Madras to Senji
December 8th 1995
I'd planned to keep my room at Broadlands while i was away, to save carting everything to Senji with me, as i intended coming back in two or three days. But in the end i remembered the other times i've done that sort of thing and invariably regretted it. It was better to carry everything with me than to risk being forced to come back when i didn't want to, to pick up my stuff if i changed my mind in the meantime - which was always very likely.
The bus was a typical south indian bus - no glass in the windows, only blinds that presumably could be pulled down in the wet season to keep the worst of the rain out. This is a sensible arrangement and i thought it was a shame the buses in northern Australia weren't the same. But Australians seemed to be under the impression they were in Europe and maybe such an obviously tropical design would give the game away!
Senji, which was also spelled 'Gingee' was a really nice little town. It was basically two streets which crossed each other in the town centre. We got there after dark and walked out of the bus station into the main street to look for a hotel.
Being there was a very pleasant change from the noise and pollution of Madras. The street was crowded, but apart from the occasional bus going into or out of the bus station, there was an almost complete lack of motor vehicles. There were hundreds of people wandering along and standing around in the street, which was more or less a market place with a row of shops behind the stalls on each side, there were also biycles, hand carts, bullock carts and pedal rickshaws.
We went to the Shivasand hotel, which was across the road from the bus station, but they said they didn't have any rooms. They told us there was only one other hotel in Senji, the Devi Lodge, which we'd passed in the bus on the outskirts of town, so we took a rickshaw out there, as Jen's pack was too heavy for her to want to walk very far with it.
The pedal rickshaws here weren't like the ones you found in Madras and Delhi and other large towns, which had one wheel at the front and two at the back, with handle bars and a bicycle saddle for the driver and a double seat behind the driver for the passengers, with maybe a hood over it to keep the sun off. These ones were like little covered wagons. The back part had a flat floor, about four feet long and wide enough for two people to sit side by side. It had covered sides and a roof which was high enough to sit up straight under and there was a little step at the back to get up into it with. We sat on the back with our legs dangling over the road and there was plenty of room inside for our bags - or chickens, children, sacks of rice, goats, or whatever it is country people carried around with them in rickshaws. In front of the wagon part, there was the usual bicycle seat and handlebars for the driver.
The Devi Lodge had a couple of single rooms, but we could only have them for one night - the following day they were fully booked out. We checked in and then went back to the Shivasand to see if we could get a room there for the next night. They told us they were fully booked the next day too, as they had a wedding party there, but it was possible they might be able to accomodate us if we came back in the morning. We ate in the vegetarian restaurant that was part of the Shivasand and had a beer in the bar there and then went back to the Devi Lodge to bed.
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The next morning we checked out of the hotel at eight o'clock and walked round to the Shivasand. They said there was still nothing available, but if we came back at three that afternoon there should be something. We left our bags at the reception desk and went to get some breakfast.
In southern India, there were generally two types of restaurant, called "vegetarian" and "non-vegetarian". Vegetarian restaurants did "meals" in the middle of the day and in the evenings. They'd put a large banana leaf on the table in front of you, which it was normal to sprinkle a little water on and rinse before you used it. Then they'd put two or three mounds of different curry-type stuff at the back of it with a little blob of lime pickle, or something like that, and usually a poppadum. Then they'd put a big mound of rice on the front part and pour some runny dhal or some other type of sauce over it. You then used your hand to mix it up and eat it with. You could eat until you were full, as they kept coming round and topping it up if you wanted more. These banana leaf meals cost somewhere around twelve rupees, which was about enough to buy a small bag of crisps in Britain.
As well as meals, and at other times of the day, they served a variety of snack-type food including idli, which is a round, white cake made of rice and black gram; vadai, which is something sort of similar, but different and fried to a golden brown colour on the outside; bonda, which are soft, spicy balls of something-or-other, fried golden brown; masala dosai, which are thin, crispy rice flour pancakes folded over with some fried potato and vegetable curry type of stuff in the middle; plain dosai, which are just the pancake with no filling; oottapams, which are like thick, spongey pancakes, made from rice flour and different sorts of vegetables. There were other things as well and the range varied a little bit from place to place. These were all accompanied by a little dish or a dollop of some vegetable curry as well as a couple of other "chutney"-type accompaniments. There were variations in the food from one restaurant to another, but the food was invariably excellent and cheap.
We went to the Shivasand's vegetarian restaurant for breakfast and had, as far as i remember, masala dosai and coffee. Then we went to visit Senji fort, which was a kilometre or so outside town and was the reason we were there.
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The fort was built around 1600 by the local rulers and incorporated three hills which form a triangle. There was a long wall running between these hills, which made the perimeter fortifications, and another wall inside, around an inner fortified area. On the highest hill, which was accessible only from a path rising from the inner fort, there was another whole fortified area which looked pretty impenetrable.
Inside the inner fort, there was a mixture of ruins and complete buildings, some of which were in good shape. Others were crumbling a bit and some of those had been restored. There was also a tank, which is what Indians call a reservoir with stone steps all round the sides. It had a covered walkway around the edge too. There were also two or three large banyan trees which had a whole load of monkeys running around in them.
We spent a few hours wandering around the place but we didn't do the climb to the hill fort, which we thought we'd do the following day. Jenny took a lot of photos and we had a good look around.
It was great to be outdoors, in pleasant countryside, and there were some good views around us to look at. The hills in that area were like piles of gigantic rocks, as if someone had dumped them from the back of an impossibly big tipper truck.
By the time we got back to town and had something to eat, it was about three o'clock and and when we went into the hotel reception we were pleased to find there was one single room ready for us and there would be another one vacant later on that evening. The wedding was beginning in the evening and continuing the next morning and the hotel clerk invited us to go along to it. I wasn't too sure i could really handle a wedding, but it was difficult to refuse and anyway it would be an interesting experience. But as it happened, we didn't end up going along to it that evening.