Saturdays are our rest days, but we usually don't rest, we
usually play really REALLY hard. This Saturday we went to Mamallapuram, which
is a beach town on the Bay of Bengal. There was a lot of fun little shops, a
couple of Hindu temples, ancient ruins and VERY good restaurants. I actually
got spaghetti and beef meat sauce! Cows are SO sacred here so I didn’t think it
would ever be able to find it as food let alone eat it—so I didn’t pass up the
opportunity. I may of well have been snorting lines of cocaine as far as some
locals were concerned, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t see me eating it and I
had my garments on while doing it so I think I will be okay. Garments kind of work as automatic protection
from everything right?
So there are some funny story about this little outing—and
some of them do contain some biologically friendly subject content so if you
don’t want to hear about it you can stop reading now. I’m planning to have these posts made into a
hard bound book/journal of my time in India so there are simply some things I’m
not going to cut out for readers sake. This is my life as I know it right
now-the good, the bad, and the biologically friendly aspects.
Anyway, we have different vehicles that take us around. Most
of the time they are older Land Cruisers with no air conditioning or big vans
with semi-working air conditioning. But
for whatever reason we were driven in a very new and very nice Toyota for our
beach trip. It was in excellent
condition with working air conditioning AND seat belts. Our whole ride we were joking about how we
felt like movie stars being shuttled around in our swanky car. So imagine our
surprise when we were repeatedly stopped and requested to take pictures with
people as we were walking around the shops and down to the beach. I am sure it was because we were white-we
always get double takes and draw a lot of attention since we are so different.
Most little children tend to react like this:
(And yes that is a real picture I took at the new student
medical training clinic the other day.)
But regardless of the reason, the picture requests were
hilarious and only added to our ongoing movie star joke for the day. After a
morning of exploring, we went to a resort that has its own pool and a private
beach. Imagine my surprise when I went to change into my swimsuit and
discovered that things that don't ever happen for me were happening-and were
happening in a big way. I was kind of panicking some because A) This is not
ideal to deal with in India B) and REALLY NOT ideal to deal with at a beach/swimming
resort in India because even IF I was able to find ample supplies to deal with said
happenings there are no swimming friendly supplies in this entire country/part
of the world. And that is 100% true—no exaggeration. And last but not least C)
this is really happening? I was feeling immediately less movie star-ish and all
I could think about was if I had single handily ruined the nice movie star car
by leaving what is essentially my insides smeared across the front seat. After
some exploration, it was discovered that there was nothing for me except for
possibly in the next town that I could of asked my driver to take me too or
walk too—but that wasn’t really possible because have I mentioned that May is
the hottest month in India? And it just so happens that this particular May is
the hottest May India has had in 7 years. Awesome right? So what a deflated
movie star to do? Bath in the Sea of
Bengal of course.
We don’t go anywhere alone in India so myself and three
others walked down to the beach-which happened to be REALY angry and was marked red
for swimming conditions—meaning you really should not enter at all but for sure
not very deep which kind of sucks for discreetly bathing purposes. But
whatever, I really didn't have any other option so I go running into the water.
And it was brutal. I tried to jump a wave and ate it when I hit the ground
because the water was so powerful. It schooled me. 100% schooled me. And then
it knocked the air out of me a time or five. And got a lot of sand in the places
I was trying to clean up. It wasn’t pretty. But luckily for me my seat in the
movie star car was still pretty. Thank all that is holy it was very pretty and squeaky
clean.
