Welcome to Tamil Nadu! Go away!

While we enjoyed Varkala, Kovalam we found a bit less interesting, with more touts hassling tourists, higher prices (some breakfast items were more expensive than they are in the US!), and not as scenic. But our hotel room was cheap, so we took a day off and got bored. It was time to get back on the bikes and make some distance!

Lighthouse Beach

Somehow the sight (and smell) of all these fish outside each restaurant convinced me NOT to order the fish. Maybe it had something to do with the lack of ice? I ordered the chicken. It came out raw in the middle, so I fed it to a stray cat and switched to veg dishes for a while…

It’s been two months since we arrived in this country! And today, we were going to reach the end of India! Well, the southern most tip of the Indian subcontinent, anyway.

The ride was full of challenges, though, upon entering our fifth Indian state, Tamil Nadu.

It started with kids coming up to us, which has always been a fun sign. They love to practice their English and joke around and poke the bikes. But this time, they simply said something in Tamil and held their hands palm up; we didn’t need a translation to know they were saying, “money”. While we get this sometimes in the cities, this was a first outside tourist areas while on our bikes and was quite depressing.

(Just a side note: I don’t give to beggars because many are part of bigger organized groups and the money is rarely given out fairly. Instead I find responsible organizations that I trust to help those in need. In India, I’ve made a contribution to Reality Gives in Mumbai, which provides education for youth in the slums.)

Another sign of entering Tamil Nadu is that spitting is back in. Spitting and smoking in public is against the law in Kerala. Lots of Indians chew paan (a mixture of narcotic betel nuts with tobacco and other spices) and spit the reddish mouth juice into the streets. These red stains are all over India but nicely absent in Kerala due I guess to strong enforcement of the ban.

Not only did we see lots more red stains everywhere, but one guy spit out of a bus missing me by inches. I caught up with the bus and the asshole wouldn’t even make eye contact.

Now I was getting grumpy, and I wasn’t the only one apparently. I tried to cheer myself up by smiling and waving “hi” at some kids and young adults, always a way to elicit a smile everywhere else in India. But here in Tamil Nadu, I just got worried or upset looks. Thinking maybe the hand wave gesture isn’t nice here, I tried the Indian head wobble with the same result. It’s one of the things we’ve grown to love about India is the cheerfulness of almost everyone we’ve passed, and suddenly it was gone.

Traffic was not nice, either. In addition to the typical India traffic patterns, Tamil Nadu people seem to be in quite a bit more of a rush and like to overtake a lot more aggressively. There are also a ton of triple and quintuple sped bumps everywhere causing traffic jams, where everyone again tries to overtake each other even though everyone is stopped, taking the speed bump at 0.5kph. Honestly, I think the potholes are sufficient; they don’t need to add speed bumps to the mix, but whatever. We’ve grown used to getting off the road to safety in these situations, but today was notable for the number of times we had to do so, often cursing quietly in the process. (Yelling is considered incredibly rude in India, and it was all I could do at times to prevent being an insufferable asshole, I’ll tell you.)

The roads were quite rough in places, and riding along the coast was nowhere near as nicely paved as Kerala. Part of this is due of course to the tsunami from 2004, and we saw some monuments commemorating the lives lost to this tragedy and took some time to stop and have a moment of silence.

At one section of washed out road, we turned around and made the next turn inland trying to find a way around. There was a family standing there talking in Tamil, and I waved, and in response, one of the men said something that sounded an awful lot like, “go away!” I will try really hard to assume that I misheard, but after another gentleman gave me directions with hand signals, I turned around to see the family quite agitated, a woman raising her voice to the man. I waved sheepishly an apology and received a snarl as a response, so we quickly left.

On the plus side, we did get a number of friendly waves and smiles throughout the day, and one person even said, “welcome!” to us. It just seemed that the difficult interactions far outweighed the pleasant ones, quite the opposite of every other day in India so far. Two fellows even asked us if we’d eaten, and we assume they would have offered us something if we hadn’t just had lunch. And whenever we stopped, we got tons of questions about our bikes, which is normal, especially when we stopped outside a paan shop to fill our water bottles. So perhaps we just got unlucky today; I hope it doesn’t continue negatively for much longer.

And, aside from too much trash, the coast is stunning, a true gem. Lined with small villages with colorful houses, tons of churches and temples at least every kilometer, crashing surf, and palm trees everywhere. And not a single tourist in sight.

Finally we reached “the end of India”, Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip. From here on, all of our travels through India will trend to the north instead of south. Of course this city is quite a tourist spot, mostly with Indian tourists but we spotted a European couple and spoke with a South African couple at dinner.

We found a nice hotel for a good price and an amazing shower. We haven’t had a hot shower in over a week, as most places don’t have 24 hour hot water and we shower in the afternoons after our ride when the water heaters are usually off. So we both soaked for a while before finding a nice restaurant that would have had an ocean view if it hadn’t been dark.

So the next three days will be riding along the highway and stopping at non-descript towns until we reach Madurai, where we plan to spend Christmas. Not my first choice for a Christmas destination, but I’ve had stranger Christmas’s before, so it will be fine.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!