The start of the trip was nice. Men selling snacks, cold drinks, chai, and coffee frequently moved through the car and I enjoyed many cups of both. I sat on the bottom bunk by the window and watched as the amazing scenery flew. Since there was no AC in our car the barred windows remained open the entire trip so we could catch a breeze. Our birth was next to the door so at times I sat on the steps of the train and watched as the ground sped past my feet (not very safe in hindsight). The recent rain had turned the countryside of Gujarat into stunning colors of green and as we flew past fields of sugar cane and paddies of rice we glimpsed women in their colorful saris toiling away in the humid heat.
As we continued south the green gave way to shades of yellow and brown and the wind blowing in our car started to get hotter and hotter; so hot in fact that I had to move away from the window. We were now traveling through the desert and our nice train ride had turned into a trip through a wind tunnel in hell. The scenery was now drastically different; dry, arid land surrounded our train as we flew past lone palm trees providing respite from the blazing sun to lone herders.
We were all miserable by this point and I couldn’t even handle sitting next to anyone because of the extra body heat that was generated. I climbed up to the top bunk and tried to find my happy place in such an uncomfortable environment. I pulled out my bag of coveted Hershey Kisses, my fail safe, and wanted to cry when I saw that they had all melted! Feeling distraught, frustrated and tired I laid down on the hard, vinyl covered bed and tried to sleep through the night. In the morning I climbed down from my hot perch, eyes red, energy level low and craving for coffee high. I sipped on coffee and immersed myself in my book, trying to forget that our train was to arrive in Chennai at 4pm and it was just barely after 8am. Finally, we arrived in Chennai, a mere 36 hours after departure.
The Chennai Train Station was huge and bursting at the seams with people. We negotiated a mini-bus to take us to our dorm which had been confirmed weeks in advance and it took about 45 minutes to make our way through the busy city. I was so excited to get settled in and finally take a cold shower; it was my light at the end of the tunnel, or rather, the end of my train tracks. Upon arrival we were told that this was a men’s dorm and we were not allowed to stay there. There was a mix-up in the reservation and apparently our names were mistaken to be names of men! At this point we were all exhausted and feeling disgusting after sweating profusely for the last 36 hours. The only thing on my mind was a cold shower and scrubbing off the train grime from my body. After about an hour of waiting they were able to find a place for us to stay at a nearby campus, which we walked to in the thick humidity.
The dorm can be compared to accommodations at a summer camp; a really bad one; for really bad kids. Our room had three wooden beds covered with a very thin cotton mat (circa 1950 perhaps) and decaying fabric that tried to pass as a sheet. I gave the pillow a couple pats and clouds of dust flew into the air. Mosquitoes were already buzzing around, obviously excited that they would have fresh flesh to feed on for the next four nights. The ceiling fan was spinning in the most lackadaisical manner and barely produced a breeze at all. I groaned and headed for the shower/bathroom which was located downstairs and through a courtyard; not a trek I would be making in the middle of night alone.
Life always seems better after a shower and we felt renewed by the cleansing water and were ready to hit the town. We jumped into some rickshaws in search of some dinner. I feasted on a burger (veggie of course) and savored my first cold beer in India. We were still tired from our exhausting trip and so we went to bed early. Again, it was almost impossible to sleep because of the heat and mosquitoes. I was the only one to bring bug repellent which we had to use sparingly between the three of us because it was a very small can. It only contained 23% deet; no match for the determined mosquitoes. They acted as if we didn’t have any deet on at all and proceeded to feast. I tried to cover my body with my sheet to protect myself from bites, but then I became impossibly hot. In the morning I was covered in bites and the bed had given me fresh bruises on my hips and back. Looking at the bites covering my body and face I thought that my souvenir from Chennai would be a case of malaria. This is not what I had in mind.
Our purpose in Chennai was to attend a conference for English teachers. The takeaway from the conference was questionable; most of the lecturers geared their talk towards college age students and the assumption that resources fully abound. This is not the case for us where we teach. My resources are a chalkboard and a piece of chalk; I can’t even rely on electricity in my classrooms. I had to laugh when a man wanted to demo a language program that cost $20,000. He had to laugh when I told him my yearly budget is $500. Some of the lectures were interesting and we did get to network with some teachers. There were only 5 other foreingers from America, Canada, and the UK. To be honest, my favorite part of our days at the conference became our twice daily tea break.
When we weren’t busy in the conference we explored Chennai as much as we could. Chennai is a nice city and is much cleaner and more organized than the bigger cities we have explored in Gujarat. It is situated on the ocean, making for high humidity and heat, and during our time there it was unusually hot. We sped through the city in rickshaws, cutting in and out of the busy traffic. We spent some time in a coffee shop (with real coffee! no Nescafe!), stopped at an English bookstore-twice (I went a little crazy), walked along the beach at night and ate the best masala dosa at a local favorite spot. Chennai definitely has more to offer, but our limited time there only allowed us to get a small taste of the city.
Reluctantly, we returned to the Chennai Train Station to board our 36 hour train home. My body was already tense just thinking about the next 36 hours and I seriously regretted not buying sleeping pills in Chennai. Again, I plunged myself into my book and then listened to my iPod as I stared out the window from my bunk. Slowly, the yellow and brown scenery returned to green as we crept closer ever so slowly back into familiar territory. As we stepped off the train onto the platform at Vyara an incriminating photo was taken (see below blog titled Feverish Foreigners) and we rushed to the vans that were arranged to pick us up. Happily we unlocked our front door and breathed a sigh of relief. We were home.
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