October 21, 2014--Drive to Tanjore

Today a driver picked us up at 7:30 for the drive to Tanjore.

Rob was on a mission:  Find some of the monuments that cousin Linny (Linneus Tripe) photographed for the Raj back in 1858.  Rob will write about it so I won't.

But I can tell you about the drive.

We set off at about 7:30 AM. The drive was to be about 180 km and estimated to take about 3 1/2 hours.  This turned out not to be on any kind of highway but on the usual twisting, turning, broken - sometimes Water-filled roads which we wheatencounter in a lot of little towns.  And, there were many, many little tiny towns.

Each of these little towns was a aswarm with activity – people out getting supplies and getting ready for Diwali today.  Diwali is the Festival of Lights, (big here like Christmas is to us. Fireworks (MANY), gift-giving,  houses decorated with strings of lights, diyas for holding tea lights or oil (little clay vessels) are all part of the festivities.  Lots of shopping goes on (women get new outfits to wear on Diwali) and there is just a buzz of excitement over its approach. 

The traffic, in every little town we drove through (MANY) was incredible.  These are little towns in rural India, so traffic means auto rickshaws, cars, bikes, motorcycles, bullocks pulling carts, bullocks just walking through an intersection, bullocks just having a little lay-down in the middle of the street, goods carriers (neat, decorated trucks) and BUSES BUSES BUSES.  Never have we seen so many buses on the roads than on that trip to Tanjore.   They are Big, Aggressive, Over-loaded, Poorly Maintained , hog the road and clog intersections.  So you can see that that 180 km took a while. 

But it wasn’t boring.  Who could get sick of seeing these towns with their cheek-by-jowl store-fronts, burgeoning with plastic ware, or pots and pans, or saris, or samosas, or stalks of bananas, or bins of rice,   There’s a tailor, there’s a flour mill, there’s a lemonade stand.  They are all tiny squished-together shops and they all specialize.  And then there’s the COLOUR.  I’ll bet I’ve mentioned it a hundred times.  The streets are often muddy or dusty and the shops shabby - so all the amazing, colourful things they sell just seem that  much more intense.  And the lovely ladies in the eye-busting colour combinations – WOW.  Kind of like a black and white photo where only selective things have been coloured in.  Eye-catchers!

Rice Flour Vendors

Banana Stand

Colourful clothing

Making paranthas

Meanwhile, every vehicle is honking, street dogs cross the road without looking, people cross the road without looking.   What seemed terrifying at first is now merely WACKY.  I’m having an out-of-body experience.  I am looking through a personal peephole into the past.

So, this was the scene going to Tanjore and also coming home, except that the return was longer due to darkness, pouring rain, huge puddles, and even MORE humanity out in the streets.  A black water buffalo sleeping in the middle of a paved road at night is very difficult to see and one of the main reasons I prefer daytime driving.

No, Silly!  Of course, there were no seatbelts.  Well, there was the shoulder harness part, but the thing you attach it to was non-existent.  No – Not down behind the seat.  It just WASN’T! Period!  (How many vehicles have we ridden in like this, here.  Perhaps the latch mechanism is an option – like a sunroof.  Many more rupees to get it.) 

Hansi