BEEP BEEP!

(Jan 28th)

Approximately 12:30 am we arrive in Chennai airport. As we're walking out of the airport, the sea of Indians holding signs with names emerges. Thankfully we saw "Miss Cassandra, Miss Kelly, Miss Cassie"

That was our driver, and that was almost the extent of his English capabilities.

As we left the airport, I truly felt like we left everything I was familiar with.

There were so many people.

There were so many people staring at us.

There were so many people honking.

I'm talkin', there wasn't a two second period without some sort of vehicle honking.

At the airport, as you can imagine, the traffic is ridiculous - bumper to bumper everywhere you look. But that heavy traffic doesn't mean anything to those behind the wheel: They're literally just laying on their horns for minutes at a time as if they have no understanding of the fact that there are indeed people in front of them. And as a traffic jam would have it, people in front of them as well.

So, we loaded up into our car, taking a second to get used to the fact that the driver's side was now on the right, and we would be driving on the left. It's funny because as much of a familiar concept that is, it took us all 5-6 times of trying to get in on the wrong side of the car to remember how things were configured.

On the 3 hour drive from Chennai to Vellore, in the state of Tamil Nadu, we were like the kids who could see disneyland, or the beach, outside of the window. But instead of 100% excited, I was about 50% excited, and 50% reeeeeeally nervous about everything.

"Yeah, that was a cow. Did you see that?!" "Yep, there's another, and another......there was one in the middle of the street - we just swerved around it!"

After a few cows, I started to realize this was a normal thing.

And this honking business, was apparently normal too, because our driver honked at every, single, car, we passed. Some of the big semis even had signs painted on the back saying "SOUND HORN."

Even though my amigos and I were beyond tired from all of our traveling, mixed with the fact that it's about 2:00 am, there were still people absolutely everywhere. Besides those that were awake and walking around talking to others, there were also those that were obviously homeless, and were literally lying/asleep any place they decided to stop: Middle of the sidewalk, on the side of a pile of gravel, on their bicycles that had actual seats on them, anywhere.

About 30 minutes into the drive, I had experienced enough, and needed sleep. See you in Vellore in a couple of hours.

Namaste.