Stumbling Towards Madurai

Our last day in Auroville we catch a cab into Pondicherry. Not for the first time do we get a cab with a portrait of Auroville's 'Mother' looking back at us from the dashboard.

We stroll around town, check out the beach and the statue of Gandhi.
 
Walking around is fine, except for the gazillion places where the sidewalks are under construction. As with every single place we've been to, there are entire streets dug up, half-built, and no workers in sight. All across India, it seems the way to begin a project is to rip everything up and dump piles of gravel everywhere. After that it's anyone's guess when someone will show up to finish the job.

That evening we take our first sleeper bus to Madurai. We're in a double bunk above the seats, and somehow we actually sleep a little during the seven-hour ride, even without AC! Although I wake up repeatedly out of fear that we'll sleep through our stop. Even if we could speak the local languages, we find that nobody bothers to tell you anything, anywhere. Forget about announcements. You better just be aware and ask a lot of questions. At 5am we're once again wandering around a strange town in the dark trying to find our hotel. As we drag our suitcases through the streets, the tuk-tuk drivers lie to us about where it is, trying to convince us it's quite far and we better hire them. But we're used to that now and ignore them, eventually finding it and checking in to the incredibly charmless but air-conditioned room for some more sleep.