The noise of the bus horn, Hu hu huhhhhhh, the tuk tuk horn beee bee beee, the bike bell ding dinga dinga, the taxi whooop whoop, the noise is non-stop. The clerk at the Lion City Hotel, Thanjavur, assured us "it will stop at ten o'clock, don't worry". We took the room 206 after 6 hours on a couple of buses that covered about 200 km.
The two lane roads of Tamil Nadu carry an impressive burden. The buses barrel through twists and turns scattering the "three and two wheelers" to the shoulders. The drivers have the mindset of Mario Andriette, if they're not leading the pack they're not doing their job. Constantly passing each other, two abreast with headlights bright in the windshield. One big blast on the horn, flash the lights, and pull back just as the orange and green truck carrying a sugar cane load twice as high as the cab plus three laborers on top "holding it down" slides by. The vehicles miss each other by inches at fourty miles an hour. The only thing that puts a hold on the drivers competition seems to be the big black cows. The healthy looking animals are immune to the the honks as they wander across the road to peruse the next garbage pile for another tasty morsel on a discarded newspaper.
Walking the streets competing with the vehicles is not enticing. Traveling by three wheeled tuk-tuks seems to be the safest option for getting around. The costs are small and negotiating the swarm of traffic is left to the professionals.
So far, the food of Southern India is the highlight for me. The "tali meals" are served on banana leaves with an endless pile of rice surrounded by small steel bowls with 5 or 6 different vegetables, yogurt, and a sweet desert. The waiter comes by frequently refilling whatever you finish from large vats with a shovel-spoon. Your right hand is the only accepted utensil. For me, the rice and curries end up covering from the mid line of the table across to my lap, to my elbow, and, occasionally, up to my eyebrow. For the beautiful woman in the sari who sat next to me the rice and stews stick lightly to the the second knuckle of her right hand and no higher.
Mercy is challenged to watch my attempts at eating like an Indian while she looks greenly at the bland "rice curd" on her plate. India is giving her the rough treatment these days. She arrived in Chennai with a head cold and some weird bumps on her back. Now the head cold is clearing up, the bumps have reached their crescendo and are receding, but now the Indian Sweets I brought her as a "surprise" last night had her puking at 4am. She's feeling a bit broken at the moment but is persevering.
We meet with a Servas host this evening in Trichy. Hopefully, M will be well enough to enjoy the visit to an Indian home and we can keep her heading back to healthy with the family visit there. Hope all are well, we'll post more with pictures soon!
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