Touching Down in Chennai

We had an easy set of flights from Amrisar to Chennai via a stopover in Delhi. We woke up this morning after a pretty good sleep in our Chennai budget hotel. It is a pretty clean, but they have no top sheets or blankets for us; no towels either and the dhobi wallah will not be bringing more until tomorrow. Those table clothes I have purchased at the FabIndia in Amritsar are coming in handy as a sheet now. I am just now realizing that we should have used those table clothes for the freezing train too. damn.

After negotiating a taxi for a few hours to take us to the EcoCafe for breakfast and to the attached Anokhi, then to Little Mount where St. Thomas lived in mediation and hermitry before he was martyred just a few kilometers away, and then to the Chennai bus station to catch an afternoon bus to Ponducherry. The EcoCafe is a yummy and a hip hangout for well-to-do locals and ex-pats. We have fabulous cafe lattes and breakfasts. And Anokhi, the most happy shopping I've had, perhaps in the entirety of my life. Sweet Mother, I have scored and will now be clothed in the new year. (btw, Ashley picked out the best shoes for me in Amritsar and I will including photos of those gorgeous little slippers in the future.)

Our driver had a difficult time finding the Little Mount and its chapel, so stopping to ask directions that were excitedly offered up by fellow taxi drivers, by auto rickshaw drivers, by men on the street, by the man in the EcoCafe parking lot who had lived and worked in the States. With a little back tracking and some this-ways and that-ways, we made it. It was a sweet little complex of chapels and then the cave of St. Thomas. This was also the place of several of his miracles: they are where he struck his staff into the rock and it opened up to produce a spring of water, a place in the stone where his footprint burned the ground below his foot and several places in this cave where he had placed his hands and there too were imprints of his hand. There were two young Indian Catholic girls who were in the cave with us; they were praying in Tamil, and except for punctuating name of Jesus which they spoke in English.

After the Little Mount, we drove to the bus station. We grabbed some water, some snacks and hopped right on an express bus which drives on the coast road to Pondy. Easy peasy. More soon about the bus ride and getting settle in here.

oxo,
Nichole

ps I am not editing these posts much, b/c I am trying to zip through them. I can barely stand this, but it is the only way that I think I can swing it b/c Luke is busy with work and so the blog might be written entirely by me this time, which is unfortunate b/c Luke's voice is so great.