I hadn’t thought about it during the planning phase. To be totally honest, I hadn’t thought about much during (what you could hardly call) my planning phase. I had some half-baked ideas of being in roughly delineated concepts of ‘the north’ or ‘the south’ and going to Sri Lanka. That was about it. I also have a friend named Ram who is from this south and, unbeknownst to me until this time, a master travel planner. Being native to the area, he also knew much better than I how difficult it would be on my own without an itinerary (and as you know, a driver). In prodding me to make decisions, buy plane tickets and generally get my butt in gear, he created a spreadsheet of cities to visit in Tamil Nadu, how to get there and what to see upon arrival - he literally arranged everything you have read about so far. What caught my eye immediately in this brilliant little xls was the end of India. Of course, the end of India! Why hadn’t I thought of that? The end of South America was my very favorite place during my last odyssey, and it makes sense to see the end of another great piece of land. So I have made it a little over half way to the bottom with my trusty driver, staying at Circuit Houses in Madurai and Courtallam. These are where government employees stay when visiting on official business and not only are they comfortable, quiet and safe, but they cost about between one and four dollars a night. Yes. One dollar. How is that possible? I will never know. Talk about consumer surplus…I enjoyed each of them one hundred percent of that dollar and all the way up to probably ten or twenty dollars. Every afternoon from one to four Subramaniam, my driver (named after one of Siva’s sons), would stop by a hotel (aka restaurant) and get a packed lunch for me. I would go back to my little circuit house to attempt to eat what I always declared was enough for 4 (I even asked for a ladies version, he said in Tamil Nadu this is how the women eat and put his arms out where a big belly would be). I would try feebly to avoid and always give in to a nap, and eventually wake up to do some planning for later in the trip. There was no Internet except 2G on my phone (thank the heavens for it, I can only be so disconnected…) and that has made this a very analogue experience. Something about all of these ancient places and activities is also sort of hyperanalogue; it is probably good for my all too digitally focused brain. 
If you plucked out each truck, car, rickshaw and motor bike (yaay no more horns) then turned all of the Internet and computer shops into, hmm I’ll say scribe and printing shops, and tore down all of the billboards…it could probably pass for the 1500’s here. I just made up that year, but look. I mean listen. They speak Tamil, one of the oldest known languages. Everyone wears traditional dress (the men all have collared shirts on though, so in that first sentence, let’s add in ‘strip all of the men of their collared shirts.’ Oo fun). We have already talked about the temples and you can see the signs of worship on most people’s foreheads in white, yellow and red dots, lines and smudges. As you walk, whether in the city or a small village, you can buy vegetables, twine, lumber, cloth, spices, metal cookware - all of the basic things that you need to live. That humans have needed to live since they first started to live. I have literally spent sleepless days (I’m not one for sleepless nights) wondering how the same creatures who play on dozens of little computational devices all day could have ever existed with the simple lifestyles of days past. Well, I seem to have found proof that it is possible. Now I need to figure out how the people I see haggling for small paper packages of turmeric tied up with string are also building the operating system I am typing on at the moment, but one step at a time…
Ram’s spreadsheet (via Subramaniam's driving) has brought me to a number of temples (although, somehow the first is still my favorite, despite others boasting a thousand columns in a single room, monolithic 25 ton nandis or tributes to women with five husbands), palaces and various tanks, caves, and a personal favorite, the Courtrallam waterfalls. The tiny village was not in my book, and there isn’t a spot for me to fill in on that little map over there, but it was a beautiful hill station with long waterfalls filled with bathers and a Circuit House filled with breeze. And cool pastel colored walls. It was my last stop before I made it to the end.
Within two minutes of leaving the hotel and my caretaker /driver a family adopted me. They didn’t speak English but were trying sneak a picture of me with their camera phone, and I offered my camera as an acceptance of their picture taking in return for mine. I really don’t know how else to handle these moments. When it is a group of men I usually look right at them then cover my face so their picture looks stupid, but since it was a family I was a little more ok with it. Apparently, other people noticed and I had to take pictures with three other groups. One of them spoke English and they took me with them to the temple after we visited the little islands. At first they like having me around, later I think they felt somehow responsible for me and therefore refused to leave me by myself, so to relieve them after the tours and a time at the beach eating fresh coconut, I just went back to my hotel. I dragged the plastic chairs outside and waited for the sunset. I was a little scared of the room and also hoped they would light up the islands after dark. I was very, very right on both accounts. The lights were better than I could have imagined – and during the day it was so surreal I could already see a giant blue Siva with half a dozen arms lounging on the rocks where the three oceans met, waving worshipers without coconuts and roses back to the shore. With the green and orange lights, the nighttime scene filled in the colors so my imagination was left to wander about the corners of my room. It was worse than I expected – if it was the US, I would have been pretty terrified for my safety in a room this dirty. Something similar might be found at a truck stop or possibly in a ghetto. Here I had no worries about people bothering me. But I was wrapped up head to toe in my sleeping bag liner (thank god I splurged and bought the x-long one), lungi draped over the bed (sorry dad, it was an emergency) as protection from the unknown and unwashed, sandal in hand as weapon, lights and TV on as deterrent - trying to escape the plethora of cockroaches. As my mom said afterwards, I'm pretty good with bugs, but this was more than I was prepared to handle. But I made it. And nothing even happened! Those nasty cockroaches didn’t carry me (or the Swiss chocolate I brought for my friends) away. And by sleeping inside a piece of silk like a little worm I even avoided mosquito bites. But I will never, ever stray from a plan of Ram’s in Tamil Nadu again. And I think it is time for new caretakers. 
