Trichy

(This blog post took place in mid August, 2011)

Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) is the "Indianapolis" of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India. This is to be my first time to actually be in southern India. (Bangalore just doesn't count since its such a mix and Hindi is spoken freely, we'll label it a gateway to the south)


First two images i'll leave to your imagination

I would really like to know what these beautiful banana trunk shavings are for but I was in a hurry and no one was aware of me.

Maybe this is why planners don't let civil engineers make the landscaping decisions?

I spent nearly 5 hours at Anna University of Technology - hosted by their Head of MechE. I think this picture says more about it than I can describe. It was a new set of buildings in the middle of sand with dotted broken machines around it that no one seemed to know what they were (this one was a windmill, but it took awhile for me to convince them that their solar cookers were actually clearly solar distillers).

They kindly pulled out a simple handpump design they made last year using two ball valves and pvc. I saw a similar one in Peru but the person had made the ball valves out of wire and bottle caps so I was less impressed than they had hoped. 

Ah, now the food. Oh man. If you are like me and your protoeolytic environment is conditioned by years of leaving behind piles of animal bones in your wake - spend a few months eating South Indian food and you will never question whether meat is necessary for your food happiness. (Whether it can fully compensate physically and energy-vs-intake I am not sure.)

This, my friends, is a South Indian Thali (meal). That is its name. And it costs 30-70Rs (~1 dollar) pretty much anywhere. Oh, and I should maybe mention, everything you see is unlimited. And that is standard practice. The variety is ingenious, because you'll never get sick of a meal that is broken into so many parts that change all the time. I'm not sure, but I think this may be the pinnacle manifestation of food in our world. I would like to see someone present an argument against that with a contender and a proper pugh chart.

Here is the more simple, common version. This one was 35Rs (the one above was 60Rs). They called it the "half Thalli" but then it was unlimited too. 

And they had a bakery. The first decent bakery I have seen in India. By that I mean it had baked goods - not just biscuits. The ones pictured were not really baked because I misordered. But they were still ok. They actually baked their own breads and had puffy doughy things. It was conveniently along a main bus route.

And as if that wasn't enough, one of the local restaurant/hotels had a week-long every night all-you-can-eat Idli Buffet. Until now, I had thought of idli as only one thing always the same size always tasting the same - white puffy delicious steamed rice and bean puffs. Delicious and one of the few non-greasy commonly available snack foods. This place had 80 different types of Idli. They basically had a big room full of steamed varieties, some wet some dry and then a variety of sauces to choose from.

I had 1/4 idli of all 80, and then chose a couple favorites before waddling out the door. The picture above shows my last serving of some of my favorites.