Rooted Wanderings

Go to Kerala...Go to Kerala… this message seemed to echo among almost everyone we talked with. From the Indian restaurant owner in Scotland, friends from home, and our Chennai hosts, the message was clear. So we went to Kerala, eager to discover why everyone loves this state so much! While Tamil Nadu is on the east side of South India, Kerala is on the west. That meant it was time for our first train ride, 15 hours rolling across South India. Although wandering around the Chennai station at 3 am trying to figure out where our late train would be arriving was not the most fun, the train ride itself was surprisingly great. It was actually better than a number of our train rides in Europe. Trains are definitely the way to travel! It helped that we were in the relatively expensive AC2 class (by default, since the tickets we luckily found were almost the only ones still available on the whole train!). AC2 is a curtained compartment with bunk beds on either side of a narrow aisle. M

After a week in busy Chennai, we were eager for some relative peace and quiet as we headed out of town on the bus. Our next stop would be 2 nights in the town of Mahabalipuram about an hour and a half south of Chennai. All of our hosts and friends recommended this town, famous for its historic stone carvings and surfing, so we figured we should go see it. After that, we would travel an hour and a half further south and spend 5 nights in the Auroville community, an inspiring, bizarre, and unique place. Then we would loop back up to Chennai for a couple days to attend a wedding reception. We’ll try to condense our narrative a bit for this blog post. Although we won’t go into as much detail about all our chores, remember that all those little things like finding bottled water, seeking out air conditioning, determining where and what to eat, and mapping out transit routes continue to occupy a disproportionate amount of our time and energy. Indeed, sometimes it is hard to go the next st