Couchsurfing

Indian Friday: Couchsurfing

Today, for one week only, I am abandoning my diary in favour of a piece I wrote just after I had left Thanjavur. I do sound a bit smug, I know. But I stand by every word I wrote then. My time in Thanjavur still stands as one of the highlights of my Indian journey. I’ve nearly used up any appropriate Thanjavur photos though. So there is just one shot today of a building I forgot to label at the time, a sad ruin of what it must have been, But red enough for #SimplyRed.

The following is an unsolicited testimonial for CouchSurfing. No money has changed hands in the production of this advert!

In case you don’t CouchSurfing is an online community in which travellers offer hospitality, and make use of hospitality offered while on the road. It’s based on the premise that this makes travelling more affordable, but more importantly, gives travellers the opportunity to experience the community they’re visiting at first hand, rather than in the somewhat detached way hotels and so forth can offer

That was a bit of a long lead in ….

In Thanjavur I stayed with Gwen, an American doing post-graduate research at the University there. We’d exchanged emails over a month or two, so she didn’t feel like a stranger when I met her. She gave me a wonderful welcome and time with her, so I wanted to treat her on our last evening together. She asked to eat at the best hotel in town, as she’s heard the food was good, and as a student of modest means, it was she thought, beyond her reach. Good idea.

A we passed through reception, we might as well have shown our passports. Thanjavur disappeared from sight to be replaced by marble walls and floors, corporate decoration, and uniformed staff of the kind that usually frequent these places. Where were we? Birmingham? Milan? Dubai? Mumbai? Who knows? And so into the restaurant, where we pulled our dupattas tight round our shoulders to combat the cold of the air conditioning. Consulted the menu (Indian, Chinese and European) and ordered our meal. Got talking to the English couple next to us as they finished their chicken and chips. They turned out to be on an organised tour, and it looked as though their time was spoken for. They were enjoying it, but were scurrying along at the pace set by the demands of the tour, with no opportunity to go off on any tangents, and certainly no opportunity to meet local people on their own territory.

Compare my time in Thanjavur with theirs. Gwen’s American, certainly, but she’s made it her business to be part of the community she lives in. She’s learnt fluent Tamil, so has good relationships with her neighbours. So while there, I had the chance to mooch round and enjoy with her the rangoli decorations and lights put out at night for a Hindu Festival of Light (not Diwali, yet another one). I met the neighbours and was invited into their homes. Narrowly avoided a big faux pas in one. Invited to sit down, I nearly plonked myself in the nearest vacant place on a sofa. Recovered myself in time and did not sit there, next to the husband, but squeezed onto the other sofa, with the women. Gwen said it would have seemed very odd to them if I hadn’t remembered in time. Chatted to another neighbour, a Christian, who explained that she liked to keep the Hindu festivals too, and showed us her Hindu decorations taking their place alongside her pictures of the Pope.

I ran errands for Gwen, and in that way had several language-less conversations in the food market, where everyone was keen to shake my hand, because tourists in Thanjavur don’t generally go and buy half a kilo of carrots.

We zipped round on her scooter and bought takeaways. We caught local buses together and visited temples. We had meals in local cafés. I wandered round her neighbourhood when she wasn’t there, and saw a small community going about its day-to-day business.

I was woken in the morning to local sounds (actually I was invariably awake anyway, I don’t do sleep in India); the Muslim Call to Prayer transmitted by loud microphone at, erm, 5.30 a.m. The church bells ringing a few minutes after that (20 % Muslim and Christian communities here). The street hawkers who kick in at about 6.45. The day-today noise which seems to begin so early in Indian communities.

And of course it was interesting to talk to Gwen, who knew exactly what I would be finding difficult, and could guess what assumptions I might be making. Gave me a quick Tamil lesson, and more importantly a gesture one (‘Yes’ and ‘No’ aren’t the same here, I learned rather late in the day). She’s much the same age as Tom and Ellie, but that didn’t seem to matter – it didn’t to me, anyway.

And I saved money, though that wasn’t my motivation. I tried to make sure I didn’t cost Gwen anything. So what did our new English acquaintances gain from their corporate type hotel? A thicker mattress maybe. Constant hot water possibly (doesn’t really happen in India). I’m willing to bet I had loads more fun. Oh, and by the way, the meal wasn’t that good, and cost exactly 9 times as much as the meal we’d had at lunch time in a local cafe.

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.

B****r Chennai!

I was off to Chennai because I’d found a CouchSurfing host – an Indian woman and her husband, not much younger than me. That would be interesting. What an opportunity! To stay in a real Indian household!

I had no idea what a confusing city Chennai is. It makes Bangalore look like a market town. Busybusybusy with chaotic housing and business districts jumbled together with shanty towns and piles of uncollected rubbish. I thought I’d got used to all that, but this was in a different league, especially after Pondicherry.

When I arrived chez my prospective host, she told me she didn’t plan to put me up, but had booked me into a local hotel, the only one in the area. I hated it. The traffic screamed and hooted all night. The shower didn’t work. I had to get up at 2 a.m to ask the manager to turn down his Bollywood DVD he was whiling away the night with, and the traffic and hotel clamour began well before 5.00 a.m., mainly men loudly clearing their throats, spitting and coughing. I stomped round the area looking for another hotel, but there wasn’t one, good, bad or indifferent (indifferent would do).

Some of Chennai’s endless traffic.

Later, I quite enjoyed being whisked round the city by my CouchSurfing host – highlights were the ancient banyan tree in the Theosophical Society Gardens …

Rather more of the banyan tree

Banyan Tree in the Theosophical Society Gardens…well, a tiny part of the tree, anyway

Gate by the banyan tree

… and sundry Catholic churches pretending to be wedding cakes. Lads on the beach playing cricket. Though I wasn’t allowed to pick my own photo opportunities. ‘ Here! Take photo here!’

St. Mary’s Chennai.

Inside St. Mary’s Chennai.

San Thome Catholic Cathedral: dating from the days when Madras (Chennai’s former name) was part of the Portuguese Empire.

Inside San Thome Cathedral

Oh… I can’t remember …

Um….I’ve forgotten. Another European style civic building.

A Hindu temple in Chennai. Which one? Can’t remember.

A game of street cricket

A family relaxing on the beach in Chennai

But at the back of my mind all the time, when I wasn’t fighting sleep, was the dread of spending another night at that awful, awful hotel. I was dropped off after our day out at 4.30 and fully intended to take a nap, but clamour prevented it. I gave up and went and rang dozens of hotels – no vacancies. My CouchSurfing host’s plans for the next day included a taxi to Mamallipuram, with, or apparently without her.

Night came and endless hours of listening to traffic and my fellow guests throat-clearing and spitting. So at 6.30 I got up, wrote and delivered a note to my host, and got a rickshaw to the Bus Stand. Let me tell you it’s not easy when three different people give you three different bus numbers, and three different stops, and the bus destinations are only in Tamil script, but I was determined to get to Mamallapuram good and early, so I coped. Chaotic Chennai traffic eventually gave way to palm trees, lagoons, and views of the sea, Finally I was happy.

Advice for my fellow hotel guests,but seen in Mammallapuram.

Mamallapuram struck me as a more congenial place to be. It’s a small seaside town, albeit touristy, With Added Culture. It’s a World Heritage Site with fantastic temple architecture and sculpture which I’ll share images of in my next post.

Walking down the street, I suddenly thought ‘I don’t HAVE to go back to Chennai tonight’. The first hotel I called at had a room, monastically simple, but clean. Outside my room was a shady courtyard, and as I started to talk about Chennai to the American tourist relaxing there, I just burst into tears. I didn’t know just how badly the noise and exhaustion had been affecting me, but I DID know that a night at the seaside was just what I needed.

View of Mamallipuram from the Shore Temple

Snapshot Sunday: Adverts repurposed as breakfast

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is ‘Repurpose’. We’re to submit an image of something of our own that we’ve put to a new use. I couldn’t come up with anything worth a snapshot, even though I’m rather keen on ‘repurposing’.

Instead, I want you to come with me to Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. I was there almost ten years ago as part of my Indian Adventure. I loved this town. It’s not quite on the tourist trail, as its glorious and extravagantly carved temples remain unpainted. They are not vibrantly painted like those in nearby Madurai, so Madurai gets the foreign visitors.

I stayed* with a young American academic, Gwen, who for seven years had made Thanjavur her home. She whisked me about on her motor bike, introduced me to her Indian friends and neighbours, asked me to run errands for her in the market where nobody spoke English or saw tourists much, and took me to tiny back street shops to buy freshly prepared and sizzling-hot evening meals.

I was by myself though, when early one morning I came upon these goats. They’d found a new use for the adverts pasted on the walls of a house. Look.

And here’s the cow that was tethered outside Gwen’s window. It’s found an unfortunate use for the pile of rubbish tumbled into a pile on the corner.

View from Gwen's window — View from Gwen’s window

Finally, here’s a different use for a pavement. It’s become a canvas for traditional drawings in fine sand. These designs frame the lights which lit our path homewards every evening during Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light.