APR 9, 13 (1/2) .. WALKING HOME FROM MY INTERNET CAFE IN-THE-DARK ..
To refresh you briefly .. My sense of my time completely-got-away-from-me last Saturday evening here at my Internet Cafe and I got caught here long after dark at 7:40PM. So Saturday night I opted to go up-the-hill to the Main Bus Stand and take a bus down-the-hill to my Raahat Inn. Long story short (I wrote about it in ‘ZILLA ASKS .. PART V) it took forty minutes and the bus was difficult.
Sunday night I opted to walk down the hill and .. other than getting a ‘hot foot’ in a shallow pot-hole puddle (one of the two I show below) that I stepped in .. things worked out very well.
By-the-way .. you can see these two pot-holes in the photo of the main roadway that I show a few paragraphs below this photo.
As I wrote yesterday .. Sunday night I was AMAZED at all of the people who were out in-the-dark walking alongside the busy main road.
So I wanted to ‘go-back-to-the-well’ last night and try this again. And I did. And I am now feeling very comfortable walking in-the-dark down this particular route from my Internet Cafe to my Raahat Inn.
During my walk down-hill Sunday night .. I failed to really notice how much street lighting there is along my route. Sunday night I was just kind-of ‘spooked’ since it was my very first walk home in-the-dark. I was concentrating on staying in-the-midst of the Indian people walking along the roadway.
True! A truck or a bus or even a car could ‘take-out’ a crowd of people walking alongside the main roadway.
Last night (Monday Night) there were .. for whatever reason I don’t know .. FAR FEWER people walking. Maybe on Sunday night they were returning from the Sunday Produce Market .. see my post on Blogspot .. MARKET SUNDAY IN KODAIKANAL ..
So being ‘quite alone’ last night .. I was SURPRISED at how good the city street lighting was .. especially between my Internet Cafe and the main roadway. There is some city street lighting on the main roadway but not-too-much. But what there is does help a lot.
NO NO NO! It is NOT anything even close to US Standards!
But on a zero to ten scale I would rate it a solid 4.
The traffic volume on the main roadway was also very low last night. Maybe Sunday night is a busy night.
HERE IS THE THING!
At this point-in-the-game .. I really KNOW this route. I have walked it a good number of times and I KNOW the really bad sections and the very safe sections from a walking-surface stand-point.
Below is a photo of my Calla-Lily-Section of the Main Roadway and you can see the roadway itself is good. There is NO shoulder but the grass offers me a way to get off the main roadway.
The dark and wet section in the above photo are my two ‘hot-foot’ pot-holes.
The photo below also shows you that not 100% of the main roadway is a total disaster. The disaster is the condition and basic non-existence of any roadway ‘shoulders’.
I greatly respect the challenges the walk presents in-the-dark (and in the light-of-day). But I DO NOT FEAR IT!
BOTTOM LINE IS THIS:
Would I recommend that YOU walk this at night? NO!
DO I PLAN to make this a ‘regular’ practice?
NO! Got IT? NO!
Smiles.. Cap