Monday March 7th 2011 2nd day in Chennai and Train to Erode

The second day in India consisted of similar things as the first day.  Aaron Kaufman, Matt, Charlie and I had hopped in a rickshaw at about 10 o’clock and  headed off to find that fantastic authentic Indian food we were craving.  It is funny because I was not looking forward to Indian food in the least bit coming into this trip and now that we left it is all that I want.  Even yesterday in Singapore, my friends wanted to all get the local Singapore food but they also had a bunch of great Indian restaurants…I smelled the food and was immediately brought back to my experience in India.  I’m gonna miss it.  I have to find a good Indian place at home now.  We went to this restaurant about a half hour rickshaw ride away which did not open for another half hour unfortunately.  We decided to be patient and visit a few little shops around the restaurant while we waited.  Now…Indian drivers have a scam… one that every driver knows and everybody who has been to India should know by now.  No matter where you are going and what kind of time restrictions you have, they will always want to take you to their friends shop.  The conversation goes something like this... “Hey, I’m late for the airport…can you take me?  And step on it please, I have a flight in one hour”
“Okay we stop at one store on the way, 5 minutes.  You find something for friend”
“No thank you I am really in a hurry, we have no time to stop…hurry!!”
“OOOkkkkayyy we stop first”
Over the course of 3 days in India, I was brought to numerous shops around town 3 separate times! It is ridiculous how obvious they make the fact that they obviously receive something in return for bringing these stores customers.  You can ask for the driver to take you to a local cheap market to buy things and they take you to these way overpriced shops…quite annoying.  On the last day I finally forced it out of my driver to what he gets to stop at these shops.  Petrol coupons.  That’s all they have to do is bring customers into the shops and they get free gas coupons.  Quite annoying for a tourist but worth it for these drivers.
So after visiting 2 of these ridiculously priced shops, it was time to eat lunch.  We had not eaten all day and it was now about 1230.  We ordered and of course forgot we were in India so an hour later we were still waiting for our food, which can be looked at as a good or bad thing.  On the bright side, when it finally came, it tasted that much better.  I had a curry chicken dish with lots of Garlic Naan and rice.  I miss naan sooo much.  It is a flat bread you rip off in pieces and dip in the stew that the chicken comes in.  This meal was the first time I had tried it and I fell in love.  Our table just kept ordering more and more of it every few minutes because it is so cheap and does not fill you up.  20 minutes later we were all stuffed beyond belief not being able to finish another bite.  The more I talk about this the more I hate the fact that we will not be having any more Indian food.  It really is THAT GOOD.
After lunch, Aaron and Charlie had to leave for their trip to Agra and Varanasi to go see the Taj Mahal and Ganges River where they burn the bodies of people who have died.  We said goodbye for the next 4 days and parted ways.  Matt and I still had another 8 hours until our homestay trip to Erode left at 2130 that night.  We paid our driver who had been with us in the morning R500 to take us around for the whole day so we hoped back in the rickshaw began driving around.  We went to a few local market type shops looking for authentic Indian wear to rock at our homestay.  We were not having much luck but it was really enjoyable being able to just drive around a completely new country without a care.  It is at certain moments such as this which I have time to think and really look around me.  The experience I am going through is something which I very likely will never do again, and it is the most amazing way I can think of to ever spend a semester studying.  Someday in the near future, I will be sitting in an office working and thinking back to just riding around in a rickshaw in a little town in India.  Moments like this are perfect…everything comes together.  The locals, the dogs on the side of the street, the hot hot sun, the noises and the smells.  There is just so much to look at that Matt and I hardly talked about anything during the ride to the bazaar where we found the perfect shirt and pants to wear for just R400.  The pants are ridiculous looking but so cool to wear in India.  Huge linen pants which come to a narrow ankle…tons of complements on them.
After the bazaar, Matt and I still had about 3 hours to kill.  Matt has a lot of guidebooks…like, literally the LonelyPlanet guidebook for every single country we visit, so he broke it out and looked up a hotel in Chennai called the Raintree.  Matt and I became experts at milking everything we possibly could from hotels in the next few days, and it carried over even into Singapore as you will hear about later, and hopefully works for the rest of the trip.  We took the elevator to the top floor like we owned the place and took our spot at the Infinity pool on the roof overlooking the city.  Since all I had with me was a little drawstring backpack, we decided to just strip to our boxers to use the pool…we were the only ones up there anyhow.  After the pool we made our way to the business center for about an hour and a half of free internet.  Score…Pics uploaded to my blog and Facebook, and all my emails answered.  When we were all finished we made our way to the Ship to pack and meet up with our SAS group who was traveling to Erode. 
We left at about 2130 to the train station where we were taking a overnight sleeper train…When we arrived at the train station after about a 15 minute bus ride, we quickly realized that it was the wrong station…good start to our Semester at Sea trip, them taking us to the wrong station.  Our bus had left already and now we were late for a train at a different station.  The 15 people in our trip hopped in 5 different rickshaws and we raced to the other station.  The drivers were being more reckless than usual and we hit a red light at which we decided to run.  I was sitting on the left side of the rickshaw which has an open door with no restraints…it is simply open to walk in and out.  I saw it coming about 3-4 seconds in advance, but in the middle of the intersection where we ran the light a saw another rickshaw racing directly at the side of our vehicle.  It’s like everytime you are in an accident and you see it coming but BOOM.  It struck the side of us moving at a pretty good speed.  We bumped off and kept going just running away from the accident in the middle of the intersection. I looked back to see sparks coming from the front of the other rickshaw as their tire had fallen off and the front of the chasse was now just scraping the ground.  I had officially been involved in my first car accident in India.  I could not believe that it happened and when we got to the train station all the other people that we were with had been flipping out that they saw an accident, little did we know that it was us involved in it.
We got on the overnight train, what a cool experience that turned out to be.  It left at about 2300 on a 7 hour ride toward Erode.  Not having quite the safety standards the United States have, India leaves their train doors open for the entire ride.  I was able to stick my head out the train car as it tore throughout the countryside of India at nighttime.  Although I was so tired from a long day of exploring the country, I was still far too excited to fall asleep on the train.  Matt and a few other kids on the trip stayed up and talked until about 0200 when we turned the lights and tried to get a little bit of sleep for the long day we had ahead of us.  Throughout the night I don’t think I slept in any increment of more than 30 minutes, but I did not even mind because of how exciting everything was.