How Much of My Hating South India Can I Blame On My Tour Leader?

I confess: I couldn't have told you the name of one can't miss site in South India before I got here. (Honestly, I still can't, but that's the point of doing your homework before you cough up the cash.) So, maybe I should have spent two weeks in the south and called it a day. But I didn't, so instead you just have me, getting in a progressively worse mood since about April 11 (when I arrived in Chennai).

Before delving into the horrors of it all, a few (well, more than a few) words on my tour leader. First and foremost, he can't speak or understand English. I mean, he speaks it a little, but not well enough to communicate with native speakers. Also, he can't read people. So, for instance, when he has totally pissed me off, he doesn't understand that he's supposed to back off and give me some space. Instead, he continues to needle me until I have to be meaner than I would normally like to be (with other people around, at least). Another problem (of many): he's apparently certified to act as a local guide, which means that we haven't had an English-speaking guide at ANY of the sites we've visited (fortunately, they've been generally lackluster, so we probably haven't missed much).
So, on with the show. We started in Chennai, and I knew we were off to a bad start when I made a joke about hiring people to fan us for our night on the houseboat with no air conditioning, and he asked me to repeat myself three times and still didn't get it. (And it wasn't funny enough to be repeated three times in a room full of people who got it the first time.) Anyway, the first place he took us was a catholic church with a wax statue of St. Thomas in glass (kind of creepy and not particularly exciting). From there, we went to the beach (apparently the second longest in the world, although he had no clue what the longest one was). The beach was filthy, crowded and dark (we didn't arrive until after sunset), so it seemed an odd stop for our orientation tour. Already, concerns were brewing about the quality of the tour.

Our next stop: Pondicherry. On the way, we passed a few not particularly exciting shrines that we stopped at for photo ops, as well as a salt factory (again, not quite on par with the Taj Mahal). We also passed by a pretty amazing looking temple of Parvati (or was it Lakshmi?) in Auroville, which the guide assured us we'd visit the next day. Oddly, it's the only place we didn't go. Instead, we spent some time at an ashram (no explanations given), a Ganesh Temple, and a weird, huge, Epcott-like golden orb (apparently, it had some spiritual significance, but your guess is as good as mine, because we sat there looking at the thing in total silence before getting back on the bus).

The accommodations in Pondicherry were nice, but a little weird. The place (a b&b) is also a gallery, so there's art everywhere and the hosts were totally charming, well-traveled, and multi-lingual. However, it felt a little like being in someone's house (my room was right off the kitchen). If I'd known what was coming next, though, I would have stayed in that place for the next week.

From Pondicherry, we headed to Madurai, known primarily for its Gandhi museum (which the English people were offended by, as the Indian history presented there did not put the British in the best light--afterwards, they made lots of remarks about all the civilization which they brought to India (trains! schools!) and how much worse off India is since they left. Which I guess is how most colonialists tend to view the colonized, because how would they sleep otherwise?) and the Meenakshi Temple, which is actually pretty impressive (the south Indian temples are so much brighter and more festive than their north Indian counterparts). So, Madurai could have been better, but (awful chemical fumes in my hotel room aside) it could have been a lot worse. That honor goes to Elephant Valley, an eco lodge outside of the hill station Kodaikanal, where we spent the next two days. Elephant Valley requires an entry all its own, since it was there that I snapped.