Journey to the Centre of the Earth: Back to the beginning again

Well, we thought that it was about time to take a step back and share some more stories and photos from our travels in South India...so here we are right at the beginning again, where the adventure started, in Chennai, on the south-east coast of India.

Here we experienced our first taste of what were to become typical Indian experiences...the oft-difficult search for a suitable hotel (it took us three attempts on the night we landed to find somewhere decent), the delicious food (always easy to find), the warm and friendly people (just mention you're an Aussie and you have lifelong buddies) and of course, the colourful and crazy street life...

This is a photo from our first major venture into Chennai, always colourful, always chaotic.

After an hour or more in a taxi, we finally came across this hotel for our first couple of nights in Chennai. We later found a nicer place not far away. It is very rare for Indian hotels to have single or twin-share rooms, so Shanks & Christian became room buddies and Astrid & I did likewise! Lucky none of us snored!

India is the land of very funny signs...we were intrigued by the last point mentioned above!

Does this face look familiar?

Astrid doing her very own masterful impression of an Edvard Munch classic...

Apparently she used to practice as a child!!

Me No Smell!

Whilst dining in a Chennai restaurant, Christian suddenly declared that he never smells and showed us his armpits as proof...we rechristened him 'Odourless Man' from that night on (and I hate to say it, but he was right...in a moment of madness I sniffed one of his socks)!

Astrid pretending to have gastric pains...Shanks wondering why on earth he agreed to come on a trip with two raving lunatics...and it was only day two!

In Australia, if we see a sign saying 297km, we safely assume we'll arrive three hours later. In India, you double your estimation and then add some...in the end it took us eight hours to cover the distance!