We came out of the Spencer Plaza in Chennai which was across a wide busy road from our hotel and were accosted by an auto rickshaw driver calling himself Joseph Hallelujah. He was not small and was impressively good at English and joviality, and asked if we needed his services. I told him we were over the road at the Taj Club Hotel and he offered a ride for R10 which is about 25 cents so off we went at speed straight through the six lanes of traffic and were safely deposited at the front door, having serenaded him with a certain song composed by L. Cohen decd. Then as expected came the questions about tomorrow’s travel requirements with offers of improbably priced deals. As it happened we did need an auto for the next day so 10 o’clock was the pickup time. This guy exemplified the entrepreneurial spirit of Indians who are happy to give every chance a go. I knew there would be requests to visit “my friends shops” which would need to be limited, but also knew we would both end up happy. As it turned out he was even more business savvy than I thought because he subcontracted the work to his “brother” whose happy demeanour diminished greatly when the one friends commission paying shop I agreed to visit was one we had already been to. But I paid him a better than normal tip so he left happy. Tipping in India is easy to swallow because it is cheap.
Our party on this second part of travelling in India was only three, being Kay and her niece Philippa and me. It was all very efficiently organised through our usual agency, Perfect Travels, so I didn’t have much real responsibility. The itinerary was four cities in the south where we hadn’t been before, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mysore and Chennai none of which are tourist necessities but still interesting and with plenty of shopping opportunities. Kay and I arrived with 30kgs of luggage and left with 80, plus there are three carpets being sent, and she describes this as a very successful trip.
Buying carpets is fun in India mainly because the sellers are almost always Kashmiris who have scattered throughout India and the rest of the world because of the ongoing military problems at home. They are the best salespeople I have ever come across and after years of probably expensive practise I think I have sorted out how to get a reasonable deal. The biggest problem always is having an idea of the real value of what you want and on this trip I bought five carpets so by the last one I actually did have some idea of that. I also finally realised that the chat about other stuff is important and time is not,so I didn’t hurry and took lots of time to finally agree on the deal. Back in the car we were talking about it and the guide, who was listening in, said the guys in the shop had said that I was very knowledgeable and good at getting the right deal which made me have less post purchase dissonance than usual and proves that b.s. does baffle brains. I am available for fixed price hire.
In order to cope with all this stuff we have bought two large new bags have been purchased, the last from the Mysore Tarpaulin Company where one of the offerings was actually made of canvas and looked indestructible. You cannot escape any commercial transaction without plenty of paper work and leaving it behind causes consternation. Everything has been made more difficult by the outlawing of the two largest currency notes just after we started but more of that later. Indian love of complicating simple transactions is everywhere including tourist attractions that require tickets. The ticket office is often quite a way from the entrance and there are usually two people on the gate, one examines the ticket very carefully then puts one or two inked stamps on it, the second produces a train conductors clipping thing and clips the ticket once or twice depending on the number of stamps. There may be a third person to open the gate. They have a lot of people to employ. Airports are even more fun although the security is a bit less than last time when nuclear war with Pak (they also love abbreviations) was imminent. The big thing is having a baggage label on your hand luggage which collects about three stamps but no clipping. You also get the full arms out examination and the last one caused me some discomfort when the metal detector was waved a little too closely to the front of my pants. Speaking of which, Indian women’s dress culture includes covered legs and when Kay bought an outfit of a dress and leggings the nice young male assistant told her when she got to her country she could take her pants off.
The lack of infrastructure commiserate with requirements is one of India’s biggest problems but things have improved since 2007, the last time we were here. There are some good intercity motorways and most airports we have used are new. Every big city is building underground or elevated metro lines at considerable inconvenience and the major problem seems to be getting them finished. Chennai is the fourth biggest city and their metro started construction in 2007, my Lonely Planet says it would finished in 2015, now it’s still at least four years away. As we got to the airport we saw the metro station there even has the trains sitting waiting but nowhere to go. One good thing to come from the currency chaos is that toll collections have been abandoned so things shift along better. We did a railway trip from Mysore to Chennai, seven hours, and although first class is a little shabby the food was really good and we met some very nice people. They still paste a list on the outside of the carriage with your name and seat number on it. Luckily we were met at the carriage door on arrival because Chennai station is the same slightly scary and totally confusing place it was 18 years ago when Kay and I took one look and decided using a bus would be better.
As expected food has been a highlight ranging from cheap chain places to some pretty smart restaurants. Philippa’s best memory is a seafood place where we were seated “on the beachside” which meant a table by the wall on which there was a beach mural. We also visited a winery which is one of the best in India, called Groverzampa and they make some good wine. Our guide apparently combined being a dj with winery guiding and was very funny when you could understand him. He’s a Moslem and explaining to us how his love of wine fitted in with his parents expectations was an interesting example of intergenerational incomprehension. Another visit was to a much hyped film studio near Hyderabad about which we knew nothing apart from that locals thought it was wonderful. We were booked in for the VIP package so had an a/c bus to get around the very large place. The bits we saw about actual film making belonged to a past era although the permanent sets were a little interesting. It gradually dawned on us that we were supposed to be there for 9 hours doing stuff that belonged to a 1950s winter show so we sorrowfully explained to the guide we had to leave a bit after halfway. Back in our hotel Kay told a staff member where we had been and she couldn’t understand why we were back so early.
For me the best sight seeing thing has been the Mysore Palace which is quite stunning. It was built in the early 1900s and shows how unbelievably rich this royal family was. Scandinavian simplicity it is not but as a statement of which end of the food chain these guys were it is emphatic. Mysore was on high security alert when we arrived with soldiers in camouflage gear with Kevlar armour at major road crossings and the odd APC in the background. There was a local king called something Tipu in the 17th century who fought four wars against the British and lost his life in the last, being found very dead under a pile of bodies when it was over. This was not usual behaviour for a king and he is regarded as a genuine hero and there is now a commemorative annual holiday which started in 2015. He was a Moslem and as a not really appreciated minority his present day coreligionists took advantage last year and caused mayhem. This year they just noisily drove around waving flags.
When not being guided we have had great fun getting about in the auto rickshaws. Philippa looked a little pale after her first experience but quickly became a veteran ignoring the buses six inches away and not flinching when we whipped through traffic the wrong way. We only had one driver try and put a move on us when, after agreeing a price of R100 and starting off, he tried the old 100 each trick. Kay and I have been through this before and after demanding he stop the girls got out and I had a stern word. I didn’t want to get another driver because a man from the hotel had told him where to go and I didn’t think I could explain it another driver, so when he agreed it should just be 100, and ” sorry no understanding” was mentioned we carried on.
The greatest confusion and unnecessary chaos has been as a result of last week’s central government decision to stop R500 and 1000 notes being legal tender. The reasons given are to fight the black economy and fix the problem of counterfeiting. The result has been complete disruption to an economy that at a retail level is largely cash based and these notes account for 90 percent of cash transactions. Obviously doing something like this requires a lot secrecy to make it work and it appears this was achieved as far as ordinary people were concerned, but you would think that someone might have considered the extent to which replacement cash that would be required and how to distribute it, and that the one new note they initially produced might have to fit into atms so it could be dispensed. It didn’t. This nice pink note was for R2000 and you could only exchange 4000 of the old stuff, which is about NZ$80. So everyone with old notes queues up at the beleaguered banks with photo copies of their ID plus original and the miserable 4000, when inside a form has to be completed including the serial numbers of each note and eventually they come out with two nice new notes. Only to find that most retailers have run out of change so you can’t use them. I speak from experience. We had 30000 of the of the outlawed currency so stood in a good humoured queue for an hour and got 12000 changed, and then got rid of the rest when buying a carpet as retailers can bank the old stuff until 20 Dec and presumably fake records to show having received it prior to d day. The announcement was at 9 p.m. and the sales of gold soared that night as everyone with unexplainable money rushed to turn it into something else. Train tickets could still be bought with the old money so ticket sales multiplied by ten times. Still on the day we left, a week later, atms were running out as soon as they were refilled, banks couldn’t get enough cash and small traders had no business. It will end up as a classic example of how not to do this. The base problem is a corrupt society from top to bottom and while this will be a one off cost to those who cannot get rid of their black money nothing has been done to get at the real problem. In fact when everything eventually gets back to normal those with lots of cash to hide will require less storage space because now they have a 2000 note to use instead of only a 1000.
While were staying in a delightful old small ex palace in Bengaluru we had breakfast outside, under an umbrella in the middle of a gravelled area of the garden. The second morning it was my birthday and our driver, working under slightly off target instructions from his employer, came over to the table with a colourful bouquet of flowers and gave them to Philippa, who blushed and sincerely hoped they were not a token of affection, then he offered her heartfelt birthday greetings. None of us was brave enough to correct him. India is like that. Things happen but not always as you expect them to.
If you haven’t been there you are missing out.
Dennis.