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. From now on, increasingly exhausted, my entries become terser and frustratingly light on detail.
In Which I Make My Escape
Sunday 2nd December
Night came and endless hours of listening to traffic and my fellow guests noisily throat-clearing and spitting. I dreaded hanging around till 9.00 a.m. to go out with Y and her driver, being driven around and cramming in three Sites of Interest before 4 o’clock, when I’d be free to … return to the hotel. So at 6.30 I got up, wrote a note excusing myself, delivered it to Y’s house. and got a rickshaw to the Bus Stand. I knew I was being rude, but I was at the end of my tether and beyond caring.
It’s not easy when at the Bus Stand, 3 different people give you 3 different bus numbers, and 3 different stops, and the bus destinations are only in Tamil script, but I was determined to get to my intended destinaton, Mamallapuram, good and early. Chaotic Chennai traffic eventually gave way to palm trees, lagoons, and views of the sea, Finally I was happy.
Mamallapuram struck me as a more congenial place to be. Small seaside town , albeit touristy, With Added Culture. It’s a World Heritage Site with fantastic temple architecture and sculpture. I knew it dated from the 7th and 8th centuries CE, that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features intricate stone carvings scattered over a wide area, mainly the beach.
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 for a mere RS 200, monastically simple, but clean. Outside my room is 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 had been affecting me, but I DID know that once I’d decided to stay here, a weight fell from me, and I’ve bounded around feeling I’ve got out of jail free. And of course I only went there in the first place to CouchSurf, which didn’t happen, for reasons that aren’t altogether clear to me.
I sauntered round being a tourist, getting a coffee on a roof terraced cafe, and in a fairly low-key way enjoyed the sculpture all over the place from the beach to sites at the end of town. In among are extraordinary boulders balancing precariously in the manner of Brimham rocks.
I had a salad lunch at an Indo-French cafe before returning to the beach and its treasures. At one destination, I found I’d made the huge mistake of arriving at the same time as 12 coaches worth of local university students. I couldn’t help comparing them with Emily and friends, in the unlikely event that their university course leaders, at her – or any other English seat of learning – would bring upwards of 200 students out on a Sunday afternoon to Do Culture. Instead of distressed jeans, subversive T Shirts and Attitude, the girls were sweetly young, quietly standing in pairs separately from the equally demure young male students. Luckily for me they were all made to wait outside quietly until long after I’d been and gone. Most people seemed to be there to have pictures of themselves and their families taken in front of the more famous sculptures, such as the life-sized elephant, so it was all a bit of a challenge, if entertaining.
I’ll go back to Chennai at the last possible moment to check out of the hell-hole and go to the airport. Luckily there are loads of opportunities to shop here, and I had some fun souvenir shopping – until I came to pay. For some reason, my card has apparently been blocked, which saves money, but could be awkward tomorrow….. Mal rang the bank for me and they say there is no problem, so let’s see.
But I’ve bought a toothbrush for tonight. Sorted. Later, I had a not very exciting meal in the rooftop restaurant above my hotel – in a powercut. My companion was an American/German woman flying home tonight, but she was a bit of a misery. In bed now, writing this, since I couldn’t get to sleep. And actually, I don’t feel very well….
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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