Time to pack up

This is my last update from Chennai; I’m moving on tomorrow afternoon (the 18th); I’m taking a 16 hour bus journey back to state of Kerala. I came from there, 17 days ago… I left from the main city Trivandrum. Now I’m going to a smaller town; Kottayam. I initially thought I’d be around Chennai and exploring the coast, up until the end of the month. But nope… the situation here at Jayanthis’ house has changed; her brother is arriving from Delhi and there’ll be a lack of space. They never asked me to leave, but I know when it’s my cue… And that’s cool…

Friday I started making plans and around the same time I was contacted by a teacher, Riya, who I worked with and became quite close to, when I was teaching at the boarding school last year. She called me and wanted me to visit her as soon as I got the chance. So, the timing was perfect and we arranged for me to move onwards to her place. Wednesday morning, after a bumpy bus ride, I’ll arrive in Kottayam where she’ll be picking me up. She lives with the whole family (extensions and all) who I’ve already met. I stayed there last year too for a weekend. It’ll be brilliant to catch up with her again and I love the settings of their home – out along the ‘jungle like’ country roads of Kerala… Cool! I’ll stay for a few days only, and after that I’m not too sure what will happen. I’m waiting for a few things to fall into place, with the teaching job that will be starting soon. Once I know more about that, I’ll know more about where I’ll be heading. But for now, I’m just taking it a few days at a time.

Knowing that I was be leaving this area and not knowing if I’d be back, I figured it was time for me to do some exploring on my last full day here. I’d heard about the tourist spots outside the city, and figured I ‘needed’ to take a daytrip. So I headed out this morning, by myself at 06.30am (Jayanthi was swamped with work). It was the crack of dawn and I hopped on the bus to a nearby temple town called Mamallapuram. It’s famous for archaeological excavations of temples, caves and sculptures. I’d been meaning to visit the place last year too. So finally I was branching out and being a real tourist for a day! This meant I should’ve been happy, curious to explore and excited to see some real history of India. Well… do you think I was any of these things? Hell no… I was nothing of the kind! I went there, in such an angry, annoyed and total frustrated state. Don’t ask me why… wasn’t able to figure it out…haha…