Chennai

We had a great road trip to Chennai. We drove 6 hours straight, ok we didn't drive but our driver did. There were two towns we were going to stop at, Sripuram and Kanchipuram, both have beautiful temples but we decided to make a special trip later on to see them. Chennai weather was very pleasant especially at night. During the day it was hot but not blistering hot and again quite pleasant in the shade. Apparently, this will all change in a few weeks so we picked the right time to visit. We were pampered at my aunt's place and she cooked delicious Andhra meals. I know that sounds odd but our cook is from Orissa so we don't eat typical Andhra food on a regular basis and I do savour it especially when others prepare it :-) Apparently there is an Andhra cook in the colony so I may convert over, we'll see. Our cook makes fantastic chappatis so we don't want to give him up that easily.

The first day, we went to Birla Planetarium, it wasn't too impressive but the children enjoyed themselves. We then went to see the IIT campus. We bought a t-shirt for my father as he attended IIT for his master's and was a professor there for a few years before moving to Canada. The first 3 years of my life were spent in Chennai but unfortunately, my father was not able to locate the apartment we stayed at. We took the typical desi picture in front of the elephant circle and then dropped in for snacks at Coffee Day. We got a feel for campus life at IIT, many of the students had cell phones and cameras and spent more time communicating with their gadgets, how college life has changed, it definitely looked like a lot of fun!

The next day, we headed to Mamallapuram. I'm not sure what took us so long to make it to the 5 rathras but we took our sweet old time and ran out of time to see the Shore Temple. The stone carvings were lovely but it was overcrowded so it made it difficult to enjoy the sight. The most impressive aspect is that all the rathats were carved out of one stone despite their size. The children enjoyed climbing the various structures although I think it is a pity they are allowing access to all the structures, I'm not sure how the monuments can be preserved the way they are being abused and not to mention the health hazard, someone could get seriously hurt there. At one point, a guard did stop some adults from climbing the lion structure but noone was there consistently to monitor anyone. We did manage to do some shopping, no trip would be complete without it. We bought a lovely pair of silver earrings and a grey granite sculpture made by local artists. We stopped at a beach on the way and saw some lovely beach side homes. We could have easily spent another day in the area, there are a few play areas for children too. The kids were tired of Indian food so they had Dominos pizza for dinner and we had take out from Saravana Bhavan, their sambar is to die for!

On Monday morning, my uncle came back from his trip from Hyderabad so we were able to catchup with him for a few hours. My aunt, Sindhu and I fit in some shopping in the morning and then we headed to Alwarpet to see Meena, Ravi, Preetha and Ajay. It was so wonderful to catch up with them and we were fortunate to have one overlapping day in Chennai. They will be back next year around the same time for Ravi's father's 60th birthday in a village near Chennai at their ancestral home, maybe we can swing a trip to see them again. Meena gifted Sindhu Enid Blyton books, I was so thrilled as I have been begging her to read Enid Blyton for the past few years. Anyway, she thorougly enjoyed one of the books from the "The Secret Seven" series and is a convert, I'm looking forward to her enjoying more Enid Blyton books as I did during my childhood. After that, we headed back to Bangalore, my cousin Mithun also joined us, he attended a concert at IIT Madras for a band he was reviewing for India's Rolling Stone magazine.

First observations of Chennai, I have been there before but it was many years ago. The town seems to have an unusually large number of medical colleges and large medical facilties. Traffic seems a bit better than Bangalore but not significantly. There were more mosquitos but again, I imagined it would be much worse! Language was not such a problem either, most people seemed to speak English or at least understand Telugu or English so we didn't have any significant communication issues. My relatives lived in Anna nagar which is centrally located with all the amenities nearby. Although I'm directionally challenged, Prasad was able to get his bearings in Chennai and navigated the driver quite well, seems like a more organized city in that sense too.

We had a great visit and we'll probably make another visit later on in the year.