Train to Madurai

From Mamallapuram, we headed for the train station via bus. Committing to travel on India's highways is an act of faith, as much as it is an act of a desperate tourist. An early morning mist covered the landscape, basking everything in the creamy orange glow of the rising sun. We bobbed, swerved, and braked our way through the countryside and villages, watching it all race by outside our windows. On a hill, I saw a temple of gleaming white pillars catching the first rays of the morning sun above the mist. It was perched on the precipice of a cliff and looked as though it could tumble over the edge at any moment.

We arrived at the train station, which was a great example of the contrast that I have found to be a theme in India. The station itself was an older building faded by the sun and stained by the dust from the local roads. The platforms were dirty and covered by rusting corrugated metal, but the backdrop was amazing. The station was set on the edge of a lake with ghosts of mountains rising up from the morning mist on the left and right limits. A lone fisherman was standing on a long wooden canoe, which was powered by a long pole used to troll the bottom of the lake, as he broke the calm along the shore of lush dark green growth. He was headed north, and we boarded a train heading south for Madurai.

At each station the train approached, the air would come alive like a forest full of songbirds. Each with its own song: "Tea, Tea, Tea," "Coffee, Coffee, Coffee." Breads, CD's, Meals, Books, Drinks. Each being sold by a different vendor. Each vendor singing his sale with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some like songbirds, some like auctioneers, and others like frogs, croaking as if they may not be able to bear another day of poor sales. Some climbed aboard and chirped down the isles loud enough to overcome both the melodic click clack of the rails and any slumber the passengers hoped to smuggle aboard.

Trash is a constant fixture on the landscape in India, and train windows double as trash receptacles for Indian travelers. It is a shame to see the litter along the tracks. However, like Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs, the litter holds testament to what the vendors are selling along any given portion of the journey. At one stop, that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, I noticed that there must be a coconut salesmen nearby, because the scene outside the window looked like the mass grave site of a vegetarian genocide, scattered with coconut carcasses in varying stages of decay.

Outside the open windows, a patchwork of every shade of green rolls by, sewn together by dusty red clay roads and black top that criss-cross and chase the tracks as we sail between cities and villages that interrupt the scenery. Our trip began with the morning cool waning, but the breeze through the windows felt refreshing. However, as we rolled into the late afternoon, the heat continued to build, and soon the breeze was more like the hot wind that brushes your face as you open the oven. As the temperature climbed, time slowed, and my interest in the scenery waned. On the downward slope of the days peak temperature, we finally arrived in Madurai.