Monkeying around
Moving on from Thanjavur we decided to take the main road as the small roads added too much distance between available hotels. The advantage of this is that it’s short, the roads are generally excellent with fabulously smooth well kept tarmac and there’s lots happening along the road. As it was a Sunday (we think) there were loads of restaurants and stalls and even houses with enormous festival size speakers blaring out highly distorted Hindi music to bop along to on the way. As you’d pass them you’d have to cringe as they were ear splitting loud. ...
Read MoreHappy People
Sacred Pond Sacred Pond Temple entrance Cerimonial Chariot in Kumbakonam Another Cerimonial Chariot.. Our day off in Kumbakonam saw us visiting more temples and the grand pond. This either enormous pond or small lake is the centre piece of a 12 yearly festival where 12000 people bathe in it at once. It’s a very impressive lake and is surrounded by steps for easy access, but fenced off for most of the time so you can’t get into the holy waters easily. Although some thinner than us folks squeezed through the fencing for a dip. We have had a fair amount of Indian food so...
Read MoreLive long and prosper..
Leaving Pondicherry on a bicycle at rush hour is an activity only Klingons will truly appreciate. Before jumping on to their Bicycle, Worf would no doubt shout “Today is a good day to die”. It’s certainly the best attitude to have when cycling here. Once you accept there’s no way you’ll survive this madness you can relax and enjoy it. To be fair to the local drivers, they all miss each other and although it looks utter chaos to us rule abiding westerners I think they generally know what they’re up to and if you behave like they expect you to – throw...
Read MoreOutshining the Prime Minister….
Leaving behind the oasis of our beach hotel we headed south on the main road. There’s no choice here unless you want to divert inland a considerable distance. So we hogged the edge of the road and let the cars, trucks, busses and Tuk Tuks do their thing. We saw a mexican standoff, where a bus busily ignoring the oncoming traffic tried to overtake a truck and the car coming the other way had to stop in the road. They were both nose to nose and neither would move whilst the rest of the traffic squeezed past on the outside hooting even more than normal. And then a bus that didn’t...
Read MoreTime for a rest!
And we’re off…. Having had the chance to experience the traffic in Chennai first hand in multiple tuk tuks, we decided the best time to set off on our cycle seemed to be sometime before the invention of the tuk tuk! As this wasn’t an option we opted for getting up at 5.30 and leaving at sunrise, which turned out to be a good plan. The traffic was light and we managed to get out without any difficulty. But it’s hot work, even at that time in the morning and we’d drunk 2 x 750ml bottles of water by the end of the first 20km. The journey itself showed the huge gap...
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