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!

Most evenings we would kill some time with a box of sweets...

and a pack of cards...

Shanks would usually pass out first without giving us a chance to see the card-shark skills inherited from his parents!

And so ended the Chennai & Trichy experience...as we headed off for another long road trip, this time to Kodaikanal.

Just photos...

Here are some photos from our travels so far...

And we're off!

Changi Airport in Singapore has free foot massage rest stops...

Astrid & Christian took full advantage!

Typical street scene in Chennai near our hotel

Shanks' long-awaited, eagerly anticipated masala dosa...


...was wolfed down in seconds, Indian-style (right-hand only)
...and it lived up to all expectations!

Who let these three near the sweet counter???

One smart cookie!

(We've never even eaten these cookies...ah, biscuits...before, but apparently they're a big hit in Chennai)!

Excuse me sir, do you have any stainless steel cookware?

India has truckloads of coconuts!

Bustling bus stop just outside our hotel in Trichy

Astrid, is that your tenth pakora???

View from our hotel balcony in Kodaikanal

Is that Guru Sri Sri Shankar...

or is it Shanks recovering in icy-cold Kodai?

Hindu temple in a village on the walk to Pillar Rocks...

complete with big stack of speakers filling the entire valley with temple music!

Pillar Rocks makes a brief appearance amidst the clouds

Chennai experiences...filling in the gaps

While we are here in Kollam (Quillon) passing time before our trip to the backwaters this afternoon, we thought we would try to fill in some of the gaps since our time here. Photos will have to come later though as we are having difficulty finding a computer with a working CD drive!

We arrived in Chennai shortly after 10pm on Thursday 7th December. Without any problems getting through immigration, we collected our bags and headed out the doors for our first whiff of the Indian atmosphere. We were pleased to find that the air was not quite as humid and stinky as we were expecting, and we went in search of a taxi to our hotel. This was of course going to be the first haggling experience of the journey, so Lorraine confidently assumed her air of "Indian authority" and quickly proceeded to get the best deal available (so she thinks!) and shortly after we clambered into our taxi headed for a hotel. The first hotel we went to was fully booked, the second wasn't, but upon investigation of the rooms, we beat a hasty retreat back to the taxi. Even in India, there have to be some standards! We finally settled on one further down the road, and the lengthy check-in process became our first introduction to the at-times extraordinarily frustrating Indian bureaucracy! After what seemed like half an hour in the hotel lobby, we finally managed to reach our rooms where we all collapsed gratefully into bed.

The next morning, after a little sleep-in, Astrid and Lorraine were ready to hit the streets (seasoned Indian adventurers that they are)! As the boys were still asleep, we decided to go on a reconnaissance mission to check out good eating places nearby. Having found a restaurant dishing up the local cuisine, we went back for Shanks and Christian, who were by now fully roused. This was to be their first "taste" of India, and we all decided to settle on a firm favourite - masala dosa. I remember getting a masala dosa with Shanks at a restaurant in Perth once - this set us back about $AU25! Here in India, for the authentic version, we paid about 50c! The price of food, and everything else, still amazes us all sometimes. We eat out 3 times a day, and the most we have ever had to pay to feed all four of us is $AU6.00! India is still the place to be for the budget traveller!

Later in the day we checked out a large modern shopping complex called Spencer Plaza, as Astrid was trying to find a camera battery for the digital camera she purchased in Singapore. On the way back to our hotel we looked at another hotel and decided to switch, as the latter one was cheaper and much nicer! On our second day in Chennai we went to George Town, a bazaar area in the older part of Chennai, then T. Nagar - another market area, where we had lots of fun haggling for some nice cool cotton tops. Later in the day it was time to start thinking about organising a car and driver for the remainder of our trip. We decided that it would be a good idea, given our short time here, to hire a car and driver, rather than relying on public transport to get us around. This gives us 100% flexibility with our plans and our timings, and the total cost for a 17-day trip for the four of us came to Rs 25 000 or $AU10.50 each per day!

One thing that has touched all of us is the warmth, friendliness and helpfulness of all the people we meet. Sometimes we may meet with curious glances (especially Lorraine), sometimes with excited shouts of "Hallo" from little children eager to shake the boys' hands, but when the people realise that we are also friendly, keen to eat the local food and observe the local customs, we are treated almost as VIPs and people, especially at restaurants, bend over backwards to ensure that we are being well looked after. We have all decided that we are going to try to fit in as much as possible with the locals - whether this is learning some phrases in the local language, abandoning cutlery and eating with our right hands only, and eating where the locals eat - not the flashier upmarket places which tend all too often to end up becoming clustered with non-Indians!

We will attempt to fill in the trip from Chennai to Trichy in the next post!

Adventures in an Ambassador

At 8:30am this morning we departed Chennai headed for Trichy (Tiruchirappalli) in central Tamil Nadu. Eight hours, 350 kilometres, 1/2 kg of scrumptious Indian sweets and 6 bananas later we were there! Along the way we had a number of scares...the first within an hour when we thought we saw our driver start to nod off behind the wheel! Astrid's method of bringing him back to a full state of consciousness was to start singing "When You're Happy and You Know It" at the top of her voice. Christian's method was to quickly offer him some sweets to get his blood sugar back up again. Finally we all decided that the safest bet would be a coffee break, so stop we did, and very glad we all were when we saw him downing a steaming hot cup of coffee a few minutes later.

The other scare, of course, was the crazy Indian traffic. However, by the end of the eight hour trip, we can all safely say that we now have a fairly good understanding of the "Indian horn usage etiquette guide"...it is not as random and purposeless as we first thought...there is a definite system which all drivers know and abide by (unless you're a big truck and then you can do what you like!).

The major road south from Chennai started out as a four lane highway (two each way) and as we were making good progress we were planning what to do upon arriving at our destination early in the afternoon. These plans went out the window as soon as heavy rains started beating down and the road deteriorated to two lanes of potholes connected with sporadic bits of bitumen. 'Two lanes' was also a generous description, as each vehicle attempted to find the path with the least potholes, with priority given according to the size of the vehicle. Only a few small kamikaze cars flaunted this 'rule of size' which even the multitude of roadside animals seemed to obey.

Tomorrow morning we will get up bright and early to go to the Rock Fort Temple nearby...then we all pile back in the Ambassador and make the trip up into the hills to Kodaikanal for a few days...what we are hoping will be a haven of peace and tranquility away from the smog, dirt and pollution of the city.

One masala dosa, two masala dosa, three masala dosa, more...

Christian here! Well my first experience of India is Chennai. The people are very friendly, talkative and zany. Ricky Ponting is a popular association to Australia, and I'm told by a reliable source in George Town that Sachin Tendulkar is now a has-been. We're off to Trichy tomorrow in an Ambassador - a 5 hour trip with 'the' Shanks, Lorraine and Astrid. Think I'll bring a pillow as a panacea for the boring company (he he). Can't wait to see the other sights of India. I've realised that we're only getting a taster in the month we're here. So, already planning a trip back - maybe to the north. I've also been told the meaning of love, life and wife by a drunk man at Pondy Bazaar...

The food is wonderful - it's been almost impossible keeping up with Shanks' consumption of dosas (a thin crispy crepe with a spicy potato filling). He is truly an eating machine and I'm not sure if I should be amazed or scared! Lorraine is waiting for her first taste of kulfi (delicious Indian icecream) but is yet to have the desire met. She has been stared at by weird men who are unsure if she is of their kind or not. Astrid is a most popular figure with the fellas and kiddliwinks - must be those exotic looks (and blue hat)!

Next post...Trichy.

Neither here nor there...

OK, so it wasn't the best start to our little adventure...Shanks was working outside until 3am and after coming inside to pack, he only managed to snatch bare minutes of sleep before we left home at 6:30am to go to the airport. I didn't get to bed at all...partly due to over-excitement, part just being so tired that all my attempts at packing were occurring at the pace of a three-toed sloth!

Never mind, we all managed to make it to the airport bright and early (Ted, you would have been proud of us!), and already having checked in online 2 days previously, we were quick to get through all the checkpoints.

Astrid had a VERY pleasant suprise for all of us on the other side of customs...one of her good friends was working at the Singapore Airlines lounge, and managed to get us all in for a free buffet breakfast before boarding! Looking and feeling quite out of place in amongst all the suits and laptops, that didn't stop any of us from having a good feed!

The flight to Singapore was uneventful, we are currently in Changi airport...Astrid is looking for a digital camera, Christian has parked himself at a bookshop, and well, you can tell where we are!

Next post...Chennai...we hope!

Five days to go...

Astrid
The much anticipated 'Bollywood Night' started with a feast for the eyes and taste buds with each wayfarer cooking up a scrumptious Indian speciality. Christian and Shanks certainly looked the part with their safari suits - a definite throwback to the 70's hippie look (there's plenty of them left in India!). Lorraine and Astrid couldn't decide whether their costumes were a tribute to Steve Irwin or whether they thought they were going to Africa instead! After downing a glass of Shanks' superb mango lassi, it was onto the main courses. On the menu was a delicious mango salad and dhal made by Christian, Astrid's scrumptious palak paneer and Shanks' mouth-watering biriyani, pappadums and famous spicy potato wedges. After filling our tummies with these delicacies, we managed to squeeze in Lorraine's yummy home-made barfi for dessert, followed by an authentic, steaming hot chai - lovingly stirred for half an hour by Lorraine herself. Yum!

After such a feast, we were much too full - and tired - to plan anything, so Shanks stumbled off to bed, and Christian, now feeling quite nauseous (having just returned from Indonesia the day before), left with pre-Dehli belly (not a good sign really!), leaving Lorraine and Astrid to plan the entire trip without the boys. Yippeee!!! That means tours of sweet shops throughout South India interspersed with frenetic bouts of shopping at markets in between! Woohooo! Who needs boys anyway? (Lorraine: I do - mine cooks for me!!!).

While sipping their traditional late-night cuppa, and with Shanks and Christian safely tucked into their respective beds, Lorraine and Astrid decided that the 17 hours of travelling time to Chennai on Thursday will more than suffice for time to plan our month of adventures in India. Roll on Thursday...

Twenty one days to go...

The unfortunate thing about having booked flights so as to allow maximum travel time in India, is that both Andrew and I will be working right up until the day before we fly out! This means that every weekend from now up until the day we leave is precious time indeed, with so many things left to do.

This weekend we will try to get our Hepatitis A shots done (though one of my colleagues who is also going overseas shortly just had a really bad reaction to this vaccination) and we will also start trying to cross off some things from our list of things to buy (e.g. mosquito net).

We will be taking off at 8:15am on Thursday December 7th and arriving in Chennai (Madras) at 10:00pm that same night. I have been diligently making my way through the Lonely Planet India guide to get an idea of where to go and what to see...Chennai itself doesn't sound that interesting, so we will probably just hole up there for a couple of days to orient ourselves and get used to the noise and smell before venturing any further.

A typical Chennai street scene

This will be mine and Andrew's first trip overseas together...I am really looking forward to sharing some of my heritage with him through our experiences in India. I may be a fake Indian really, but I can pretend when it counts!!!