On the Road.......

8.30 AM: Well, here I was, back on the road again, from Madras to my mother's village( its about 350 Km from Madras), after about 4-6 hrs sleep( I just arrived the night before). The road was absolutely atrocious ( ever heard of the offroad experience? well here its offroad all the way). Temperature was in the 40's ( celsius, not farenheit). It was like the bloody Sahara, man!! We were averaging about 50Kmh, so you can imagine how long the journey took. Nothing interesting actually, its monsoon tropical all the way ie; cactus( i'm not joking!!!) with a sprinkling of shrubbery. it was really looking like No Man's land in the wild west, when in the horizon ( I know this sounds like a country song), I saw, (hold yer breath), a gleaming rest stop!!! I could not believe my eyes!! In a country where "TOILET" means a one way ticket to the hospital, this stop looked exactly like the ones that you get along the PLUS highway. I was even expecting to see palm oil plantations around!! Anyway, we got down and bought some kulfi, which incidentally is India's answer to ice cream and the odd thing about it is that it is packaged (like your usual Magnolias and walls) in a tiny, earthenware pot. Talk about biodegradeable!!!

5.30PM : We have finally arrived, and I must say, its fantastic here. We were trundling down the road, when suddenly a wild peacock appeared! My god, it was beautiful. It was strutting up and down the road like it owned it but scrammed after we honked. In fact the whole area ( around the village) is inhabited by this bird. Its much cooler here due to the extra foliage and we seem to be surrounded by either euclyptus or sugarcane( no paddy yet, its summer and harvesting's already been done) The wedding's being held at the house and not at a temple ( this is normal for a village wedding), and so entire house looks pretty colourful. The wedding's tomorrow and so I end this post with "Good Night".