Mega-Chat!

I have a fear that Blogger will no longer be free - at least to me, if I continue such long posts with lotsa pictures. I'll wait til they ding me to change my ways though. For those of you who would like less eyestrain when reading the blog, I have a solution. DH will not allow me to change the original but you can view it at a different size. Go up to the top left of your screen and click on "View" and pull down to "Text Size." Then on the menu that pops up choose "Larger." Don't forget to change back to "Medium" in that same menu once you leave the site. I do have plans to improve various things about the page but can't do them until I return.

Yesterday we drove to Chennai with a local friend - Janine - who is a talented florist, artist, jewelry maker and clothing designer who has been living here for 6 years. She knows all the textile stores and was happy to take me in tow. When I say drove, I mean we hired a driver with an S.U.V. with airconditioning that even had separate controls for backseaters! The wonders of having a driver cannot be overrated! You get dropped off and he deals with parking or hovering until you're done. Mr. Yasin is a very good driver and of course an expert in the language of HORN. Plus, he's very careful around animals (who also know HORN when they hear it) and never falls asleep - a huge plus! We took the coast road as usual which means passing through rural villages the whole way. There are always cows or goats or dogs in the road and much of driving involves dodging them and passing slower vehicles. No traffic lights or lanes so the main rule of the road is that the smaller gives way to the bigger from dogs up to huge trucks. It's very typical to look out the front window and see monster-sized trucks bearing down on you in your lane - but - they are merely passing and everyone shuffles back at the last minute. Sometimes I watch and marvel, sometimes I can't, but I have lots of confidence in the drivers we've used. There are wonderful landscapes along the way. Many rice fields and areas close to the sea where they harvest salt. The landscape is carved into shallow square pans where the water is evaporated out for the salt - then piled high in bright white yurt shapes and then covered with palm fronds so that they look like pointed huts. In shallower waters men in turbans and short lunghis stand in water up to their waist, throwing their circular fishing nets out by hand with practiced grace. Women walk along the roads with huge piles of gathered wood on their heads.

As you've no doubt read, cows in India are sacred and allowed to wander everywhere at will. When we have visited temples, there are always carvings of Brahma Bulls.



There seem to be three or four types of cows. Basic brown or brown and white cows without horns that have face shapes like Holsteins. Cows that are black or brown with elongated faces and horns that are long, and like - but not like Brahmas. I never manage to catch the Brahma's pulling carts on camera. Next week is the festival of Pongal - which centers around the rice Harvest. Cows are decorated, garlands of flowers are draped over them, and their long horns are painted. This site shows some Brahmas being decorated as well as other pictures of Pondy. Look for the picture titled "washing the cattle and carts" and the following two pictures."I should have better pictures after the festival. I found these guys waiting for their train outside the Pondy train station.



They wouldn't tell me where they were headed. I am after all a stranger. (DH thinks it was a simple language problem since I don't speak Tamil - either that or they wanted it to remain a Moostery!) What do you think? Were they just on their way out of town to visit relatives?



So by the end of the Chennai trip I had assembled a small pile of bounty - keeping in mind the groaning suitcases at home in the hotel room. No drooling now...



Here are my favorite shawl sellers in town. They've given me a good education on what fibers are combined in shawls for different price ranges. They also told me right away about some of the shawls I was admiring as super soft - that they were viscose and that often sellers will sell them as pashmina instead and how unhappy people would be when they got home and realized they had been had. Not 24 hours later Dear Reader Anita sent me an email about this very thing so I give these guys full credit. By the way, the green shawl hanging up on the side is no longer hanging there. Those who love chartreuse as much as I do will have to get a grip on themselves.



Even in my first weeks of scarf-seekage I didn't do too bad.....



I'll leave you with the sphere for the day - Gulab Jamin. This is a sweet served at breakfast consisting of milkballs in a sweet syrup. I'm afraid they look a little too much like gonads for me to dig in.



Tonight is the Muslim holiday of Bahkrit, celebrating the prophet Abraham's birth. Many people are out tonight with firecrackers, noisemakers, etc. Goats are getting sacrificed - but thankfully not in front of the hotel! Abraham you may remember was allowed to sacrifice a goat instead of his son when he was tested by God. The first few hours of noise were fine but as they evening has worn on the street doggies are giving people what for as they are now up past their bedtime!

And, for you gardeners and plant lovers, I've been taking a few pictures of local flora. I'm pretty hopeless with plant knowledge but you may identify them just by seeing the pictures.

Hibiscus, bougenvilla, and oleander are big here just as they are in my childhood town of Riverside, California. Palm trees are everywhere. Evergreens are nowhere! Okay, even I know the lily family when I see it.



This is familiar but I've forgotten the name....



Hybiscus growing on the side of a building.



No idea 'tall....