Travel
Back in the Saddle and a Trip to Arunadri
More than two months since my last bike ride — oh how I missed it
Sunday morning, 6 am, I got back on my bike. Immediate exhilaration.
The brakes pulled a little and the bell didn’t work. Otherwise, all good after I dusted off the cobwebs, wiped it clean and pumped the tires.*
I headed to Girivalam, left onto Vediappanur, and I was off. I hadn’t been by our old place, Arunadri, the guest house and retreat centre, for quite some time. It was a business casualty of COVID. I wanted to see it again so that was first on my itinerary.
From where I’m living now, Arunadri is about a twenty-minute ride toward Vediappanur village.
My, so many new homes all along Vediappanur now, and a couple of new housing developments. The first development, Happy Propertys (sic) has the beginnings of two new homes. But I’m not seeing any progress on either one since the first time I saw them in August.
The other development, a couple kilometers away, has also been divvied up, parcels plotted, but no construction at all. Just brightly painted boundaries and gate. And an open air covered structure, probably for the sales people.
I can’t imagine anything more depressing than living in either of these nagars or ‘hoods.
The road from Vediappanur, I don’t know what it’s called so I look to see if it’s found its way to Google Maps yet. It has:
Arunadri Retreat Center
276/A AYYAMPALAYAM PUTHUR ROAD
VEDIYAPPANUR, India
So I head a couple of kilometers down Ayyampalayam Puthur Road — good to know — past the mango groves, which have really taken off since I was here in 2020. But it will still be another couple of years before they produce fruit — it takes seven or eight from spindly little starts.
Past the Regenboog India Foundation, and voila.
Well, that’s new: a concrete wall the full length of the property on the north.
The front of the property is fenced, but there are gaping holes in the fencing material, and I can see in: big piles of yard debris and quite a few workers about.
And a tin clad hut just inside the gate is new. I’m guessing a “port-a-potty” for the workers.
I’d love to stop in, to look at the property, inside the buildings: the house, guest rooms, meeting hall, kitchen, dining hall. But I don’t speak Tamil and it would not be a good time — in the middle of some project.
So I ride past — the adjacent fields, a house on the left with a new shaded car port — past the “wine shop,” which we were loathe to accept when it appeared down that dirt road in that small, unmarked concrete structure two fields over. No signs on the road or on the structure; no matter, patrons found it.
At the outset, motorbikes, with one, two, or three passengers, stirred up dust on the lane to the shop. In and out, a steady stream, all hours that the liquor store was open.
Though county planning and zoning can certainly run amok, I can see the sense of them when they’re completely missing. Like here. It would not be a surprise at all to see a sewage treatment plant adjacent to a marriage hall here in India. If they had sewage treatment plants.
On the side of this country road, a little stall opened up to serve deep fried vada, a savory donut made of lentils, spices and herbs. And generated garbage from the newspaper, banana leaf and plastic bag take aways.
But the stall didn’t last all that long. Drinkers want to drink. They don’t want food that obliterates the buzz.
Wine shop patrons would gather under shade trees in the fields within a couple of kilometers of the shop. Or they’d sit just outside our gate, laughing, talking, smoking, getting drunk and leaving their considerable trash: plastic bags, plastic cups, cigarette butts and liquor bottles. And littering the formerly pristine farmland.
I continue down to the gypsy village at the end of Ayyampalayam Puthur Road, where it meets busy Chengam Road, but I don’t go through it. Instead, I turn around.
Saravanan, a local, told me about them and “gypsy” is what he called them.
Gypsy is short for Egyptian, which is where Europeans thought they originated. Not so.
They called themselves Rom or Romani and they are from the Indus Valley, in what was northwest India, according to fairly recent genetic testing. Their language is rooted in Sanskrit. No one is quite sure why they fled, but they spread throughout Europe. And apparently into south India as well.
There is a distinct difference between this Romani village and Vediappanur village at the other end of Ayyampalayam Road. The Vediappanur village has a much more prosperous feel to it: the children are clean, the stoops are swept, kolom on the entryways, fields planted, cared for, a few cars parked in driveways. And there are two primary schools in that small village.
Not so in the Romani village. The fields surrounding it are not under cultivation. I’ve seen lines of villagers carrying water in the mornings from a source on Chengam Road, so I’m guessing that they don’t have running water in the village. Or not enough. The children are not well dressed or clean, and their hair is dry and faded from too much sun.
At one time, these Romani fed themselves by hunting monkeys, I was told. But the laws changed and they weren’t allowed to do that anymore. They raise chickens now and they have a more or less open air butcher shop along Chengam Road. The butcher block is visible from the road. Those penned chickens awaiting their fate peck each other, raw, bloody.
Saravanan, a Hindu and vegetarian, said that the gypsies have bad luck because they’re meat eaters.
And when a cat goes missing, which happens fairly often, everyone in the area believes it’s because the gypsies got it.
When we were at Arunadri, someone gave Ishani, my granddaughter, a cat. She loves animals but over time, even she didn’t like Rian very much. He was not cuddly, he would scratch — her arms, the sofa — and if he was outside, he would make a ruckus before hurling himself at the screen, and then clawing his way in through the bathroom window at 3 am, which woke me up.
And he had the biggest furriest balls you ever saw on a smallish ginger cat, which gave him an odd gait, like he was tiptoeing on his hind legs. I know — petty. Not his fault.
And he did nothing to solve the rodent problem. So he was pretty much worthless.
When I saw him sleeping on my bed, I roused him out of his slumber by picking him up and putting him outside. I didn’t want his grit or his fleas in there.
He got me back though. A few days later, I found he’d crapped in my bed. Not hard or well formed. Definitely soft serve.
It wasn’t even war. I hadn’t roused him all that gently and though I didn’t mistreat him, I’m sure I startled him. And I’m sure he knew how I felt about him. So he got me back. Understandable.
One day, however, we noticed that he hadn’t been around all morning or afternoon. Same with the next day. And the next. After a couple of weeks, I figured I probably owed the gypsies.
On my way back, I snap a photo of a countryside crematory called a sudukaadu. I’ve never seen one in use.
As I pass Arunadri again, I notice that the roofs are freshly thatched. I remember my first season there, seed from the thatch, some kind of showy grass, fell to the ground and sprouted in yards in front of the guest cottages, which plants were a lovely addition to the landscape.
The stucco buildings are freshly painted, a rich earthy red-brown because the paint we used is formulated to be mixed with the earth. The monsoon is hard on paint and it needs at least a touch up every two or three years.
Down to the end of Ayyampalayam Puthur Road and another left turn. Up a couple of “klicks” and on impulse, at the fork, I take a left. Last time I was here, it was a dirt road, pretty pocked up — but now it’s, WOW, blacktopped. What a difference!
When I returned this August 2023 after three years away, many of the roads that had been moonscapes were now freshly paved. Saravanan said that this happens about every ten years, coincidental with political elections. Go figure.
This little road, Tiru Farm Road — I checked — isn’t too long, and it drops me onto what I call Greenland Road, because that’s where Greenland Ashram is.
None of the roads are marked so I looked it up on Google Maps. It’s actually called Sri Sathya Sai Road. Greenland is on Enlightenment Road.
A few more klicks to Kanji Road, past fields of marigolds and red cockscomb, and a new banana plantation in the fields below, to my left.
I turn around at Kanji and retrace my route.
This portion of Sri Sathya Sai Road has recently been paved; it too, had been a rutted dirt road. I’m surprised at how many spots already need repair. Serious repair. Monsoon and those fully loaded dump trucks are hard on them.
I check my watch and by the time I make it home. I’ll have been out for a couple of hours. And that’s enough of a ride for today.
Such gratitude for being back on my bike. It’s been two and a half months and I’ve sure missed it.
*My trepidation about biking — read about The Mishap here.
Out walking in the morning, I noticed that there wasn’t nearly so much traffic on Sundays, so I braved it. Glad I did.
Country roads are single lane and it’s intimidating to meet a full-sized bus or dump truck along with other traffic — motorbikes, pedestrians, cows, dogs. Often, motorbikes and oversized vehicles fail to observe prudent speeds and simply rocket down these roads.
Shout out to Meryana Tamera https://meryanaradiosparx.medium.com and Yohan J.
