We pulled off the road onto a bumpy dirt road. There were dogs everywhere and the buildings were all made of leaves and sticks. A man slept under the one street light on the street, wrapped in a teal blue sarong.

Are the dogs wild? Do people live here? What the hell is my hotel going to be like?!

The hotel was the least of my worries--the bed was hard as a rock and the carpet was a stiff brick red. The shower lacked hot water but the bell boy winked at me repeatedly when I handed him a tip.

I watched Hindi tv til I fell asleep. Everyone was dancing and singing and holding hands under trees. All the men were fat with curly hair, all the women thin with long, straight hair.

I decided I had to get the hell out of Chennai. Here I was on "vacation," trying to relax from my stressful, confusing life in the ultimate stressful, confusing place...with no friends, no plan, no clue.

I took a rickshaw to Central station, got ripped off for 100 rupees, but was adament to take the next train to Bangalore. Everything freaked me out. I didn' t know how to use the phones. I kept standing in the wrong line at the ticket counter. Everyone wore their luggage on top of their heads and stared at me.

I had the best meal of my life at a vegetarian restaurant across the street from the station. It costed me fifty cents.

I watched the huge tv screen monitor in the station for about three hours and analyzed the same four commercials that played repeatedly.

I saw an astrologer. He couldn't speak English well so I had a translator. They charged me five times the going rate for a reading. The astrologer gave me an amulet to "protect" me from evil on my trip. He told me if I ever lost faith in the amulet, to throw it in a flowing river. He also told me that I would get married within a year.