For the Birds

On another day excursion (hey, I'm on a roll), two friends and I were on the road by 6:00am today, excited about the promise of spotting the migratory birds--painted storks, pelicans, even flamingoes--that stop at Pulicat Lake, an estuary located on the Bay of Bengal, right at the border between the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh (India, don't forget). Although we didn't spot as many birds as we'd hoped, it was enough to satisfy us non-birders. We poked around the dry lakebed along Pulicat's receding shores, a nice escape from the hustle, bustle, and honking of Chennai. We drove through the town of Tada and ventured inland along the low-lying hills in search of some falls, which we never reached, but the drive/walk was adventure enough. Driving back through scrubby rural fields of irrigated rice paddies and made a visit to the lakeside town of Pulicat, a former Dutch settlement that was first found by the Portuguese in the 1500s, who met Arab Muslims who'd been there since the 1200s, and then there's a 10th-century Chola temple--you get the idea.

A good Indian road game is watching the colorfully decorations and reading the hand-painted public-service messages on the back of freight trucks here. The one I've seen most is "We Two, Ours One", promoting smaller families. More recently, I've seen quips promoting AIDS awareness, and, today, "avoiding" child labor. I was often pleased to note that Indian truck drivers seemed immune to the rough-talking, tough-guy routine of their colleagues in the US and Europe--or are they? I spotted this mudflap art today (end of the slideshow). And, with some translations from my own driver, I learned that most truck artists label the under-carriage rack for the spare tire almost always as not "spare" or "extra", but rather as "small house" or a euphemism for a mistress or other woman.