Solo Adventure

Today is my last weekend day in India, so I needed to make the most of it. I didn't really have anything planned other than wanting to go to Kotachiwadi, an old Christian enclave. This was all the way in downtown though so I to get there I decided to learn from yesterday and take the train... by myself. I was so glad I chose to do that rather than take a cab for 10 times the price. It was a nice peaceful ride where I got a chance to try and plan my day.

After arriving at my stop I spent alot of time wandering around asking directions on how to find the hidden neighborhood. There is only one main entrance, and it is a tiny alley-like street that you could easily pass without noticing. I walked around the meandering small streets and was sadly disappointed. If I had a tourguide telling me stories of all the history here, it may have made a difference. The most interesting part of this area was the group of young boys playing cricket in the street. There was barely enough room for a single tiny car to make it through between the other parked cars, but yet here they were playing the game of India. The ball would bounce off of car doors, roll under cars, and bounce off buildings, but that was all part of the game. It sort of made me wonder if cricket was so popular in India because you could still play in a relatively small area. Baseball requires alot more space to have all the bases to run to and more players to man all the bases. Cricket just needs a little brother to run and fetch the ball in obscure places!

After the disappointing main destination, I decided just to explore. I looked up a fun sounding restaurant and walked my way there. I had to keep a close eye on the map, since there are not really any street signs. So I found my way by counting the number of streets and matching there curves to the ones in the pictures. Thank God for a well drawn map. It worked great. After this I went to the beach area, but there wasn't really anything to do there. So feeling confident from my travels, I decided to find a masseuse, as I had been thinking about trying one here. The one I found in my guide book was pretty far off, but I had nothing better to do.

Venturing through the city gave me a much better perspective of real Indian life. Walking amongst the locals as they shopped, worked, and lived. The area near where the massage place was pretty nice. There were many Western clothing stores and good looking people walking around. The massage place was very high society. I felt like I was in Beverly Hills living it up. Amazingly an hour here was still cheaper than any I've had in the US.

After a pretty relaxing experience, I realized foolishly that I still had to walk back, so I was going to lose that melting feeling... but oh well that's the price of being a high society in India! I kid! :)

I headed back to the enclave area to go to mass that evening, which was for the most part just like mass in the US. I was a little amazed at the number of statues crammed into this small church. It made me wonder if some of that was spillover from many idols of the Hindu culture.

After that I headed back to the train and back to my apartment. Not too much accomplished today, but I was very happy with myself :)