guesthouse continued

Read the post below then finish with this one, I had some internet troubles when publishing!

we had passed a Pizza Hut not far from the guesthouse. But the manager shook his head and said,that we had cooked for us!  We are ecstatic. He proceeded to sit us down and bring out several courses of awesome Indian cuisine.  This trend has continued for several other meals as well.  Now this is an India that I can get on board with!

On Saturday we went shopping for silks and scarves and other gifts. I can't tell you much more because they are for my family, but it is all good stuff, I am excited! Then we found out that Bangalore had an English speaking movie theater, so we decided to make a girl's day.  We had iced coffee and lunch on the veranda of the nicest hotel in town, then we got pedicures for 400 rupees ($8), and went and saw "He's just not that into you." We had to surrender our camera batteries and boys had to get pat down searches.  At first we thought, bomb threat! but it turns out that pirating is huge over here so they are very strict. The Indian movie theater is an experience in itself. There was an intermission where waiters ran to us asking our orders for popcorn or full out meals, and Elena enjoyed her new favorite India snack, a tub of steamed corn. Nope we are never going back to popcorn, it's extra sweet niblets at the movie theater all the way now! We finished the evening by meeting our friends from CMC at Hardrock and eating cheeseburgers.  I think that the red meat shocked our digestive system and we have all paid for that meal in the past 24 hours.  Still. worth. it.  We are such girls and such American's but it was just what we needed!

Sunday we met our friends again and rented an minivan!!! to take us the Mysore, a city of palaces and temples of the royal Woodeyar family that ruled there until the British came into power in the late 1940s.  The palace was awesome, but checking our shoes, bags, and cameras, outside was annoying.  Also unsettling was our driver.  He was perhaps the worst that we have had in India. which if you know anything about driving in India, this is saying A LOT.  We feel very lucky to be alive and not have vomited with all of the swerving and stop and go action that happened during our 3 hour car rides both there and back.  Tommy, I will never complain about your Dallas-style merging again!

Amitabh's guesthouse

So this Friday there were no clinical experiences scheduled, so we headed to our pool Oasis on the CMC campus. We ate french fries and drank coke in bottles and basked in the luxury of our pool.  We definitely used sunscreen but found ourselves a little crispy by the time we left.  We ate lunch in town at Dhaba and enjoyed the fresh garlic naan that we are sure to miss when we go home.  Then we went back to our hotel to set off for Bangalore for the weekend.  A car something the size of a geo metro with no trunk pulled up and something like 7 Indian men tied every one of our bags to the luggage rack on the roof, and we have a lot of luggage. We loaded in and watched in amazement as our driver after each major bump would reach his hand out the window to see if our bags were still there. We were pretty uncomfortable with the situation, but hey it's India and I really cant remember the last time I was comfortable about the way things run.  Throughout our 4 hour car ride our driver, a twenty something male with no English vocab whistled and sang to Bollywood soundtracks...it was a long ride.  When we got to the city of Bangalore, much bigger than Vellore, we gave our driver directions to the guesthouse where we were going to stay.  He not only did not understand our directions but he didnt understand the directions of the 15 or so people that he pulled over to ask.  After 2 and 1/2 hours of driving in circles around some foliage called Cubbin park (we decided to skip that during our weekend sightseeing as we saw it sufficiently 9 times I think throughout the evening), we hired a rickshaw to drive in front of us and lead us to the address.  We finally walked up to our destination at 11pm exhausted and pretty frustrated.  We are staying at the guesthouse of a work colleague of Carly's sister.  We walked into the sleek modern building into our flat.  It was complete with dining room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and some of the nicest bathrooms I have seen in India and America. It was awesome.  We asked the guesthouse manager if we could use the phone to call Pizza Hut (we passed one 

So I finally was able to upload some pics! The pics on the left are of nurses at the hospital and on the left is a pic of a boy with a monkey that Elena took. She gave him a rupee and he was so happy! It really is like slumdog millionaire, we saw him with the monkey and his handler later handing over our money. So sad! One of them is of Liz, Elena, and me at the beach in Varkala, so fun! One of them is the "Indian Starbucks" that I mentioned. Classy, huh? Once again, how are we not getting sick everyday?! Another pic is of the roof of the CMC hospital. This is where scrubs and linens are sent for washing and then they are dried on the roof! American healthcare is so different! The last is of Carly and me in Kerala near the backwaters.

Elephant Hill

We have spent the past few days working at a hospital called Karigiri. This hospital is just a hop, skip, 25 minute bus ride on the #1 and 15-20 minute autorickshaw ride away. Karigiri is translated as Elephant Hill, named for the flat topped hill that can be seen in the distance. This hospital was built by an American doctor, Paul Brand, in the 80s. This hospital was built for people with Hanson’s Disease or Leprosy. Yes leprosy. During our first day we were able to learn a lot about the research projects they are working on here in India where leprosy is much more prevalent than in the United States. We have learned that though this disease has been plaguing people since the time of Christ, no one actually knows how it is transmitted. There are theories and the researchers here are swabbing the nares of relatives and neighbors of newly infected patients to see if there is a correlation. Though they don’t know the route of transmission, doctors have known for some time that Dapsone can treat it. And they are testing drug regimens as well.
On the second day at Karigiri we went on surgical rounds with an orthopedic surgeon. It was amazing, horrifying, and so humbling at the same time. We walked along busy leprosy wards seeing patients, mostly men as they are more susceptible to the disease. Leprosy is caused by bacteria that attack nerves, especially those on “cold” areas of the body such as fingers, toes, superficial leg and face nerves. This nerve destruction leads to a deadening and then a total loss of pain sensation in these areas. It is similar to the neuropathy that diabetics experience on a larger scale. Due to their lack of pain they are prone to infection, ulcers, abscesses, and absorption of bone and tissue. Many of the patients we saw had little more than nubs on the tip of their hands; they had multiple contractures and ulcers on distal surfaces. Some of these ulcers were as deep as the tendon and bone with tracking fissures and sinuses. The doctor unwrapped saturated gauze as the patients looked on unflinching. They could not feel these sores that made me cringe deep within. The most horrific wound was an ulcer on the medial aspect of the ankle on a middle aged man. We unwrapped the gauze to find a terrible odor and saw that they wound appeared to be moving! Upon closer inspection we saw hundreds of maggots crawling inside of the wound. We couldn’t believe it! We spent the afternoon observing wound debridement with the surgeon. One of our patients was a man with osteomyelitis on his foot with infection tracking along the tendon. The surgeon debrided the wound and the anesthesiologist sat back monitoring blood pressure. No anesthetic was administered as the surgeon crunched infected bone out of the open bleeding wound. The patient lay their oblivious to the pain. It was incredible.
Another afternoon was spent touring physiotherapy and occupational therapy and saw countless boots, splints, and devices used to help these patients eat, drink, walk, and brush their teeth despite the loss of their fingers and toes. It all seemed very primitive, but it worked for the patients and it was made affordable to them.
This experience was amazing, only slightly marred by the very questionable conditions of the mess hall they keep sending us to for lunch where we wash our own plates in the sink after eating and where they are continuing foisting papaya upon us.
In the evenings after work I am spending my time washing my clothes in the shower and eating wonderful Chinese food from the rooftop restaurant at the top of our hotel. Two of the Vellore four have finally had India catch up with them and began taking Cipro for intestinal issues yesterday. Hopefully a cure will be near before we embark on our four hour train ride to Bangalore for the weekend!

Diet Pepsi and Death By Chocolate on the Arabian Coast

This past weekend the Vellore four decided to leave the grind of village medical life and hit the coast of the Arabian sea for a weekend of sun, food, and shopping. We took a 13 hour overnight sleeper train to the Southern state of Kerala. The train, or slumber party on rails as I like to think of it, was an experience in itself. We found our way around the train station and walked a quarter of a mile down the tracks to the spot where we were supposed to board our top tier luxury train. We stepped aboard around 10pm and were met with the smell of stale urine and fried food. We found our seats/beds to be filled with Indian travelers fast asleep stacked three deep in open compartments. We felt like rude Americans as we politely asked for our seats, but our slumber party had to commence. We climbed onto our bunks, popped ambien pills, and awoke rested but somewhat bruised from jostling on very hard “mattresses” all night. In the morning we grabbed our toothbrushes and face wash and headed to the bathroom. Unfortunately, we were greeted with the most dire bathroom situation we have seen yet. Two small footholds were situated around a funnel like hole that was open to the tracks below. To use the restroom you had to maneuver your clothing and squat over this hole as the train bounced along its merry way. And of course, no soap or toilet paper! Needless to say, I kept myself dehydrated for the return trip home as to not repeat this experience.
We arrived in Varkala the next morning ready for beaches and fish. We checked into our super charming bamboo huts with bathrooms open to nature and we were mere feet from the cliffs of Varkala. Then we hit the beach where we jumped in super strong waves and sacrificed Elena’s sunglasses to the sea. A voodoo woman convinced us to buy a whole watermelon which we munched happily until a naked Indian boy came up looking hungrily at our dripping fruit. We surrendered the melon then hit a rooftop restaurant for a much needed cocktail. The rest of the day was spent shopping for colorful scarves and shirts and eating delicious fresh seafood.
So, I have never really liked diet pepsi, or even diet coke for that matter. If you know me at all, you know that I prefer regular soft drinks in general and Dr. Pepper in particular. In India where they only serve mildly chilled 7up, sprite, regular coke, orange fanta, maaza (a mango soda), and mirinda (another orange soda), diet coke and diet pepsi have become very precious, and Dr. Pepper is absolutely unheard of. So, when on our relaxing weekend we found an awesome restaurant that served up these low cal treats, we were beyond thrilled. I believe we attempted to high five our nice waiter, but he did not understand this gesture and just looked at us strangely.
We woke bright and early and found some chocolate crepes and fresh juice at the Juice Hut. Then we hopped on a 2 hour long train ride and hit the town of Allepee for a backwater tour. A bamboo covered boat carted the four of us through villages and backyards to see people bathing, fishing, and cooking in backwaters that seemed like Venice meets African safari meets the slum. It was beautiful and relaxing. Then halfway through the tour our guide pulled over and told us to stopped by the coffee house. We wandered into some pinetrees to find India’s premiere Starbucks. It was an unventilated hut where a man and his wife showed us to a beat up table and made delicious homemade coffee and fried onion doughnuts. Only in India.
We spent Valentine’s day dinner eating some good Chinese food at a candlelit table poolside at a hotel in town. Then back to the hostel that we were told by other students that was one of the most charming in Kerala. We found our rooms to be bleak with hard mattresses and rough bathrooms, but we are now troopers with Indian standards so we hunkered down for the night. Liz and I were roomies for the night and were about to fall asleep as she noticed two toothpick sized antennae poking out from behind a mirror. Open further investigation there were definitely some eyes back there with what I am sure was a record sized body attached. We fled to our mosquito nets for the night and prayed that they did not leave their dark refuge. The next day we ventured by bus to the Fort Town/island of Kochin. We watched Chinese fishing nets being pulled in and contemplated buying coconuts carved into monkeys (we decided it would be a tourist mistake and as the coconuts still held milk inside they would probably get confiscated by customs anyway). Then some friends from Malaysia and Kansas bought fresh red snapper and giant prawns from a fishmonger and needed some help eating it all. We sent the fish ahead to a nearby restaurant and feasted on seafood and tomato rice. Delish! Then we viewed Santa Cruz Cathedral and Saint Francis Church. Beautiful old churches build by Europeans.
Then we took high tea at the teapot. They had the best iced raspberry tea that I have ever experienced and a “death by chocolate cake” that finally fixed my chocolate craving in India. It was absolutely heavenly. I could have eaten many slices, but there were still sights to see. We also checked out Jew town. A tourist area filled with antiques and the regions only synagogue. To end our trip we ate soup at a cool Chinese restaurant and proceeded to use their non-gross bathroom to change clothes for the slumber party on rails part deux. We arrived at the train station with time to spare so we gave the Indians a show by brushing our teeth and washing our face at a sink on the platform and using several baby wipes to clean our hands and feet for our journey. Unfortunately round 2 was even less pleasant than round 1. We had no a/c on the route home so we were sure it would be sticky and hot. However, India must have had a cold front because it was absolutely freezing with the open windows on our train. We had only beachware so we bundled in our mosquito nets, sandy towels, and paper thin scarf purchases. It was miserable, but at least I never used the bathroom (liz had to go twice!!) We have never been so happy to see our lovely Darling residency and take a steamy hot shower (our first in 10 days!)

Cockroach Buffet

Our second day of surgery was spent in outpatient clinic. I was assigned to the chair of the department, the same one that was mentioned in Elena’s blog tapping his toe to elevator music. I spent the morning getting pimped about venous stasis, and pretty nasty non-healing food wounds. There was also some cool stuff, carotid body tumors, a hydrocele on a twenty year old the size of an ostrich egg, thyroid nodules.
Wednesday we rounded with the same chair and several interns and 2 upper levels. I have learned a very universal lesson…attending rounds are BRUTAL. We marched all over the hospital rounding on nearly 50 patients and by the end I think that the resident had shrunk several inches in size due to the disappearance of his confidence. Then we went to dinner at our favorite Punjabi restaurant and ate some awesome North Indian vegetarian food. Unfortunately, the single cockroach that we saw at the restaurant last week seemed to have found a friend and performed some major reproduction as there were several bugs crawling on the wall. The chickpea masala and garlic naan is so yummy though that we merely acknowledged the creepy crawlers and went right on munching. I think that my expectations of hygiene and bug infestation have drastically changed in the past 2 weeks and I suspect that I am going to be very good camping from this point on.
Oh and on another note, for some reason they changed the bus schedule Tuesday. We got cocky because we had a string of successful commuting, but due to this unannounced change the number 2 bus did not take us home on 3 separate occasions from 3 separate starting locations. We spent quite a bit of time walking along mysterious roads and even more time asking people who did not speak our language for help that they were not very interesting in giving. So we get it India, we did not figure you out in a week. Back to square one.
Tonight we are leaving on a 13 hour overnight sleeper train to go to the town of Varkala in the southern state of Kerala. It boasts some of the best beaches in the country and we have some bamboo huts with our names on them! There are also rumors of pancakes there too which will be awesome since breakfast is the least impression meal of the deal. Sure they have decent coffee or tea and there is amazing juice where I am pretty sure that place whole pineapples in a blender, but they have subpar toast and idly. Idly is some kind of round yeasty rice cake that we loved at first by now after eating them everyday I am pretty sure that they are just sitting in our intestines clogging our cecums.

Name that tune

Today was our first day on our surgery posting. After we found our general surgery team and changed in to the most unflattering version of scrubs ever manufactured, we started observing a routine laparoscopic cholecystectomy. It was amazing because everything in their OR was the same but so different as well. They checked expiration dates of sterile water but it was a held in a glass tube inside of an oven mitt, the surgeons all wore sandals with no shoe coverings, but were very conscious of septic technique. The instruments were brought in from central sterile, but they were wrapped in brown cloth and tied with strings. It was very interesting to see the differences, and while we listened to an instrumental medley of American elevator music consisting of “are you lonesome tonight” and “I’m on top of the world looking down on creation…” playing name that tune under our breath, they had to emergently open due to bleeding and then proceeded to pull out a stone the size of a key lime out of a shredded gallbladder. After some more observing I headed home. I feel pretty bus savvy these days but I definitely got lost on the sprawling CMC campus so I opted to pay a little more for an autorickshaw. I flagged one down and hopped in. Apparently, another driver had his sights on my business those because he yelled and ran up, stuck his hand in the moving auto and turned off the engine. The men then began screaming at each other over my 30 rupees. I got so angry and felt so homesick at this point that I yelled “Just stop it!” and hopped out. I began to walk away and both men followed me yelling, “madame, auto!” I walked for several blocks before I grabbed a much friendlier auto. This is funny now because they are just so eager for business as the average Indian makes only 45 rupees a day, but at the time I was very annoyed.

Pondicherry, Pancakes, Pendants, and Puke

This weekend we went to the town of Pondicherry, a coastal town steeped in French influences (think New Orleans meets the Taj Mahal). The town is about a 5 hour bus trip from Vellore and well worth it. We went with about a dozen other international students, mostly American, and with the exception of a lone guy from Kansas, wholly female. We ate some good food for dinner, ridiculously expensive by Indian standards but right around 10 US dollars. We have all been missing vegetables pretty badly. Both our taste buds and our bowels have noticed their absence. There are vegetables here but they are either fried (i.e Gobi 65 which is fried cauliflower pieces…what?!) or minced and slathered in so many spices and sauce that they are difficult to distinguish. So in Pondicherry with all of its western flare, we were able to order a giant bowl of veggies that made my weekend! We also tried chilled Red Indian wine which was almost as expensive as our meal and very Sangria like. During dinner Elena realized that the chain of her necklace broke and her pendant was gone. The pendant was her grandmother’s engagement diamond that was placed with other diamonds in a pendant. Her grandpa gave this to her a few months ago after her grandmother passes away. So needless to say, she was devastated. We got out our flashlights and looked all over the restaurant, looking ridiculous. Then we attempted to retrace our steps, but since we walked all over town and the streets were broken and littered we didn’t have much hope. After some time Elena trailed behind, crying and devastated. The other girls had walked on and were standing in the street waiting on us. All of the sudden we heard screams and running. A girl from Kansas had found the pendant faced down in the middle of street near where she had stopped!!!! It was an awesome moment. I mean how cool is God, really!!! After the jubilation, we ventured to our hostel which offered two rooms each with a double bed for a large group of us. This got us a referral to another hostel on another street with no name, but at least we knew it was building number 32. After some looking and an offer from a French businessman on vacation to put the girls and the guy...hmmm …up for the night, we found our building. It ended up being a Muslim man’s house. It had many marbled levels of empty rooms and was the most extravagant residence any of us has seen here. We got ready for bed and lay exhaustedly down on giant beds that were essentially wooden planks with glorified lawn furniture pads on top. There were no sheets and the pillows each weighed about 8 pounds and were about as soft as a rucksack of flour, oh and dirty. Apparently friends who are more seasoned travelers told us that this is very standard so we have much more of it to look forward to in the coming weeks. The next day we went to an ideallic rooftop brunch spot for whole wheat pancakes with honey and butter and freshly blended pineapple juice. I do believe that they were the most amazing pancakes I have ever eaten. Funny that the best American breakfast I have had was in a French colonial town in India! The rest of the day was spent shopping and visiting an Ashram filled with flowers and Indians worshipping the spirit and the teachings of The Mother. We spent dinner at a funky tappas bar called Le Space Café and experienced India’s finest mojito. It was a bit subpar due to over mincing of the mint leaves, but after some general instruction to the bartender, they were quite tasty and Elena feels that this contribution to the Indian cocktails (which are actually taboo everywhere but tourist hot spots) will forever be likened to Mother Theresa’s work with orphans.
Sunday was spent traveling to the temple town of Gingee. There we trekked through the ruins of a palace and hiked up a small mountain of stone steps to a gorgeous crumbling temple. It was awesome. The process of getting home was a little less awesome however. After walking several kilometers with all of our weekend luggage in Pondicherry, then the mountain hike, and another 2 kilometer walk to the bus stand, we waited for over two hours for our bus. For some reason they kept cancelling the bus that would take us home, though the bus that would take us the opposite direction continued to run regularly. We waited with thousands of other Indians, some selling fried snacks, some begging food and money, all staring at the white kids. The highlight for me was standing next to a bus that approached where a woman in a saree with a child stepped out and puked several times at my feet. Awesome. Just awesome. The buses in India are so hot and crowded (often dozens of people standing in the isle for several hours), the roads so poor and bumpy and food being peddled at each station so fried and greasy that we have unfortunately learned that it is quite common for travelers to puke out of windows and in parking lots at any point during their bus travel. It has made for a new kind of awareness when traveling that’s for sure! After hours of standing, our bus finally arrived. It was so sought after due to multiple cancellations that people sprinted at the bus and were literally hanging out of windows and holding on to the side. Fearing for our life and resenting our lack of upper body strength the Vellore four opted for $25 cab ride. Well worth it I’d say to finally get myself and my puke shoes home and in bed.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

From an early age I have appreciated a good map. Street maps, elevation maps, mall maps, it doesn’t matter. I love finding my location and then coming up with a logical series of turns to work through in order to get to a desired end point. I even played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on our very first PC computer in the early 90s with such zeal that you would think I would be a whiz at geography… or directions in general, but I am not. And guess who else isn’t. Everyone in India! Every time we are lost (which is often because most streets do not have names in English and several have no names posted whatsoever) we get a vague wave in some direction that often sends us on a fruitless search to another vague waver. If we do ask what direction a place is in in relation to our current location, no one even has the slightest idea. Apparently north doesn’t translate. And I am fairly certain that a street map of Vellore has never existed because the English speaking tourist center looked at us with such confusion when we ask for one. So we will continue wandering using such landmarks as “the good pineapple stand” and “that one curvy street” as guideposts in our travels. Oh India

Into the villages or “If we survive this, it will be the best day of my life”

Today Elena and I joined two nurses and a driver to go into several small villages in the area for home visits. We focused on antenatal/postnatal and well baby checks, any sickness or chronic disease check up in the villages, and taking history of any deaths. The nurses cover about 20,000 patients apiece in the area and visit the villages monthly. It was an amazing experience. We sat on mats with impoverished Indians in their tidy dirt floored, thatched roof homes where they rarely had beds and if they did they stored their kitchen pots under them and cooked next to the fields that doubled as their toilets. These people let us into their homes and gave us respect as doctors. We held their babies and examined their bodies in the rooms where they slept. We took no pictures because some villagers believed that snapping a photo somehow robbed a baby of its soul through its eyes and death would be imminent. They offered us chai tea and coffee from their kitchens. One family of rice farmers made us balls of cornmeal, onions, coconut, and spices. It was probably more then they got to eat for lunch but they would have been offended had we not taken it from them. One man picked coconuts for us and chopped the top off to give us refreshing coconut water. After we finished drinking he sliced them in half and we ate out the delicious gooey coconut center. We are so excited about the coconuts that the nurses asked why. We said they don’t coconut like this in America (these are very different from the typical Hawaiian ones that we think of) and she said, “but how do Americans get their coconut water then?” We laughed and said, “uh they don’t.” She was shocked. We shared lunch with the nurses in a patient’s home. We sat in a sun drenched courtyard and spread out our tins on a mat and sampled leman rice, tomato rice, lemon peppers, okra, chickpeas or chenna and potatoes. It was delicious. Utensils are hardly ever necessary here and Indians effortlessly mix rice and sauce and spice as they shovel their large meals into their mouths. We told Greta, one of the nurses, that in America we often grab a granola bar for lunch or just skip it at work and she responded in surprise and said, “oh so sad!!” One patient we visited lived on the outskirts with a gorgeous mountain in the background. We asked if we could take a picture and she ran inside. We questioned her action to the nurses. They informed us that she was getting ready for our picture. Nearly ten minutes later she emerged with her hair freshly oiled and in her only “good” saree. She acted like it was the highlight of her day or week. We ended the day with tea and snack cakes at a roadside stand and a visit with the camp of Tamil gypsies. They sang Jesus loves me in a combo of Hindi (the language of the north), Tamil (the language of the south), English, and their own dialect as we rocked their babies and played with their children. Throughout the day Elena and I kept saying “where are we?!” The experience was humbling, saddening, and amazing. We are sure to get sick from crazy bacteria that picked up eating out of cups of strangers and their dirt kitchens but even if some vomiting ensues, this day was worth it.

One little, two little, three thousand Indians…on a bus

We have started our first assignment at CHAD, Community Health Against Disease, a community hospital outside of town. We definitely got the run around trying to get our paperwork filled out and probably walked 10K in the process, but the experience was worth it. Liz and I spent the first day on the pediatric ward. Elena hit the nursery and Carly went to the ICU isolation ward. We rounded on the kiddos who had from run of the mill diarrhea to protein energy malnutrition infections and gruesome burns. The wards were very clean but simple mattresses with no sheets and there were 8 beds to a room. The moms often slept on the cement floor next to their kids, but they were ever present. We also saw kids in the nursery, mostly with jaundice and sky high bilirubin levels. Then we spent a day in clinic as well seeing all kinds of illnesses. Some much is exactly the same as it is at home, but poor management of chronic illnesses here causes DM and HTN to be much worse. Then there is the crazy stuff like typhoid and leprosy and goiters. It’s a very interesting experience and I am pretty sure that no one around here takes the HIPPA quiz online because several people crowd around the docs in clinic waiting for their turns as the docs go over patient charts. The greatest feat of the first two days was mastering the public bus system. I am pretty sure that all 200,000 Vellore residents are on the streets hailing buses at all times. The bus is almost always standing room only and people crowd and push to the point that every surface of your skin is plastered against a sweating stranger. And due to this you can’t see out the windows, so it was not surprising when we missed our stop and took the bus a good 30 minutes out of our way before we became suspicious. We have figured out peak bus times now and the various routes we need, so for anyway from 1-3 rupees we have the run of the town, and sometimes we even have a seat!

So a general surgeon, an ob/gyn, an anesthesiologist, and an ENT get into an autorickshaw…

We have arrived in India! After 20 some hours of plane travel and airports we landed in Chennai. We were blasted by muggy heat, mosquitos, and the smell of curry. Well the latter was probably just our imagination. We attempted discretion as we exited the airport but found ourselves facing thousands of Indian men. Some were holding signs with names of travelers, most there for who knows what reason. There were all, however, staring at us. After a few days I have realized that this is not going to change. There very few tourists in South India, specifically in the state of Tamil Nadu where we are. Also, everyone wears traditional sarees or more modern but still very Indian Punjabi suits. Western clothes are not worn. Ankles are not shown unless they are adorned with bracelets. In general we are freaks here. We have jewel colored eyes and I have “spots” on my skin. Children stare and laugh, teenage boys gossip and wave, men have lingering gazes and women either smile in interest or glare in annoyance. No one bothers us and we feel very safe, but I now have a new empathy for Britney Spears. Navigating a foreign land under the watchful gaze of everyone is rather exhausting. We arrived via vintage British automobile to our hotel our first night. We entered our room to find no electricity. Turns out there actually is electricity if you place our large golden room key into a hole in a box on the wall. I cold tell that the bellhop we summoned was thinking “silly American girls.” But honestly, who does that. Our hotel room boasted 2 twin beds despite us asking for two double. We called down for mattresses and a man brought two small, brown stained mattresses I am assuming from the “it’s a hard knock life” set of Annie. We said no thanks and pushed the beds together and cozied up for our first night in India. The next we attacked Chennai tourist style. We walked around the city and then planned to hop into an autorickshaw which is a small yellow turbo golf cart used for commuting people around the city because most Indians cant afford cars. They usually use autorickshaws or “autos” motorbikes, buses, or walking for transportation. So we hopped in an auto which costs around a dollar. And then the period of the trip where we began to fear for our lives began. Drivers in India do not adhere to any rules. They don’t stay in any particular lane and just honk louder the closer they come to imminent death. The streets are filled with motor bikes, buses, pedestrians, cows, dogs, venders, and garbage. Everything is chaos and noise and if you aren’t paying attention you are certain to get honked at or clipped by some form of traveler.