Have Horn, Will Travel

We arrived in Trichy yesterday after a five hour drive from Pondicherry. Confession time - we did not travel by bus, but by private car. It seemed so much more civilized. I imagine people will stop reading the blog now that we have become car travellers and have stopped having bus adventures!

By the way, Trichy's official name is Tiruchchirappalli or something similarly spelled. Geordie was afraid we might have gone to the wrong hotel since there are a lot of long-named towns in this area starting with the letter T. But the hotel had a reservation for us and everything matched up with the map we had so looks like we got to the right place.

The drive was almost incident free. We came close to wiping out two children on a bicycle who drove onto the highway without bothering to look our way. The driver screeched to a halt, the children fell off the bike and then we continued on our way. The kids looked more shocked than injured, don't worry. Geordie wondered aloud that it was a surprise that the kids seemed to grow up, what with the traffic they deal with.

The five hour drive was a 225 km trip, so we didn't make really good time like we might in Canada. About half that distance was along a terrible road, which is being rebuilt as a four lane highway. It is the second worst road I have ever been on, after the one we drove in Zambia. At a few places the road had been recently surfaced so the driver drove up to a 100 km an hour. I worried that he would have had little experience driving at that speed. Most of the time was spent driving at about 50 to 60 km an hour, except in towns and villages where 20 was fast and the worst potholed sections which were a matter of weaving around potholes, motorcycles, giant trucks, crowded buses, bullock carts and overloaded farm equipment! I spent 10 minutes counting the beeps the driver made on his horn, and it worked out to 8.8 per minute. That's close to 500 per hour, so 2500 for the trip. I'm sure this is a good estimate because that 20 minutes was counted over some country driving and some village driving (yes in the same 10 minutes).

Along the way we saw lots of amazing sights. Part of the area is for sugar cane and the farm vehicles were heaped about 10 to 12 feet above the upper level of the cart's walls. And the trucks are often bulging at the seams with huge tarps hiding the unidentifiable loads. Of course as well as carrying lots of people, the motor bikes are used for delivery too - and often it's some long load carried sideways. I saw what looked like a beam for a small house carried blithely held on by the driver's feet. There was another driver who had a huge basket between him and the handlebars. The bad news is that these motorcyclists are ignored by the car and bus drivers who pull out to pass other cars, trucks or buses without any regard for motorcyles. Every motorcycle for itself I guess and survival of the fittest. How did we not see any accidents?

When we arrived at Trichy it was a blessing to get out of the car. The fact that our hotel is across the street from the bus station means we get a cacophony of horns from there as well. We talked about looking for another hotel and did a survey of several within walking distance but a bit further removed from the station. But last night the noise quieted down quite a lot and with the sound of the air conditioner, it was quite bearable. Besides this morning we woke to find someone had slipped a copy of the Indian Express newspaper under the door so we got our dose of news without even having to go out and find a paper at a restaurant.

So here we stay for three more days. We are taking the train next - an overnighter from here to the very tip of India at Kanyakumari (I can't guarantee that spelling) - it's also known as Cape Comorin. It is the meeting of the Bay of Bengal, the India Ocean and the Arabian Sea so there will no doubt be a lot of water. I wonder how they work out the borders of oceans amd seas anyway.

There will be another blog later. We have to tell you about the food here. It's a little different from where we have been so it deserves its own entry. Later.