Travel Day 901 – Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
It was our Arrival Day in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu and it was a really early one since our train arrived at 4am in the morning…
British Railway Station in Chennai, India
Obviously this was the wrong time to be negotiating a fair price for a rickshaw or a taxi because only very few of them were on duty already and the pre-paid booth was not even open at this time. But after some negotiations and several rounds of walking off, we finally managed to get a taxi for a somewhat reasonable price to the area where most of the hotels were located…
About one hour and the awareness that this was obviously not a cheap city to stay later, we settled for the best value option out of all the overpriced places we were able to see at this time. Not every front desk person fully appreciated to be woken up before opening time so our margin for price negotiations was rather slim. Once we realized that, we made peace with the high prices, had some nice chai with southern idly for breakfast and crashed in our guesthouse as the sun was slowly rising…
Masala Dosa in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
As soon as we were fully rested, showered and had a nice lunch, we were finally off to some sightseeing in this British colonial town formerly called Madras. The British fort St. George and Georgetown became naturally or destination of the day and we just started walking towards those places from where we stayed. But unfortunately we had to realize that there was not too much to see along the way and the fort itself was a rather restricted military base…
All we could really visit was the fort museum inside one building and the small church close by. Also a walk through Georgetown did not reveal the great colonial buildings as we expected after being in Kolkata. The center of the town appeared to be rather deserted, probably because it was a Sunday and the only people around were those living on the street itself. Compared to other places this seemed to be the city with the highest amount of street dwellers that I had seen so far…
Seven Taste Uttapam in Chennai, India
So considering the few sights we had seen, the aggressive rickshaw drivers and the at times very pushy beggars, Chennai appeared not the very best place to visit. Adding the high prices for the hotel and the extreme heat during the day, only the great south Indian food here seemed to be on the bright side. So while we were debating to get out of here as soon as possible, we at least enjoyed some delicious southern meals like Masala Dosa and Seven Taste Uttapam, yumm… : )
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