On Monday I travelled to Pondicherry for the Pongal (India’s harvest festival) holiday. I set off very early in the morning and Chennai was covered in a thick smog.
The reason for the poor visibility was that Monday was Bhogi, the day that families burn all their rubbish ahead of Pongal. It is a tradition that has gone on for many years, but now the authorities are restricting the kind of rubbish that can be burned for environmental reasons.
I got the 7.30 bus to Pondicherry from the main bus station in Chennai. The smog stayed with us most of the way, but it largely disappeared when we reached our destination. The journey was OK, apart from when a fat woman holding her grandchild sat down next to me so I was very squashed for the rest of the journey.
