"Chennai has neither the cosmopolitan, prosperous air of Mumbai, the optimistic buzz of Bangalore or the historical drama of Delhi. It's muggy, polluted, hot as hell and difficult to get around. Traditional tourist attractions are few. Even the movie stars are, as one Chennaiker put it, 'not that hot.'"
So begins Lonely Planet's introduction to the city, and after 2 nights, I'm not in a rush to disagree, though I would add (if they're looking for contributions to the next edition) it literally smells like literal poo. We've luckily escaped now, but I suppose our stay there does need to be documented.
Upon leaving Mammalapuram our first stop of the morning was at the Crocodile Bank!
They had hundreds of crocs of breeds from around the world, and actively encourage conservation. I admit to giving no more than a cursory glance to the American alligators, having seen more than enough growing up. The real thrill was when the snake section opened at 10am and we saw the local snakecatchers cooperative do their stuff - pulling various hissing and thrashing snakes out of clay pots and letting them slither around the pen. The men in there (wearing little protection other than wellies) didn't seem very bothered about the multiple fast moving cobras continually raising their hoods, hissing and lunging at anything that moved. The Russels viper stayed curled up asleep, though a 10-day old saw scaled viper had a bit of a wiggle around. The handlers passed around a sloughed off piece of dried shedded snake skin and everyone quickly agreed that was enough and never in a million years would they pet a live cobra. Yet- when the handler scooped up one of the hissing beasts we all reached out a tentative finger and gave its tail a little stroke. These snakes are not simply attractions though- every week or so they are "milked" for venom, which is sent to local hospitals to create antivenom. They collected the venom from one of the snakes while we watched, getting it to bite down into a waiting vial and the amount of liquid collected is substantial. And also terrifying.
Sadly though we had to leave the snakes and crocs for the far less interesting and exceedingly smelly city of Chennai. It's like LA or Miami - miles and miles of faceless sprawl, with no apparent centre or draw. Just many stagnant bodies of water sharing their fecal fumes with the traffic. However, we tried to make the most of our days there and shortly after checking in to the Hotel Pandian we walked down to the Government Museum.
Walking in Indian cities is no mean feat. When a pavement does exist, it might just be concrete slabs in general states of disrepair balancing menacingly over open sewers. Whatever pavement might exist is more often than not completely taken over by street vendors and their wares, dogs, trees, people sleeping, men pissing against the wall, piles of gravel and/or rubbish, etc. In most cases it's best to just walk in the road anyway and let all the motorbikes, scooters, tuk-tuks and buses swerve around you. This mentality is the only way to cross a road in India as well. The traffic never abates - you just have to take a deep breathe and walk straight through the enormous chaotic roundabout or across the highway and know that the drivers expect this and adjust accordingly. We still prefer to latch onto a local and stride across with them. Never scurry- it shows fear!
Even short (<2 miles) walks in Chennai offered plenty of opportunity for us to fine-tune our street crossing skills. Having made it to the Government Museum, we figured we'd stay a while, and it was closing time in 2.5 hours anyway, so we thought it shouldn't be difficult, as the ticket allowed entrance to all 7 different museums in the complex. That was before we realised how stifling the heat and humidity became after too many galleries. The Hindu and Buddhist sculpture and architecture was beautiful and incredibly detailed, but we've seen so much of it in its intended place, which feels very different from the bland institutionalism of the museum, which appeared to have been designed in the 1950s and not updated since. Shoving antiquities behind glass isn't enough to create any sort of engagement with the past. After several rooms of natural history (mostly consisting of rooms of badly taxidermied mammals - including a honey badger - and invertebrates that appear to have been sealed in formaldehyde pre-independence) we thought that perhaps the art gallery might have cooler galleries. In the main museum, only 1 gallery had aircon and even the fans had petered out when we were deep enough in the bowels. So we marched across the complex - stopping en route at another building displaying puppetry and ethnology - for the art museum. Any ideas that perhaps paintings would be kept in a potentially more climate-controlled environment were quickly dashed. Hottet and more humid than outside. This is not the way to preserve one's national heritage. Before leaving (Patrick looked in serious danger of fainting) I had to know what the Hologram Gallery was. Turns out the museums acknowledges it doesn't have the funds to securely display its collection of treasures, but rather than just show photos, which can't convey the items' depth, they made holographic pictures, which are on display to show gold necklaces and such. Original solution to a lack of funds. It is a tricky question- what to do with historical artefacts in countries without the resources to properly protect them.
We had a similarly disheartening experience at the museum of Fort St George the following day. Apparently it's the most interesting attraction Chennai has to offer, but the idea is better than the reality. The Fort was built up by the East India Company from 1653, and still functions as a working military base today. Though quite a casual one, as no one seemed to mind 2 English, 1 Australian, 1 Belgian and 2 dualies (new Armshaw epithet) wandering around once we decided the museum was only fascinating for those with a real military bent. We wandered the base for close to an hour looking in vain for something vaguely interesting - a rampart? imposing walls? cannons? We did go in St Marys Church, which does claim to be India's oldest surviving British church (1680), but I came out to discover a bird had shat directly inside of one of my shoes, whilst it was deposited at the entrance. This is becoming a theme.
In our group of 6, there was some half-hearted discussion of going to Marine Drive and walking along the beach, but the noonday sun was making a mockery of us, so we tuktuked over to a massive gleaming AIR-CONDITIONED shopping mall. Not the sort of thing we'd generally find ourselves doing on holiday or in real life, but the heat has been stifling and prevents any normal level of activity. Patrick and I decided to catch a screening of the Hindi film "Neerja," which Shiraz recommended when we were in Mumbai. I'm glad we waited till Tamil Nadu state though - people speak so many different languages in the south (not necessarily Hindi) there were English subtitles! It was a really excellent film and deeply moving - I was sobbing!
Chennai was a time of change for the group - the end of one leg in which we said goodbye to the Canadians, the two English ladies and most of the Australians and picked up 3 new passengers (all English, we finally outnumber the Aussies!) for the next leg.
Our new little group of 8 had a nice cheap dinner near our hotel (complete antithesis in every way from the awful experience of our final meal of the other leg the previous night) and caught an early night (ok, not that early, "Skyfall" was being shown on tv) ready for a 6am wakeup to get on the road to Andhra Pradesh.
So begins Lonely Planet's introduction to the city, and after 2 nights, I'm not in a rush to disagree, though I would add (if they're looking for contributions to the next edition) it literally smells like literal poo. We've luckily escaped now, but I suppose our stay there does need to be documented.
Upon leaving Mammalapuram our first stop of the morning was at the Crocodile Bank!
They had hundreds of crocs of breeds from around the world, and actively encourage conservation. I admit to giving no more than a cursory glance to the American alligators, having seen more than enough growing up. The real thrill was when the snake section opened at 10am and we saw the local snakecatchers cooperative do their stuff - pulling various hissing and thrashing snakes out of clay pots and letting them slither around the pen. The men in there (wearing little protection other than wellies) didn't seem very bothered about the multiple fast moving cobras continually raising their hoods, hissing and lunging at anything that moved. The Russels viper stayed curled up asleep, though a 10-day old saw scaled viper had a bit of a wiggle around. The handlers passed around a sloughed off piece of dried shedded snake skin and everyone quickly agreed that was enough and never in a million years would they pet a live cobra. Yet- when the handler scooped up one of the hissing beasts we all reached out a tentative finger and gave its tail a little stroke. These snakes are not simply attractions though- every week or so they are "milked" for venom, which is sent to local hospitals to create antivenom. They collected the venom from one of the snakes while we watched, getting it to bite down into a waiting vial and the amount of liquid collected is substantial. And also terrifying.Sadly though we had to leave the snakes and crocs for the far less interesting and exceedingly smelly city of Chennai. It's like LA or Miami - miles and miles of faceless sprawl, with no apparent centre or draw. Just many stagnant bodies of water sharing their fecal fumes with the traffic. However, we tried to make the most of our days there and shortly after checking in to the Hotel Pandian we walked down to the Government Museum.
Walking in Indian cities is no mean feat. When a pavement does exist, it might just be concrete slabs in general states of disrepair balancing menacingly over open sewers. Whatever pavement might exist is more often than not completely taken over by street vendors and their wares, dogs, trees, people sleeping, men pissing against the wall, piles of gravel and/or rubbish, etc. In most cases it's best to just walk in the road anyway and let all the motorbikes, scooters, tuk-tuks and buses swerve around you. This mentality is the only way to cross a road in India as well. The traffic never abates - you just have to take a deep breathe and walk straight through the enormous chaotic roundabout or across the highway and know that the drivers expect this and adjust accordingly. We still prefer to latch onto a local and stride across with them. Never scurry- it shows fear!
Even short (<2 miles) walks in Chennai offered plenty of opportunity for us to fine-tune our street crossing skills. Having made it to the Government Museum, we figured we'd stay a while, and it was closing time in 2.5 hours anyway, so we thought it shouldn't be difficult, as the ticket allowed entrance to all 7 different museums in the complex. That was before we realised how stifling the heat and humidity became after too many galleries. The Hindu and Buddhist sculpture and architecture was beautiful and incredibly detailed, but we've seen so much of it in its intended place, which feels very different from the bland institutionalism of the museum, which appeared to have been designed in the 1950s and not updated since. Shoving antiquities behind glass isn't enough to create any sort of engagement with the past. After several rooms of natural history (mostly consisting of rooms of badly taxidermied mammals - including a honey badger - and invertebrates that appear to have been sealed in formaldehyde pre-independence) we thought that perhaps the art gallery might have cooler galleries. In the main museum, only 1 gallery had aircon and even the fans had petered out when we were deep enough in the bowels. So we marched across the complex - stopping en route at another building displaying puppetry and ethnology - for the art museum. Any ideas that perhaps paintings would be kept in a potentially more climate-controlled environment were quickly dashed. Hottet and more humid than outside. This is not the way to preserve one's national heritage. Before leaving (Patrick looked in serious danger of fainting) I had to know what the Hologram Gallery was. Turns out the museums acknowledges it doesn't have the funds to securely display its collection of treasures, but rather than just show photos, which can't convey the items' depth, they made holographic pictures, which are on display to show gold necklaces and such. Original solution to a lack of funds. It is a tricky question- what to do with historical artefacts in countries without the resources to properly protect them.
We had a similarly disheartening experience at the museum of Fort St George the following day. Apparently it's the most interesting attraction Chennai has to offer, but the idea is better than the reality. The Fort was built up by the East India Company from 1653, and still functions as a working military base today. Though quite a casual one, as no one seemed to mind 2 English, 1 Australian, 1 Belgian and 2 dualies (new Armshaw epithet) wandering around once we decided the museum was only fascinating for those with a real military bent. We wandered the base for close to an hour looking in vain for something vaguely interesting - a rampart? imposing walls? cannons? We did go in St Marys Church, which does claim to be India's oldest surviving British church (1680), but I came out to discover a bird had shat directly inside of one of my shoes, whilst it was deposited at the entrance. This is becoming a theme.
In our group of 6, there was some half-hearted discussion of going to Marine Drive and walking along the beach, but the noonday sun was making a mockery of us, so we tuktuked over to a massive gleaming AIR-CONDITIONED shopping mall. Not the sort of thing we'd generally find ourselves doing on holiday or in real life, but the heat has been stifling and prevents any normal level of activity. Patrick and I decided to catch a screening of the Hindi film "Neerja," which Shiraz recommended when we were in Mumbai. I'm glad we waited till Tamil Nadu state though - people speak so many different languages in the south (not necessarily Hindi) there were English subtitles! It was a really excellent film and deeply moving - I was sobbing!
Chennai was a time of change for the group - the end of one leg in which we said goodbye to the Canadians, the two English ladies and most of the Australians and picked up 3 new passengers (all English, we finally outnumber the Aussies!) for the next leg.
Our new little group of 8 had a nice cheap dinner near our hotel (complete antithesis in every way from the awful experience of our final meal of the other leg the previous night) and caught an early night (ok, not that early, "Skyfall" was being shown on tv) ready for a 6am wakeup to get on the road to Andhra Pradesh.
Never underrate the smell of poo. It is a clear sign you are alive and all senses functioning.
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