Journal 11-21-2010

Journal 11-21-2010

Today started off well. I slept in and then Katie and I went to Coffee.com the Internet café to do some work and write a couple of emails. In the afternoon I made spaghetti… again, because I had to finish off all the sauce before I left. While I was packing up the rest of my stuff, Claire managed to get a Skype call through on the poor Internet connection she uses in Cairo. It was great to hear from her, I haven’t been able to talk to her on the phone for almost a month.
I was in high spirits as I said goodbye to the girls and got into the car to begin my trip to Kerala. Unfortunately the driver was a little bit to enthusiastic about driving in a car with a horn and AC. He was blasting on the horn so much that he may as well have just kept it honking continuously for the entire 4 hour drive. He also kept the AC on high for the entire trip, which was completely unnecessary because it was a chilly night outside the car. I should have said something about it but I didn’t.
The drive itself was really interesting. It was my first experience with Indian highways. It is pretty scary to be in the car when an Indian driver is going at highway speed. The same lack of traffic rules apply to the highway. Drivers force their way between cars to merge, they break at the last second, and pull out into oncoming highway traffic like it is no big deal. On Indian highways there are uncontrolled crosswalks, pedestrians, cows, dogs, bicycles, mopeds and severely underpowered motorcycles all traveling at less than ¼ of the speed of the cars. Busses and Lorries also add to the mess. They can’t go very fast and every car wants to pass them. But they also block the visibility of the road in front of the passing car. I can’t count the number of times we have pulled out into the opposite lane to try to pass only to be confronted by an oncoming buss or a group of cows. I am convinced that the Indian government should stick to building only smaller roads to prevent people from going fast.
I made it to the train station 4 hours early, as I had anticipated… the VCRC people had insisted I leave at 5:00 for a 11:30 train. So I sat down on the station floor with everyone else. This was a really interesting experience… Within minutes I was surrounded by families and groups who had taken up spots around me. After a couple of hours I became aware that I was one of about 3 single travelers in a group of hundreds of people. Nobody does anything alone in India. I am fairly certain that I looked a bit out of place sitting in this group of people because at one point an bummy looking black American dude came up to me and asked me “are you ok?”  I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary except sitting on the station floor but that has to be considered normal considering the other 100 or so people sitting around me. Later someone tried to hand me a baby. So I pretended that I only spoke Spanish. It is never a good idea to accept babies from strangers.
Finally my train showed up at platform 7. I walked over there and waited some more then finally got on. About an hour later the train left the station and around 2:00 I finally fell asleep. I had chips and water for dinner.