Tri-Seas of India

Saturday 7/7/12

We arrived at the tip of India and loaded into a very nice car – a change from our full size vans we’ve been traveling in so far.  The issue, though, was that there were only 5 seats and there are 6 of us, so we had to rotate who got to straddle the two captain’s chairs in the middle row of seats.  The suspension on this car was much nicer than what we were used to!  Definitely made for a nicer ride, but my car sickness (that I’ve really never had until India) still persisted at times.  I’m thinking that the car sickness is partly due to the malaria meds, partly due to the way they drive in India, but I know it isn’t much fun.  Never actually got sick, just felt nauseous a lot.  We drove about a half hour to check into our hotel, which was a very nice.  At the end of the hall, we had a BEAUTIFUL view of the tri-seas and the monuments that we would later visit.

The southernmost tip of India is the only place in the world where three bodies of water meet – the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea.  It is known as the tri-seas area.  It was amazing to realize I was in such a cool place.  Once we were settled into the hotel, we went and had a buffet breakfast in the hotel.  We then headed down to a boat which took us over to an island where a few temples stood.  There is another island right next to it with a huge statue on it.  It is a 133-foot-tall sculpture of the Tamil poet and saint Thiruvalluvar, in Kanyakumari.  We related this statue to our Statue of Liberty because it was so large and surrounded by water.  Loading the boat, I felt a little bit like the Titanic because we all had to grab a life vest from a huge pile on the shore.  I’m not sure I trusted the boats 100%, but it’s all about the experience.  The temples were neat, but I enjoyed the breeze and the water more.  It was easily 10 degrees cooler at the tip, and I just love being on the water, watching the waves, and smelling the fresh(er) air. 

After the trip to the island, we journeyed to a super-high bridge that we walked across.  On the way there, we passed some rubber tree farms, so we got out and examined the "sap" collection of the rubber.  Amazingly, when we got to the bridge I was ok with the height because there were rails that went across the bridge, but Daryl was not and basically could not look over the edge.  It was a beautiful view, but it was about to storm, so the skies were not clear.  After we crossed the bridge, we got to try some fruits and even learned where an almond comes from!  

After this, we traveled to a wooden palace nearby.  This was very interesting to look at the intricacy of the architecture and all of the different materials they used to build the palace.  Very royal!  For  lunch, we got to have my favorite -  flaky bread (paratha)!!  Apparently this is something that you can only get in southern India, so sadly I won’t be having any when I go experience American Indian food.  After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to check out and get a few souvenirs made.  We drove to a spot on the beach for the sunset, and there were a ton of people there.  Unfortunately, it was a little cloudy, but the sun still set and it was beautiful.  We got to stand in the water where all three seas meet – something I’ll never be able to do again. 

We headed for a bus ride home at 8.  We had a sleeper bus again, which was great because it meant I could actually get some sleep!  I was sharing the bunk with Pamela, and we woke up about an hour into the trip, both needing to use the restroom.  Every hour the bus would stop, but it was on the side of the road.  So the men would get out and pee on the side of the bus, but the women couldn’t do anything!  (As a side note, I should mention that for all the traveling we did, we RARELY saw women traveling with us – we were usually the few, if not the only women traveling.)  After 3 or 4 stops, we couldn’t wait any longer.  We tried to wake up our professor to get him to tell the driver to stop, but he was sound asleep in a double bed with some Indian man we didn’t know.  We tried calling his phone since he wasn’t waking up, but it was turned off.  I tried shouting over the man, who had JUST been out to use the bathroom, but he pretended he was asleep and wouldn’t help me by tapping our professor next to him.  I obviously would feel weird reaching over the man to tap our professor, so it was up to us to solve our own problems.  We could no longer lay down because that increased the urgency to go somehow, so we were sitting up in our beds dying.  We realized our only option was to bother the driver, which we didn’t want to do because, well, he was driving a huge bus in Indian traffic!  “Bathroom?” We questioned him.  Most likely, he didn’t understand English, so we decided as few words as possible would be best.  He looked at us like we were crazy and he had no clue what we were saying.  We figured we were out of luck, and decided the next side of the road place we stopped, we would just have to squat next to the bus and shield each other – Julia also had to use the bathroom by now.  All of a sudden, about 1:15, we started to pull into a gas station-type area where there was a bathroom!  Halleluiah!  We literally ran to the bathroom – one of the best things ever.  Only the three of us and one Indian woman got off of the bus to use the bathroom.

Sunday 7/8/12

We arrived back to the hostel at 9am.  We had breakfast, and when we got back, we noticed a note laying there – the care package my parents sent had arrived and was ready for pick-up at the post office!  Sadly, the post office is closed on Sunday, so I would have to wait until Monday to get the package, but I was sooooo excited!!  For the rest of the day we rested around the hostel and got caught up on a few things.  A few of us headed to the mall for some last minute shopping. For dinner, Dr. Kannan took us out to a nice place with his family and the Gunaseelans (from the lab).  I was introduced to Dr. Gunaseelan’s family as Jim Carrey again – what a surprise.  Everything I thought looked good was apparently very spicy, so I couldn’t order it.  Dr. Mohan ordered me some sort of vegetable dish (stir-fry?) with bread, and it was decent, but a lot of food so I couldn’t finish the whole meal – imagine that.  I also bit into some sort of spice that I must not have been supposed to eat (Indian dishes commonly have extremely hot peppers, cinnamon bark, or other spices that are in the dish for flavor, but you are not supposed to eat.  I usually get a late memo on this, and therefore eat things I shouldn’t).  This particular spice tasted like I bit into a huge chunk of incense at Church.  Yuck!  That kind of spoiled my appetite for the dish after that because that was ALL I could taste, and I had no clue what it looked like to know what I was supposed to avoid.

Monday 7/9/12

Monday morning we were able to relax.  Our task for the day was to finish our abstracts and work on our powerpoint presentations for the International conference we were to present at.  We all had to split up the research projects so that we all had an abstract to write, so my specific abstract was “Evaluating the incidence of Tuberculosis amongst organized and unorganized farms in Tamil Nadu, India.”  In research, you don’t always know what your results are going to be, and for my research, we assumed that we would find some tuberculosis positive cases, especially in the unorganized farms, because we had found a few in clinical samples.  However, all of the cows in these farms that we tested were negative for tuberculosis.  This is good for the area, showing potential that preventative measures are being taken, but it did not make my results very exciting!

In the afternoon, we had some time to run some errands.  We got our pictures printed for the picture frames we were going to give as gifts, and it was at a photo printing company – there is no CVS or Walgreens photo printing computer where you do it yourself – here, you go to a man with your memory drive from your camera, he loads them on his computer, and you tell him how many of each picture you would like.  Our driver came to try to help us translate, but it was still a bit of a process.  Next, we went to go pick up my package at the Indian post office.  Wow, this was something else.  It was located in what I can try to describe as an extremely run-down strip mall, and the post office was a stretch of 3 doors/offices on the second floor.  There were basically no signs, and definitely none that looked anything like what I’m used to post office signs looking like.  After waiting for the employees to finish their lunch, one man helped me get my package.  He had to go in a wooden trunk that was locked to get it, and when he gave it to me, I had to sign for it and give a phone number and such.  The package looked like it had gone through hell and back – wrapped with rope that I know my parents didn’t wrap it with, beaten and bent in the corners, etc.  When we got it back to the hostel, I immediately opened it.  Inside was lots of goodies from America, but there was an issue – my mom sent individual jelly packets – the ones at the tables in restaurants – and all of those burst open.  That meant no PB&J (so sad) and also meant that everything in the package was covered in sticky jelly.  After cleaning up the mess, we all gazed at the food that was so familiar, yet so unfamiliar to us now.  Easy mac, miracle whip, pudding, applesauce, tortilla chips, black olives, bean dip, taco seasoning, nacho cheese dip, pancake mix, and syrup were some of the items included!!  Such an exciting day! 

We went to the vet school to edit our abstracts with the professors and then attended some of Dr. Mohan’s anatomy lecture where he was dissecting a dog.  We returned to the hostel early to help the kitchen staff make dinner and make some of our very own American potato salad!  We didn’t have mustard, though, so we had to attempt to make some mustard from mustard seeds (which they use as seasoning in a LOT of dishes)!  It was an interesting experience, but it worked out really well and everybody said it tasted great.  That is, everybody but the Indians – they did NOT like it, but I guess they aren’t really used to the taste of mayonnaise.