All good (and bad) things must come to an end

 Well Norm and Sue’s most excellent Indian adventure has come to an end. Frank Whittle’s invention and 40 hours landed us back in Minnesota safe and sound (albeit on a wildly different time zone). Our last post was from Chennai Airport which would have been an abrupt and incomplete ending. Abrupt and  incomplete endings are thoroughly unsatisfactory. So, and with many apologies to our reader for the delay, some thoughts.

First a video from the balcony in our Chennai hotel, its a bird sanctuary with water buffalo feeding.  Lovely.

We took it the morning of our last day and decided to walk to the beach after breakfast, 15 minutes away. After stepping over various indeterminate piles of indeterminate organic matter, walking through the fish market and declining multiple offers of various services we arrived at the beach and decided to have a paddle in the Bay of Bengal. It’s the 2nd longest urban beach in the world and here it is.

The people squatting are definitely not going for a paddle and neither did we. 

So why finish with this? Well its not like there are no contrasts between how people live in the West, but it’s so much easier to ignore. India makes it impossible to ignore. Go there, love parts of it, hate parts of it but don’t forget the lessons, we won’t.

Monuments in Mahabalipuram

 No I’m not going to attempt to say it but when the Indians do, it sounds a little like a slowly shooting machine gun. We are current sat at Chennai airport waiting for our flight to Delhi, and will arrive in good old Rochester MN in about 40 hours if all goes well. We have both been mildly ill so Mahabalipuram was our last full day of tourism, I’ll cover the last two days in another post.

So the G20 has been in town, and the day before we visited the delegates were treated to a tour, predictably causing even more than the usual level of  chaos. When we did the Inca Trail for the first time, our guide Eric would usually give a lengthy lecture on each of the many sets of ruins we walked by. Inevitably he would wind up his presentation with a dramatic description of what the archaeologists had dug up, and inevitably it was lama bones. So in south India whenever you ask what you are going to see the inevitable answer is temples. After upsetting the whole Hindu population of Chennai by pointing my phone in the wrong direction (see photo of angry man Sue posted yesterday) I was a bit templed out. But Mahabalipuram was worth a trip.

Here’s Sue risking life and limb under this extraordinary boulder. According to our guide it was absolutely safe, but I didn’t notice her getting under it.

Then a stunning bas relief that was nearly 2000 years old:

And for those of you waiting with baited breath yes there were some temples:

My favourite part was seeing the local animals enjoying some of the G20 bounty

 My belated New Year’s resolution is no more Hindu temples.

Finding St Thomas in Chennai

Sue here.  Its been a while since I’ve posted, mostly because Norm has done a great job of summarizing our activities, and partly because I finally succumbed to an unpleasant stomach bug that has diverted my attention elsewhere, in particular how to avoid throwing up when in transit from one location to another.  This is probably the thing I was most nervous about before coming to India, but on the bright side, it has allowed me to explore some aspects of healthcare here!  I am especially struck by the ease with which it is possible to purchase medications.  There are pharmacies everywhere, and you literally tell the pharmacist the name of the drug you want, and they will mostly sell it to you without a prescription.  Norm was able to purchase Ondansetron (an anti-sickness medication) and I was (inappropriately given my symptoms) offered Pantoprazole (a proto-pump inhibitor for reducing gastric acid) – both of which are only available on prescription in the US.  For a cold, I was offered Azithromycin (an antibiotic – useless for colds).  The other surprising thing is that medications are readily provided with few questions asked regarding symptoms and with no instructions for use, or information about side effects.  On a positive note though, medications are MUCH cheaper than in the US.   

So on Wednesday, at 5.30 in the morning, we started on the penultimate leg of our journey, catching an internal flight from Madurai to Chennai.  We arrived with stomachs intact and immediately embarked on a whirlwind tour of the city.  It took me a while to realize that Chennai used to be Madras – I was wondering why I hadn’t heard of it.  We learned that the city had suffered badly in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, when about 8,000 people lost their lives across the state of Tamil Nadu.  Another indication of the resilience of the Indian people is that there is little evidence of this disaster in the city. 

Our visit began with a tour of the ubiquitous temple:  

Norm was shouted at for taking a photo of the inner sanctum sanctorum – in fact he was going for the banana leaves … 

We witnessed a wedding:

… then made a stop at St. Thomas Cathedral Basilica.  

Built by the Portuguese in 1523, the cathedral is said to be built over the tomb of St Thomas the apostle (although our guide suggested that there is some controversy over whether Thomas ever came to the area). I think he did. There was a mass in progress during our visit and it was very moving.  Next, we took a drive along the marine shore.  Chennai has the second longest urban beach in the world at 12 kilometers.  It is a very wide beach, and a hive of activity, with fisherman returning with their catch to be sold at the roadside – literally from the net.  Just as well, as there is no evidence of refrigeration in the 30C heat.  

 

Then on to Fort St. George, the first English fortress built in India in 1639 by the East India Trading Company.  Since there was nothing here except a few fishing villages when they built it, it is generally claimed that the city developed around the fortress.  The fort is now the headquarters for the legislative assembly of Tamil Nadu state and is a lively place, with areas preserved for historical purposes and a museum.  We particularly appreciated the peace and stillness of St Mary’s church – the oldest Anglican church in India, completed in 1680.  

Inside, the church is very much in the traditional Anglican style and we could have been in an English country church.  Here we found numerous memorials to very young solders, including one Thomas Davies, who died in a clash with sepoy infantry at the age of 21. 

 

Our tour concluded with a visit to a gallery of bronze sculptures, and I am finally getting my head around the distinctions between the different manifestations of the Hindu god.  I now know that Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are the three main ones, but apparently there are 330 million altogether!  Now, I wish we had paid the extra fee to take photographs, as the sculptures were magnificent.  If you are interested in seeing some, Google ‘bronze gallery Chennai’ and click on the photos. 

 

One other thing I have been meaning to comment on is the style of dress here, particularly in the South.  I have been surprised that the majority of women, in the markets for example, have been wearing saris rather than Western dress. These are generally made of cheaper materials (cotton, nylon), but are incredibly colorful and vibrant.  Made me realize how drab we can be in the West (or maybe how drab I am!).

    

We have one more day to report before the gruelling 40+ hour trip back to Rochester. It’s been amazing.

Flowers and a shower in Madurai

So we eventually made it to the flower market - wonderful scents and sounds. The vast majority of Indian flowers are heads only and used to make garlands for weddings or to take to the temple. The usual extreme hustle and bustle:

The garlands are made from individual petals bunched so tightly they almost look like Christmas decorations:

Then weaving through the traffic to a major temple, no photos allowed inside but check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meenakshi_Temple,_Madurai. Here’s what it looked like from outside:

Inside there was a temple elephant; if you put some money in her trunk the mahout would get his pachyderm to breath over your face, which was apparently good luck. Well, although Sue was not keen, I thought you don’t get an opportunity like this every day. I duly inserted about $2 into the trunk, which close up looked unsettlingly like one of the giant worms from Dune. The mahout extracted said amount and as he wiped copious amounts of elephant mucus off it, I began to wonder about the wisdom of my plan. But like the pig in bacon and eggs (as opposed to the chicken which is merely involved); I was by this stage, committed and had paid $2. I was relieved to see the elephant flush her trunk with some cleanish looking water but then this anaconda like organ was suddenly six inches away from my face. As well as the elephants breath, a good portion of watery elephant mucus gave me a damn good dunking. Vowing never to trust an elephant again I soggily completed the temple tour. 

Outside the elephant was the star of a small parade. As you know elephants never forget, but I didn’t know they could snicker at you too.

Market in Madurai

 Well we didn’t go to the flower market yesterday because it was too late to see it at its best, instead a visit to a palace and a street market. The palace serves as a due warning to those who check their horoscopes everyday. Only a quarter of it remains, the rest was demolished by the raja of the time whose’s astrologer informed him that it would be unlucky to live there. As you do, he started to tear down the palace and was using the stone to rebuild a new palace (perhaps called dundemolishin), [Sue insists I add a groan from her at this point] but died at 75% complete. This remains.

Then a walk through a street market which evoked that familiar composite feeling of fascination and despair. Fascination at the vibrant, colourful affirmation of  humanity striving and achieving under (seemingly) intolerable conditions.

The despair? We stopped to wait for our air conditioned car to pick us up by a restaurant, serving freshly cooked Indian bread and omelettes. 

I’ve always thought the story/parable concerning the beach full of washed up starfish was slightly hypocritical on one side and callous on the other. Two men walking along the beach, starfish as far as the eye can see. One man picks up a starfish and throws it back. ‘Why did you do that, it doesn’t make any difference?’ asks the other. ‘Well it did to that one’ comes the reply. So we paid for one, very old lady to eat, which of course didn’t touch the rest of the beach or erase our guilt and hypocrisy.

Getting spicy in Thekkady

Up at 6.30 for a boat ride in the tiger reserve, the heart of which is a man made reservoir, we were sure to see many many animals so that was OK. Some of the boats were of a certain age, and our boat (see railing) was mostly green with some other colours thrown in. I think it was camouflaged.   

A beautiful cruise:

We saw three deer the whole trip. I consoled myself with the thought that I never see deer in Minnesota.

Our driver was keen to show us a spice garden, which although very much a shopping opportunity’ was great. Really interesting to see spices growing.

A pepper vine

Cardamom pods (the little green things on the horizontal stalks)

A vanilla vine - it takes five years from planting to produce a pod.

Bark from the cinnamon tree

Nutmeg

Just arrived in Madurai after leaving Thekkady this morning. A brief drink with the local pigeons and off to the flower market now. 

Tigger sends his apologies

 Onto the tiger reserve in the hills a great drive past rubber, pineapple and tea plantations:

Cooler in the hills and we were straight into a jungle walk with a local guide. To be honest it was more like a forest than a jungle. The local people have exclusive use of over 300 square kilometres of the jungle so you have to pay a local guide to take you in. The locals seemed to be part of the local ecology:

We saw bison:

Deer (I’ve never seen one in Minnesota), and a giant squirrel:

All of a sudden our guide gestured us to stop, went ahead and then called us forward, sadly not tigger but a wonderful sight nonetheless:

We watched for 20 minutes as a group of nine wild elephants just went about their business, a wonderful privilege.

And Tigger did let us know he had more pressing business: