Nearly a month in India and I don’t quite know what to say about it. At first we

weren’t sure we would last for the three months we planned but it is kind of growing on us.  Traveling in India has been more difficult than other countries.  For example it took us several hours (think hot, humid and sweaty) in the Chennai train station being shuttled window to window and office to office before we finely found a worker who would sell us a ticket for our night train.

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived from Hanoi, Vietnam on India’s east coast in KolKata (Calcutta) which is extremely crowded, has really bad infrastructure and terrible air quality (our eyes began to sting from pollution on the ride from the airport to our hotel).  Even

though we paid more than usual for our hotel and thought we were getting a nice place, by our second night, we both ended up covered with bedbug bites.  Since then we have been staying in nicer hotels and spending more than we usually would.

Our first two-hour bus trip on a government bus ($.40 each) started out all smiles, the bus was comfortably full and we had a seat.  But the bus stopped at every crossroads and

was soon crammed with people in the aisles.  Mike gave up his seat to a lady and was quickly pushed to the back of the bus.  What we did not know (lost in translation) was that the bus did not go into town but stopped at a crossroads for us to get off.  The conductor in the front of the bus was yelling at me (in Hindi) to get off, I couldn’t manage all of our bags through the crowd, Mike was at the back of the bus, it was a hot mess.  Not to worry, we got off with all of our stuff, caught an auto-rickshaw and found our guesthouse.  Oh, and we are paying more to take first-class buses and trains.

The people of south India are very religious so there are a lot of temple ruins, religious statues, cows wandering the streets (the cows aren’t so bad but the poop makes walking a challenge) and a serious lack of alcohol.  People of Hindu faith are strictly vegetarian (restaurants are either veg or non-veg) and do not drink alcohol.  We have seen many colorful processions of hundreds of people making religious pilgrimages.

Mike and I got blessed by the temple elephants in Pondicherry and in Hampi.

As I said, India is growing on us.  We have seen beautiful sites, eaten great Indian food (finally found a cocktail in Goa) and met some really sincere and kind people.  As we head north to see the rest of the country, we are now wondering if two months will be enough.