Riding the trains in India is, of course, a character-building experience, as we’ve learned. The train ride from Kanyakumari to Madurai was no different. I secured a seat in the overcrowded carriage and buckled down for a 4 hour trip at night. With each stop, more and more people got onto the train and the compartment became more and more full to the point of people sitting on the floor, children lying on the floor under seats and at my feet and people hanging out of the door openings. Honestly, I doubt that Holocaust victims were packed any tighter in German-occupied Europe than we were on that train. The density of people was just crushing. I managed to tune out a large part of the experience with my iPod, but the staring of the surrounding passengers managed to penetrate my bubble of tranquility. It’s not even the staring that’s the worst part, it’s more the gawking, pointing and talking as they keep motioning back to me during their conversations. It’s blatantly apparent that they’re talking about me right in front of me and it just feels horrible. It has the effect of making you feel like a circus animal. Me no likey.
If traveling and arriving in a new place by night and enduring the staring and gesturing of my fellow passengers wasn’t trying enough, I then received a text message from Hiral that changed everything: “Air India on strike. Flight cancelled. Trying to find you new flight”
Shit. Now what?
If I knew I wasn’t flying out as planned, I would have stayed in Kanyakumari where things were familiar, I had friends, and I knew my way around. Not having a hotel booked in Madurai, arriving in an unknown place at night, dealing with the zoo animal experience, knowing that Air India is the only carrier that runs from Madurai to Mumbai, and missing the good times in Kanyakumari all became too much and I broke down for the second time on a train in India. The staring and gesturing only intensified when this happened and I could do nothing to curb it but keep my eyes averted (which is tough when there are people in every last nook and cranny of an enclosed space) and bear it.
Anyway, mad train experience over, I made it into Madurai and needed to first find a hotel room for the night and then a meal and then begin to sort out all of the flight business. Because Air India is the only carrier who flies that route, that meant that, by definition, I’d have to move on to another city to get a flight back to Mumbai. The two closest airports were Trivandrum-- a good 5-6 hours away, or Chennai-- 8 hours away. Great. Awesome. Just what you want to deal with at the end of a travel circuit when all your clothes are dirty, you’re exhausted, and ready to snap.
I texted my friend Vikram in Kanyakumari out of desperation and it turned out that he came through in fine style. He told me to go across the street from the station and find a friend of his who runs a travel agency. Within one half hour I not only had a hotel room (within my budget, no less) and a hot meal, but flight plans were in the works with a reservation to get a luxury bus to Chennai the following night. I wound up getting the new plans sorted out for just over $25 more than my original plan and was even set to arrive in Mumbai a couple of hours before the Air India flight! Go Vikram and Mr-Travel-Agent-Extraordinaire, Boomi!!
With this new plan in place I had one free day in Madurai to check out the temple at the centre of the city, the Sree Meenakshi temple. It was absolutely gorgeous. Not quite as atmospheric as the one I got to visit outside of Kanyakumari, probably because of the hordes of people milling around it and the fees they charged foreign visitors but not Indian visitors, but it was beautiful. The temple is made up of many towers enclosing the inner sanctum and several large courtyards. The towers are huge and made up of thousands of sculptures painted in blindingly bright colours. Apparently, every couple of years, the sculptures are repainted in order to keep them nice and bright. Well done, Madurai!
What started in madness managed to turn into a relatively good stay in Madurai.
The trip to Chennai, on the other hand, was another dive into the madness.
I boarded my overnight luxury bus at 9pm only to be sat in the foremost front seat. This wouldn't be a problem at home, but in India, it’s not a good configuration. Firstly, in the front you’re getting an unobstructed view of all of the nonsense going on with the traffic in front of you-- people driving on the wrong side, rickshaws and motorbikes loaded with about 12 times their legal carrying capacity, cows, dogs, big trucks refusing to let you overtake them, and the occasional person carrying an astounding amount of material on their head. Secondly, to deal with all of the foolishness going on on the road, the bus driver honks his horn to either announce his presence, indicate he wants to overtake, threaten others or sometimes just to annoying the living hell out of me, I think. And we’re not talking a little beep-beep like on the Simpsons, or even the obnoxious latino horns you hear coming from cars with that ridiculous ‘La Raza’ decal on their windshield…. I talking a full on airhorn that sounds like an accelerated high pitched siren. There is no hope of sleeping on the sleeper bus when this is going on. So after 8 hours of lovely driving, I reached Chennai. Boomi had arranged for them to drop me at the airport since it was apparently on the way into town from where we were coming from. Of course, this didn’t pan out properly. The driver forgot or just decided not to and I got stuck having to argue it out with him at the central bus stand 25km from the airport. I had to get Boomi on the phone to remind the driver of his deal. They tried to tell me that it would cost “only” an additional RS300 to go out there… not cool since I had paid that much to get to Chennai and also because we specifically agreed he would take me to the airport. I stood my ground and said “Fine, if that’s what it’s costing, then you can pay for it-- you’re the one who made the error here”. Of course he wouldn’t have it and I wound up having to take a city bus to the airport for RS10. Useless. What made matters worse was that the bus left me off in front of the airport-- only it left me on one side of a 4-lane highway that passes in front of the airport. Great.
Now I was playing Frogger, the real-life edition, with luggage.
Needless, to say, I did find my way across and made my flight, but the recurring wish that I’d taken out some life insurance before leaving came back once more…
