variety of ideas but of
course makes it quite difficult to make things actually happen. From what I
understand there’s a bunch of parties in India but there are pretty much just
five coalitions. To make things happen within and between these coalitions there
are many bargains and deals made in the way of “I’ll support your party/ideas
if you support this specific value of mine” which also happens in the US of
course but at least there are only two parties.
For the prime minister vote, that will happen next year,
they don’t necessarily vote for the person himself but one of the five parties
and then the party will choose their candidate. The party with the majority
vote will then have their candidate as prime minister. This system seems quite
interesting to me but I suppose it works for the largest democracy in the world
for 1.3 billion people.
Back to Pondicherry
though…
Saturday we walked in the rain to a certain restaurant,
decided we didn’t like the menu nor pricing of the place, left, and then
returned to the place we had dinner the night before. Dinner was good once
again and we then used the restaurant’s phone to call our German friend, Paula.
She happened to be above us at the bar/restaurant there with two other girl
friends, Marie and Lara, and one guy friend, Michael. It was a nice evening and
a cool venue but soon enough we had to leave by the 11:30 PM curfew.
Sunday - witnessing the the process of setting up street shops
Tim, Morgan and Bob chose to wake up early to see the
sunrise but I really didn’t want to wake up that early to see one of a million
sun rises I’ll see in my lifetime. It kind of would have been cool to go though
because I guess the street along where they sat on the rocks to watch the sun
rise over the water had many people walking in the road that was closed in the
morning.
Eventually I woke up, didn’t know where Evan and Mike were,
and decided I wanted to go outside and get street breakfast food. I then wanted
to compare the breakfast food by walking down for a bit but then found myself
walking more than expected because I enjoyed watching many people set up their
little shopping stand of sorts all along Mahatma Ghandi Road (MGR). Basically
everything that was set up in the booth was of very low quality to American
standards (like a dollar store or something) but I was most intrigued by the
process of setting up the shop/booth.
Each person carefully placed each item in its place in order
to make it look like as attractive of a booth as possible. Most used foldable
tables to set their stuff on but some would simply lay a tarp on the ground and
lay out their items. What caught my eye the most was one table that had a bunch
of books on it but then I looked closely and saw there were mostly engineering,
science or math text books. Maybe that’s why they’re much better at technical
stuff than America….
Boat ride
Soon enough Evan left to go back and take a surf lesson but
the rest of us wanted to take a boat ride. We later found out that the boat
ride took us to Paradise beach and had a mini carnival setting just before the
boat house. The boat ride was rather nice and of course had beautiful scenery.
We only stayed at the beach for about one hour because there wasn’t too much to
do on the hot beach and we had to get back to our autos waiting for us.
Next we got to the botanical garden which was actually
mentioned at the start of the Life of Pi book. We were kind of disappointed by
the garden because none of the waterfalls worked, there was trash around, and
didn’t seem very well manicured. However, later I read one of the posters about
the garden and found out there was a cyclone in late December of 2011 that
destroyed the garden which is probably one of the largest reasons for the not
too awesome garden.
Then the five of us grabbed lunch which took forever, we shopped
for a bit where I got some really awesome loose pants that I’ve been wanting
since I got here, and we waited to take the cab that was arranged by our
friend, Upendra. The 2.5 hour ride back was much more comfortable on the way
there because I was able to read for a bit, take a nap and then I tried to read
more but I found it difficult because I kept wanting to look out the window and
look at unfamiliar and fascinating parts of India. I wish I could describe it
but at this point, there’s no use trying. You just have to go on a car ride
yourself in India and see what I’m talking about.
The mango I bought earlier today was good but kind of difficult to eat with Mike's Swiss Army Knife
My awesome new pants
My new shoes I actually bought in Chennai right before Pondicherry
By the end of this car ride my outlook on the unique, yet
beautiful country blossomed and has continued to grow since.
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