testmeat photoblog

the journey leaving the andaman islands began with such promise, on the ferry from havelock island we got seats at the front with unobstructed legroom, and then on the flight back to the mainland we were given the emergency exit seats so again i could stretch out. it felt like our lucky tiger really was guiding us smoothly around his country. however this good fortune ended abruptly when we touched down in chennai. we intended to head down the coast to pondicherry but when we looked online we discovered almost everywhere was booked out, and spent an exhausting hour debating the terrible options before eventually settling on the least shitty one.

despite it only being a few hours away transportation also proved to be another headache, with no obvious bus we could book online, so after wasting a lot more time we ended up splashing out for an uber. or at least we nearly did, that was until the driver demanded additional money for various tolls and fees which he assured us he'd have to pay. i mean the best thing about uber is that it's a fixed price and you know you're not going to get stung by an unpredictable meter or ripped off by greedy driver. so with now two hours spent hanging around the airport we decided to take a train to the local bus terminal hoping we could employ the old school method of just asking around if there was a bus going south.

this part actually worked without a problem, but any hopes that the dramas were behind us were soon dashed when we made it to the shitty hotel to be told they had no record of our booking and no available rooms. we walked to a couple of nearby hotels to be told that they had no vacancies either, and we finally began to realise why we had been struggling all day. turns out pondicherry is a super popular place for indians to go to for holidays, and it being a friday night everywhere was booked out by weekenders - we never stood a chance. after roaming the streets for an age we finally overpaid for the worst room i stayed in my entire indian trip. there was no air conditioning, no fan and it felt like barely any oxygen in the room, and to compensate there was an endless steady stream of mosquitoes. if you wanted to sleep you had the choice of being eaten alive all night, or cover up all your skin so you're uncomfortably hot. it was a world away from the luxury i'd experienced in the andaman islands, and to be perfectly honest it felt like an overdue act of the universe rebalancing itself. and a couple of nights inside a mosquito sauna was still well worth the cost of the month spent in the company of tigers, elephants and monkeys.

i took this photo the following day as i spent as much time as possible outside of the room and walked around the streets of pondy - here's another shot of the egg van