The Wheels On The Bus

After remembering what my budget for this trip should have been, I decided to start taking the local buses between destinations. This basically requires knowing where you need to go, standing next to a bus, pointing and saying that destination in the best Indian accent possible. You may get a definite answer, or you may get a head wobble, which could mean anything, in which case you get on the bus and if it's not yours they will tell you to get off. Easy! My next destination was Madurai, since it was the next major stop, and I decided to stay in the warm South considering I'm missing summer back home.

If you google pictures of Madurai, the first thing you will notice is the 4 hypercoloured entrances to the Sri Meenakshi temple reaching up into the sky. I however, didn't. I thought I may have been dropped off in the wrong part of town, until I got to my guest house and noticed 4 unsightly thatched huts climbing up out of the city. This was a slight disappointment, but I managed to find my way inside the temple to witness something like a rock concert for the Gods. People were running around everywhere, throwing coloured powder here and bowing their heads to the ground there, hundreds of young bearded men in black lungi's (material wrapped around the waist) pushing their way through like part of some punk gang, and stalls selling any number of things to cause you to go into a ceisure, conveniently placed next to stone carvings from centuries ago. The city was not so much different, so I decided to get on another bus to Thanjavur.

With very little hearing left, thanks to the high pitched squeeling of the movie being blasted through speakers right next to my head, I found my way into the town and into a nice room, birds chirping through the windows. I decided this was a nice place to rest and introduced myself to some Indian television. There's nothing quite like watching "Dexter's Laboratory" dubbed in Hindi. I eventually made it to the temple, and could see it! There was something magical about this one, so I found a tree to sit under and drew until the sun went down. The next day I headed into a neighbouring town for a music festival, only to find I arrived 6 hours early, so headed back into town to look at the Palace before going back out again. It wasn't as big as I expected a festival to be, but the performers were amazing, each band having a different focus instrument, all the locals very welcoming and helpful. I was sad to leave but my bus addiction had kicked in, so I was soon on the road again.

I didn't much care for my next stop, which was sad because the name Chidambaram sounded great. I visitted a couple of temples, but by the time I left it was a state wide festival called Pongal, to celebrate the end of the harvest season, and I could not find an open restaurant in sight. I imagined my next destination, Pondicherry, to be much nicer. It was colonised by the French a long time ago, and has since kept a lot of thos aspects, including French people. The place was fully booked, and I was hungry. I eventually found was someone considered a room, downed my last bus stop biscuit and headed to the water. I figured I was just getting tired of the process of finding a room every 2 or 3 days, and so headed for a previous destination which I knew would calm my nerves.

Yet another bus got me almost all the way to Mamallapuram, being the last day of Pongal and also a dance festival on, almost all of India was headed in the same direction as me. I found an old friend of Jeremy's who ran a guest house here, and after getting a room I headed for water again to chill out. Big mistake! I'd never seen so many people in all my life! Thankfully it was just for that day, and after a nice walk along the beach and a hearty breakfast, I'm ready to rest my bus-bruised knees, do some drawing and count the cows go by.

Shaun.