My Surface Hippy Adventure

Arrival at Chennai

We are comfortably situated in the confines of our Hotel room at 6 AM, looking down below. At first glance, the drivers and pedestrians look anything but safe, going in all mishmashes of directions. But as we kept watching, we realized that everyone seemed to know exactly what to do to avoid collision. To get to these cozy hotel confines, let me revert back to the plane trip.

The flight on British Airways from London, despite taking 9 1/2 hours, was very comfortable and enjoyable. There was sufficient leg room (although the amount in 1st class was obscene!), the seats were comfortable, the food tasty, and the children on board surprisingly well-behaved the whole time. I selected an Indian movie which was not typical Bollywood fare. It was a very stimulating, well-crafted portrayal of Delhi college students taking on the system - "Rang de Basanti." (I highly recommend it.) Saku sat next to an older woman who was returning from visiting her children in New York. She didn't speak English very well, so Saku spoke in Tamil for the first time in quite a while. When we arrived at 4:30 AM today (Sunday), we went through the "Foreigners" line, and saw a relatively small number of Indians in our line, which meant that most travellers on board were returning to India vs visiting there. As soon as we got outside, there were mobs of people waiting to pick up their relatives and friends. We had no trouble finding our pick-up person arranged by the hospital. The 20 minute drive to our hotel was adventurous, as there was an interesting mix of traffic even at 5:15 AM. There was lots of honking, but as we learned from our driver, one is expected to beep when close to another vehicle to alert them of your (very near) presence. It was still somewhat dark, so only the close-up pictures with my flash were viewable. The first is of the most popular vehicle we saw - an auto-rickshaw, the second of two passengers on a bus, and a third of another very popular vehicle - a motorcycle, with a woman passenger, dressed elegantly in a sari.

posted by Gary Klein @ 10:17 PM