The plan for today was to get a new sari for Sridevi to match my outfit for the upcoming anniversary party and that meant shopping. A close friend of the family (Auntie) had been consulted and the rest was about to be history. “Raj Kumar” (sp?) had us firmly in hand and that meant being treated like royalty.

   v.s.

So here we are in India, shopping. This is an experience that must be had to be truly understood. The juxtaposition of has and has not, or maybe new vs yesterday is unbelievable. As an example, you can by a low quality, but still passable cotton dress shirt from a street vendor for 60 rupees (about $1.20 today), OR you can go literally across the street into what can only be described as the Saks Fifth Avenue of Vizag and pay 1200 rupees ($25.00) for a nice shirt with a designer label while being waited on by literally 8 people.

Now, look at those two pictures above…  The one on the left is inside the store.  The one on the right is taken from the door of the store looking across the street.  I’m told the “Hollywood shoe store” used to be a good place to buy shoes, and upstairs, you can by a ceiling fan for a good price still.

The jeans that I bought say that they are Diesel and even have some Italian on the label, but I have my doubts as the the authenticity.  However, they are comfortable and of good quality so I think they are probably real!  All told Sridevi’s parents got me three short sleeve dress shirts (I can’t stress enough the importance of these in this climate!!!) and the jeans as a gift.  I bought Sridevi a beautiful sari.  Here, you buy a piece of cloth and they stitch the sari for you, so we had two sari’s stitched, which we will pick up in a day or two.

Now, off to her sister’s favorite tailor (the family standard you might say…).  I have been told that he does the best work, and judging by the shop, he definitely doesn’t invest in the decor.  He must be spending it on the tailors!

Just a quick note, during the drive we got into an amazing traffic situation.  We were turning across traffic, and at one point we had cars going around us on both the left and right, all the while we had scooters and pedestrians amidst the crush and halfway through the turn, we met a car making the opposite turn…  The sheer chaos amazes me, and yet I have only seen a single accident since we got here, not counting the motorcycle and the scooter that have bumped us.  While everyone loves the horn (I asked, and ours has been fixed already once from over use…) there is generally a calm camaraderie to the crush.  No real temper tantrums here.

I know that there are hundreds of photos already, but more here…

With a 12.5 hour time differenc, jet lag was high on my mind, but I managed to stay up till 7:00 PM and 13 hours later, feeling fully refreshed, even the 8:00 AM 90 degree heat and humidity couldn’t dampen the mood.  That is probably a good thing, because it is likely to be a pretty common occurence here.

We headed off at around three to do some shopping and visit some recently found and excavated Budhist ruins a bit north of Vizag proper.  Driving here continues to be something out of a Kafka story, with huge trucks narrowly missing whole families on mopeds.

This doesn’t make India unique though, just very different than the orderly streets of the US, so I promise not to keep coming back to it.  Suffice it to say though, that I have only noticed a single stop light in two days.  The whole experience it more like a huge dance hall shared between a modern dance company, a waltz competition, a classical ballet and an Bollywood routine.  ALL AT ONCE!!!  Toss in a square dance troupe with no caller and here we are!  :D

We went about 20-30 killometers north, up the coast, passing Sri’s engineering school on the way (she made this commute daily on a scooter).  I managed to get a series of photos of a couple of ox dragging a huge load of palms through traffic, which parted with no seeming difficulty (nor lessening of pace) for the wide load going about 2 kilometers an hour.

Seemingly in the middle of no where a well maintained road with no sign headed to the left and after consulting a local, Bala headed into the hills.  The signage is somewhat sureal with a slightly military looking sign pointing out a 2200 year old budhist monestery with a modest fence and no other markers…  We toured the ruins on our own before clambering back into the car and heading further up the coast to a slightly more museum like place where a guide gave us a wonderful description of both these ruins and the ones that we had just left…  Suffice it to say, but he was very knowledgeable and he gave us very definitive information about the ruins.  While I’m not sure how they know this much daily detail, it was great to learn which parts of the “ruins” where recreations and which were original.

Don’t miss the pictures (India, 2008 – Day Two Photos)

From India Trip