April 14, 2009

I found myself on a flight to India wondering why. Everybody here, and everyone back home asks, "Why India?" Frankly, I'm not totally sure. I sort of go where doors open these days. I spent the winter house-sitting and dog-sitting for Kate & David, a very nice couple that also own a place in India. Since I haven't really settled down anywhere I'm at that time when I can up and leave on new, big adventures every so often, and I really believe in taking advantage of that. Kate and David offered their place and their friends here and there was no way I could pass it up. Going back to the flight - the whole trip here - it was terrible. My car broke down halfway to O'Hare. My dad came to my rescue and I made it to the airport exactly two hours before my flight. The woman at the Air India ticket counter wrote me out a carbon copy ticket and said that my flight to Mumbai was now to Dehli, and from Dehli I would fly to Chennai. Okay. So the first flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany was great. I sat next to a little Indian girl, whose parents were busy with two other kids, so I helped her unwrap meals and work the little TV and we chatted it up about Dora the Explorer. There was recessed mood lighting that changed colors during the flight. The food was relatively good. And then we got to Germany, where the man at the ticket counter told me the first lady was wrong and I was, indeed going to Mumbai. It was pretty confusing since half of the flight was lined up to go to Dehli and the lady seemed pretty adamant that I go to Dehli - I don't know - but he printed me out the final two tickets I required and that was all the reassurance I needed. The flight out of Germany was a little worse. It seemed the quality of the Air India flight always directly corresponded to the quality of the country. The food was bad and I felt motion sick and I tried to curl up in my little seat to sleep. I even stole the empty seat between me and another passenger - nothing helped to make me feel better. Feeling sick always makes me want to be at home in bed and being on a flight out to the furthest place I could be from home was disheartening at this point. When I got to Mumbai, I noticed my flight was pushed up like 17 hours, which was half good (it meant I didn't have to sleep in the airport) and half bad (it meant if there was a taxi scheduled to pick me up, I'd have to wait all day for it, and it'd be 2 am when I arrived). The Mumbai airport - oh my gosh - what a horse and pony show. The gate on our tickets ended up not being the gate we actually had to be at. Our flight was allegedly "boarding" for a few hours on the t.v. screens scattered about, but the people at the gate told us to "just wait, wait" with no explanation. Eventually our flight info just disappeared from the screens, never to return. The doors to the gate were left open and the place was swarming with mosquitoes. Finally, it must have been 2:00 or 3:00, they yelled for the Chennai people to get on the bus. Yeah, a bus. The gate was for a bus that brought us out to an old plane. The flight took two hours and I don't even want to talk about how lame it was. Once I got to Chennai, I couldn't find an ATM, and I couldn't find a bus terminal. So a pushy auto-rickshaw driver said he'd drive me to the bus. I said fine. Then he dropped me off at a street corner and said he'd stop the correct bus for $20, since all the bus destinations were written in unreadable Tamil. I find it's best in tense situations like this to pretend to be humored by it, so I laughed and told him that I should charge him $20 for the insult. Then he lowered it down to $10 and gave the argument that it wasn't much for me but would be a big help to him. I actually think that's a great short-term argument, but I didn't feel like being taken advantage of and I told him that. Nonetheless, I told him to stop the bus. He did and the driver let me know it was indeed headed to Pondicherry. I didn't have the energy at this point to ho-hum over morality, etc., so I just gave the auto-rickshaw driver the equivalent of $8, or so. The bus ride took 3 hours and I hopped off when I knew I was finally in the correct town and asked another auto-rickshaw driver to bring me to Kate & David's. He had to stop and ask directions. Then finally FINALLY I found my place and slept all day. It was really exhausting.

I had jet-lag for almost the first full week here. It took me a few days to really get the courage to leave the house on my own. I was totally overwhelmed by this place. My neighbor took me out to the grocery store and showed me around the streets (more on the crazy traffic later). Another neighbor just took me on a tour of the Ashram and a Temple to Ganesh (with an elephant that tapped me on the top of the head) today. I'll plan on stopping at the internet cafe again tomorrow to tell of how incredibly beautiful this place is... the Bay of Bengal, the serenity at the Ashram (and what it's all about), the slum houses and the beautiful French buildings. This town is littered with incredible vibrant colors.