Chennai, India, August 26-30, 2011

We make a last minute decision to travel on the long Hari Raya Puasa weekend. But where? We have not been to India yet. Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, is only a 4-hour flight away and it happens to be one of the four visa-on-arrival entry locations for us Finns (others being Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata). So, South India it is for four days! We stay in The Park hotel on Anna Salai. We arrive at Chennai late on Friday night, and don't do much but go to sleep.

We are not sure if VOA is worth it. Upon arrival, it takes us some time to find an official to grant us one, and for him painstakingly long to record our travel information in a huge book. We've already met security screening with body scanners in major tourist attractions in China, like museums and historic places, especially Tian'anmen Square. In India they have them in hotels too. Every time we enter, our bags are subject to inspection and bodies go through a metal detector.

Next morning (Saturday) when getting out of the hotel we are immediately surrounded by a number of aggressive auto rickshaw touters. We don't have an idea where to go, and to be honest, where exactly the hotel is located (i.e., which side of a busy intersection --- the hotel is not marked in the map, the map does not have street numbers, and the streets do not have signs --- welcome to India!) So we ask the hotel staff. They mark the hotel in our map, but really they don't have a slightest clue. Finally, the Google map helps.

Eventually we give up to one of the touters who promises to take us to Marina Beach for 80 rupees, instead of offering a tour around a whole set of tourist sites for a few hundred, like others do. Even here on the beach, the rickshaws bother us. Otherwise it would be a nice stroll, even if it is getting hot.

The Ice House, used to store ice transported from Boston, now a women's hostel known as Vivekananda House.

We leave thee beach and take one of the shopping streets inland.

The street is busy, noisy and smelly.

Then we find Express Avenue. A modern mall! An A/C! A restroom! A coffee shop! And a book store to replace the guidebook we left in the plane! After EA we visit another mall, Spencer Plaza.

Spencer Plaza. An air-conditioned complex full of shops to find western comfort food and toiletries, tells our guide book. For us it looks a bit shabby and out-dated, mostly selling fashion directly from the 80's.

Everything is cheap in India?

View from our hotel's rooftop terrace.

Another view.

A freaky movie poster in our hotel room. Is that guy strangling the woman?

Next morning (Sunday) we start with a run in the hotel gym, which is actually pretty good, only that the fuse blows after 30 minutes and halts all four treadmills. We are in the end of our workout anyway. We hire a driver to take us to Mamallapuram and Kanchipuram today.

On our way we stop at the Guindy National Park and the Snake Park, founded by Romulus Whitaker.

The park hosts a number of animals in the family Crocodylidae.

There are tens of crocodiles in this pit. Only one of them is moving, the one in the pond.

This is the first time we see gharials live.

A snake tree.

We continue South to Mamallapuram on East Coast Road (ECR), and make another stop at DakshinaChitra, a center of domestic arts and crafts, focus in South India.

Silk weaving, gorgeous colors.

Shore temple in Mamallapuram is more than 1300 years old.

Descent of the Ganges, a gigantic (9 x 27m) rock relief carved by Pallava kings in 7th and 8th centuries.

These girls quite persistently try to sell us cheap jewellery; actually for tens of minutes that we have to wait for another vehicles to move out of our way so that we can go on with our trip. Fortunately, the girls don't know how to operate the car door from outside.

A flyover construction site.

A roadside landfill. Sadly a common sight both in small and bigger towns.

Our next stop is about 60 kilometers away inland in Kanchipuram, a temple city. We visit four temples from different eras, but only have pictures from the last two. The first one is quite simple and small, the last ones larger and quite intricate in decorations.

Varadarajsvami temple.

We join other visitors on these platforms and enjoy biryani rice, served on a leaf and eaten by hand.

Kailasanatha temple, built in the 8th century, is our favorite of the day. It may be because the warm light of the setting sun presents it especially favorably.

And it is not crowded like the other temples.

We return to Chennai pretty late so for the dinner we opt for the hotel's restaurant 601. We start with a South Indian platter, and then have some mutton biryani. The server advises us to skip the chicken dish we were about to order, since that would be too much for two of us. And he's right.

We end with sorbet and ice cream, flavors vanilla and hazelnut and some mango(?) An anecdote of the South Indian service culture: these days it is quite customary in restaurants worldwide that when a dish is served the server comes back in a little while to ask if everything is ok/tastes good, or something along those lines. Not in India! Ok, the server comes back to ask if everything is ok, but then continues to interrogate about every single piece of the course if it tastes good. Quite annoying, since it happens after each course. And one can't dismiss it, since unless getting an answer they keep on insisting.

Next day (Monday) we make another road trip to Pondicherry and Auroville. We have the same driver as yesterday. We don't complain: he drives well and does not talk too much. Unlike some other drivers we've had in past, he also stays awake for the whole trip.

These school kids are out to advertize a fundraiser for the blind.

An annoying incident happens this morning when we are having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. A guy, presumably a marketing representative of the hotel chain sits down at our table (without asking if it is ok) and gives an advertising speech for the chain's membership card. He hands out his business card and a brochure, and since we are eating, we just put them aside, and tell him we'll study them and make our decision later. He remains seated and an awkward silence follows.

After a few quiet moments and some puzzled looks exchanged between two of us, the guy asks if we want to get the membership. We tell him again that we'll take a look at the material later, and then decide. He goes on with his marketing blabber, and eventually Tomi picks up the newspaper he was previously reading and Tei tries to concentrate in her food. Finally, the guy leaves. The picture: a brand new office building by the highway.

Almost dried out lake.

Our driver takes a break so we get a chance to get this great shot from a not moving car.

Idyllic road with little traffic --- this looks like a jam.

In Pondicherry we leave the driver to sleep in the car, and head out to explore the French quarters for a couple of hours. This is one of the several Gandhi statues we see in our trip.

Beach vendors in Pondicherry.

Goubert Avenue (Beach road)

Le Cafe.

Bay of Bengal.

Actually, we should have stayed here for a cople of nights instead on busy Anna Salai in Chennai. The rhythm is quite different here.

Streets are empty and relatively clean.

Houses are well kept.

No Starbucks, but Pizza hut.

Aayi Mandapam monument in Bharathi park (= Government park). The monument was built in the 1500's. And if you must, you can check the movies that the monument has been featured in: http://www.wherewasitshot.com/2010/09/16/aayi-mandapam-bharathi-park-pondicherry/

A demonstration (or alike) has happened in the town before we arrive; some crowds are still hanging around, and there is a strong police presence with special vehicles and barricades. We guess it has something to do with the projected hanging of the three men that were sentenced of conspiring to kill the prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

What exactly did the architect have before designing this?

Typewriting services offered.

We briefly visit the Tamil side of Pondicherry: it is crowded, noisy and smelly. True India.

Trash. Smelly.

The colors are also very different from the French side.

We return to the quiet and picturesque French side.

We stop at this tea house but they have just finished serving lunch.

Then we find Hotel de l'Orient. here the lunch time is also over, but they promise to prepare us something quick and small, such as salad and sandwiches, which we enjoy with local Indian wine Sula's Chenin Blanc.

From Pondicherry we continue to Auroville, The City of Dawn, a bohemian community planning to be a new utopia.

We don't see so many Indians any more but more young and middle-aged Americans.

We reach the entrance of Matrimandir just in time before the closing of the gates. The entry is free but a permit is required to visit the place.

Matrimandir, "Mother's Temple"

Cows have their own lane at the toll plaza.

The piles covered by blue tarp is salt, brought here from the ocean by high tide.

We reach Chennai around 8pm, after a long and jammed ride. Again we opt for the hotel restaurant; this time it is Lotus, a Thai restaurant. Food is ok, although we order too much, and this time we don't have a server telling us that. However, otherwise the service is overly attentive, to the level it gets annoying.

Another ancedote of the service culture: Both times we dine at the hotel restaurant we are asked to fill in a feedback form right after the dinner, without a prior notice and with no opportunity to opt out. You can just guess that in the second incident the only feedback we give is that this kind of forced feedback is quite annoying and ruins part of the dining experience.

Our last day (Tuesday) is full of misfortune. We skip the planned morning run and the breakfast, since neither of us feels quite well. We head out instead to look for an early lunch place in the nearby Little Italy, which we never find. Then we have quite inconvenient walk to the Government Museum. Before we have a chance to buy the entrance tickets, Tei gets bird poop on her shirt, and we need to return to the hotel to change.

We take rickshaw back to the museum, and this time the entrance goes without incidents. This is the National Art Gallery building.

The museum consists of several buildings hosting exhibitions from art to archaeology to natural history.

The National Art Gallery is closed, and the collections now reside in the gallery of Contemporary Art.

This collection is a mixture of modern art, design, and science museum.

A group of school children having lunch after a speedy museum visit; they basically just walk through it in a line.

The National Art Gallery building is closed to public.

Museum Theatre.

Bronze gallery hosts a superb collection of statues of difference incarnations of Siva.

The historic penguin can also be found ... ???

The museum grounds are very badly kept, dirty and trash can be found everywhere. Many exhibition spaces do not have lights on.

A modest attempt to get people to use trash bins.

This gallery has a large collection of animals found in India.

We take a rickshaw to a nearby Italian restaurant Pasta Bar Veneto. This is the same guy who took us back to the hotel earlier today.

McDonald's in City Centre Mall.

We have our last dinner in another Italian place, this time quite an upscale restaurant Prego in Taj Coromandel hotel. We have difficulties in finding the place; our tourist guide does not mention that the restaurant is located in a hotel, so we keep looking for another cosy home style place in the ground floor of shop houses. Again we are early and the lone customers, so we get the service staff's undivided attention.

We have scallops and fennel-asparagus salad to start with, and then tuna and spring chicken for main courses, and chocolate cake with chili flavored (and shaped) marzipan. After the dinner we pick up our luggage from the hotel and leave for the airport, with the same driver again. We sleep the whole return flight to Singapore, and skip the meals, even if SIA's Indian vegetrian meals are pretty good.