Heading South

Until now, we've spent our time in north India - make that North India. As an Indian friend once told me many years ago - "we have our own Mason-Dixon line."

We took the train from Agra to Delhi, then flew from Delhi to Chennai (formerly Madras), then nigh-trained from Chennai to Madurai.

We had a few hours to kill in Delhi. We were pretty tired from somewhat constant traveling - Mumbai-Jaipur-Bikaner-Agra - so rather than site-see, we found the nicest restaurant at the nicest hotel we could, had a really good meal and chilled.

Flight to Chennai, then, our last night train - from Chennai to Madurai.

Many differences between the north and south. First, there's language. In Madurai, people speak Tamil, not Hindi.

The linguistic diversity of India is staggering. About 200 languages and dialects, 15 offically recognized languages. Hindi is the officially recognized national language and the problem is - few southerners speak Hindi. Hindi is actually more closely related to English (we are both Indo-European languages) than it is to Tamil (from the Dravidian language group - indigenous to this region, while Hindi descends from Sanskrit and other languages brought by the Aryan invasion of the subcontinent thousands of years ago).

The closest thing to a lingua franca here is English, and most people don't speak that either. Nehru had wanted to make English the official language of India, but he lost that battle and the northern-dominated parliament made Hindi the national language - despite the fact that more than half the country did not speak it at all.

Becky learned Tamil, which is great down here but it was useless in the North.

Another difference - Madurai is a much more culturally conservative town than the other places we have been. One won't see a woman in modern dress here - saris, plus an additional wrap covering a woman's chest are required for going out in the street. Becky was shocked to see women wearing jeans and such in Mumbai. I even saw women in saris in a yoga class (though, that was also the only place I saw a couple of women wearing pants).

Also - nearly every man I see in Tamil Nadu has a moustache. Some have beards, but probably less than one in a hundred have an exposed upper lip. Facial hair is common in the north, but not like this.

Oh - one more thing. My camera died - I think from sand from our camel safari in the desert. So I don't expect to have any more photos - at least not from my camera.