February 9th, 2008 - Pondicherry, India

There is a reason why people prefer the extremely slow train to the bus.  We discovered this yesterday on our 7 hour chauffeured car ride to Pondicherry from the school.  

Evy & I, along with the 4 other volunteers from Shanti Bhavan, rented a car & chauffeur to go to Pondicherry.  On the map, it seems like a fairly simple drive, especially since we didn’t have to do the driving ourselves.  Simple highway driving, following the route from one large city (Bangalore) to another (Pondicherry).  Then we discovered the true meaning of potholes.  

As the 3 crammed into the very back of a small 7 person car - Katie (the volunteer from Boston), Evy & I were very very ready to emerge from the car 7 hours after we’d left.  Bottoming out a small minivan type vehicle every 10 or so minutes (not to mention the near bottoming out every 1-2 mins) along with psychotic bus drivers who like to pass other buses by coming into our lane (opposite direction) meant that it was a stop & start ride from start to finish.  I think it was something like 188 km total.  In theory, we could have driven it in 2 & 1/2 to 3 hours…  Not so much….  Not looking forward to re-cramming my legs into that back seat tomorrow.  I feel like an old lady, I’m still all sore & stiff.  However this could also be due to another reason…

Yesterday morning I was woken up at the ungodly hour of 5:22 am. Some moron with the wrong number (I discovered later when I finally decided to answer the phone in case of emergency) was calling on my phone.  Once awakened, I couldn’t fall back asleep.  I’d been thinking for a while that I should try to get some exercise, maybe remind myself of some basic Hapkido practices.  So I grabbed my Ipod, and, with a little MIA to get me going, ran out to the basketball court, where hopefully the guard in the tower wouldn’t be able to see my lack of physical abilities.  I think the MIA was a little too good.  Before I knew it I was happily leaping not-so-agilely around the court to the music.  Kicks here, lunges there.  Today, my body doesn’t quite know what my mind was apparently thinking, because I can barely move.  Next time I’m going to have to try to restrain my excitement at being outside with loud music a little…  and maybe avoid the 7 hour cramped-quarters car ride directly thereafter. 

The arrival in Pondicherry was a whole debacle in itself, but I think I’ll have to write about that later.  We’re running out of time at the internet cafe.  Off to look up traveling through the backwaters of Kerala, India…

PS Hopefully I’ll be able to post more photos soon.  In case you haven’t noticed I’ve started posting them on Facebook because it’s been much more user-friendly both for adding & viewing purposes.  I’ve listed them as being only visible to my ‘friends’ on Facebook though so join/add me if you’re interested and aren’t acquainted with me on Facebook already!