Indian Friday: Hello Thanjavur!

My diary, revived from my trip to India back in 2007. This second part details my solo travels during the last three weeks or so.

I should explain. These next few entries cover the time when I stayed with a young American academic. I’d linked up with her through Couchsurfing, an organisation that enables travellers to stay with locals with a view to getting more of an insight into the local community than the average tourist does. Gwen was the only person who contacted me in Thanjavur, and I was a bit reluctant. An American in India? How wrong I was. As you’ll find out.

Hello Thanjavur!

Friday 23rd November.

5.00 a.m. The station was heaving with life! Such a surprise.  But it was a bit too dark and gloomy to read, so off to the booking hall.  What a party! Well, no, not actually.- just a score or so of boys and men sitting in convivial groups on the ground collating the day’s newspapers.  This took most of the time till 7.00 when  Gwen arrived … on her motor scooter.

In fluent Tamil, she negotiated me a rickshaw and off we went.  And at her flat, she gave me breakfast and the first decent cup of coffee of the holiday.  I really like her.  She’s lots of fun, and at the same time, very committed  to her archaeological studies.

Towards 10.00, we hopped on her scooter and she gave me a lift into town, dropping me off at the Chola Temple.  What a place! Magnificent multi-sculpted edifices – several separate temples all on the same site.  I just explored for a long time. Then I mooched round town.  I can cope with this one.  It has a shape I can follow, though the streets are familiar now.  Internet cafe, then a hunt for lunch.  No language passed between us, but I got my rectangle of banana leaf, my choice of rice, and helping after helping of the various sauces dumped onto the rice.  They went out and got me bottled water as I indicated I wouldn’t have that in the jug.  All for about 10 bob (50 p in new money) and ½ of that was the water.

Eventually, I found a bank: a chaotic jumble of customers, with areas of desks all over the place behind which sat officials and their untidy piles of files.  More dusty files in dusty metal cupboards, and for me, no sense at all of what happens where.  I was shunted to three different places and told eventually to come back tomorrow.

Back to the temple and a rickshaw home.  Gwen took me out to get a take-away – a ‘parcel meal’, which was indeed neatly parcelled with cotton and cost Rs.65.  Lots of talking …and so to bed.

And so today’s Square for Becky’s #SimplyRed is clipped from the shot above, where goats were lounging in a disused brick-red building in the centre of Thanjavur. They seemed very content.

Street scene, Thanjavur
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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

54 thoughts on “Indian Friday: Hello Thanjavur!”

  3. That’s a great square, Margaret. I had just been thinking about pulling that shot up for a close up. And it’s true, goats will eat absolutely anything! Gwen sounds an excellent ‘flatmate’. Such an old-fashioned name now, isn’t it, but I had a friend Gwen, once. Happy Friday! xx

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  6. Well! That scaffolding looks truly perilous! Gwen sounds be a great lady, and seems like you had some fun prowling around Thanjavur, and the goat looks content!

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  12. Reads like quite the adventure, I am enjoying your posts and learning much about India. I know so little about it or other countries. You and your blog have opened my eyes to the India and the rest of the world – South Korea, Spain, the Pyrenees in France, and of course England. How long was your visit and were you traveling alone? Stay well.

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      1. I remember watching ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ on PBS and ‘A Passage to India’ with my stepmother in the eighties. She and her first husband lived in Mumbai (then called Bombay) in the mid-sixties. I never asked enough questions about how long she lived there, or what it was like…

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      2. Oh, I watched those too (didn’t we all?). Yes, I too am regretful about the quetions unasked, the conversations I didn’t have. And now it’s too late.

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  15. Gwen sounds like a lovely host and the temple looks wonderful! Your lunch sounds very like a dinner we had in Kathmandu when it was a national holiday and the restaurant we’d chosen was doing a set menu which was basically that – rice with different sauces etc that they kept coming round with and offering seconds! But it cost rather more than 50p 🙂

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  16. How good that you and Gwen got on. It doesn’t always work out that way. The chaps sorting the newspapers out took me back to when my dad had a newsagent’s shop and sometimes I’d be roped in to get the papers sorted and marked up for the delivery rounds. A 5 a.m. start and the shop opened at 6 a.m. too. That black ink got everywhere.

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  22. I loved Couchsurfing, I used it around Australia, along with WWOOFing (willing workers on organic farms) back in 1986, a great way to meet locals. Gwen sounds a lovely person. India is such a culture shock it must’ve been great to have her navigate you around.

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    1. She was the perfect host. Yes, we know about WWOOFing too, though haven’t actually worked on a farm ourslves. All these schemes are great, and worth it even for the odd disaster.

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