Myself and Greg go for breakfast. The power goes again. We get served the most delicious coffee. Not. We meet Ian as we are walking back. He wonders where we had disappeared to. We meet the rest of the lads apart from Peter who is comatose back in the room. Greg heads back to get some packing done before we leave. I leave Ian, Eoghan and Aidan to get breakfast as I go to the beach to do a ritual.
The beach is lined with fishing boats and men as they prepare nets and stock for their days catches. A swarm of horseflies play and dance in the warm breeze. As I walk back up the main street I'm stopped by a smiling Indian gentleman that tells me, “Jesus love me”. I call around to Swamiji to let him know we are heading off and ask him if he needs some help with the internet. Myself and Swamiji arrive and the power is gone again. I go to my room and collect my bags. Upon my return the power is back.
We get some internet stuff done and I find out that Swamiji is also know as Saswot. The rest of the gang gather in the internet cafe and wait for me before we leave. The owner of the guest house organises a rickshaw for the six of us and all our bags. I'm looking forward to seeing the size it.
As expected the rickshaw can not possibly fit all of us and our bags into it, even after the owner insisting it would. So in stubbornness and refusal to pay any more we all pile in. With the sardine arrangement perfected, the rickshaw driver then ask us to pay more. We argue as usual and agree to ten more rupees than agreed.
I can only imagine what it looks like. Something similar to the Simpsons sketch of the clowns getting out of the small car as 6 fairly tall lads and 12 bags and two guitars empty out at the bus stop. Locals stand around laughing at the sight of us.
A minute later we are all jumping onto the bus to Pondicherry, as he barely stops as we clamber on board. The bus is jammed with only Indian as the six whities block up what little space is left. After the usual array of gazes and glares the audience return to watching their movie. After a number of stops the majority of us get seats. Myself and Aidan sit in open the open doorways. One at the front and one at the back.
The views skirting by at speed. Fields, houses and villages. A large quantity of houses in India are totally painted by an advertiser. We think we have it bad in Ireland. Can you imagine your whole house being an advertisement for Massey Ferguson. I presume this helps people to survive. As we make our way along the coast I notice a Tsunami village built along the coast. I also notice a large quantity of fields far in from the coast which are covered in sand. At one stage, in the distance, I see to our right large domed hills of white. As we get closer I see they are salt fields. Men and women working away farming them, collecting the salt into smaller piles. The smaller piles are collected and then you have the large hills of salt. Something I've never seen before.
The bus passengers are either locked watching the movie or trying to catch some sleep. The film is like any fast action packed movie we see everyday. The hero is killing people left right and centre. Dropping motorbikes on some, shooting others and doing a variety of Matrix style martial art moves on others. Its quite ridiculous. A couple of times throughout the showing, the story stops and the main characters start doing a music video. Something similar to Austin Powers.
Two hours later the driver is bullying his way through the suburbs of Pondicherry. He's bloddy insane with near misses being the norm. Blaring his boat style horn to traffic as he drives down the wrong side of the road. We pull in alive to the main Pondicherry bus stand. As we disembark the driver continues to move along dropping us off in three groups. The terminus is insanity with buses racing through beeeping their horns. People scattered amongst this walking in every which way. The heat is a paltry 36 degrees or so. We collect together and stand on one of the piers to plan our journey into the city.
10 minutes later, after being driven through the streets of Pondicherry by a drunken lunatic, we arrive at Government Square. Himself and his drunken partner ask us for some more money for some booze. He illustrates this with the glug, glug, symbol of finger and thumb going up to his mouth. Myself and Eoghan walk away to the Qualithe Hotel around the corner.
All the boys are already there, sittting inside this old brown and cream walled, french colonial building. As Eoghan correctly mentioned its like something you'd see in an Irish pub with the old chairs and tables laid out as they are. We order a round of beers, soft drinks and water. A moment later we are joined by an old eccentic American man with busy hair and glasses. He starts conversing with Greg in French. Ten minutes later I chat to him and enjoy the rather insane chat we have.
Myself, Peter, Ian and Greg head off in search of accommodation. The French side of Pondicherry is clean and far from anything we have seen in India so far. The streets are laid out in a grid system of French named roads, lined with trees along the paths. The buildings are large impressive structures with small flowered gateways and colourful stepped entrances. After an hour or so our search seems futile with either places being full, too expensive or having a curfew of 10.30pm. The Ashram have a collection of places around the town that fall under the name of Aurobindo. These are peace havens that are for people looking for a place to stay where they can meditate and do yoga. The one I visited was beautiful inside. The place was spotless and the six bedded room I saw was spacious and modern and only cost 320rps for the room for the night.
An hour and half later we were back in the Qualithe with Aidan and Eoghan. We checked the rooms to find them to be more than acceptable, so we booked in for the night. We freshened up and I went about hanging my new hammock.
That night we ate in Le Space. Somewhere recommended by Glen and Will. After sitting down and Eoghan doing a small dance with the menu blackboard, we attracted the attention of a girl sitting beside us. Lisa was from Norway and she happily joined us at our table. A minute later we had three more girls come over and join us. A Canadian and two from the UK. The cocktails were the best I tasted in India so far. The food was delicious. The splitting headache I had was the only thing that took from the evening. After dinner I excused myself and headed back to the Hotel. With two paracetamols and half bottle of water inside me I lay down on the very short bed and fell asleep.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment