Southern India - 6 February 2012 (1)

Chennai City Sight-Seeing (1)

I slept well but not for nearly long enough.  But Southern India was out there waiting to be explored so I jumped out of bed.

As I waited for Jen to get ready, I looked out of the window.  There was a roof below us and a pair of ground squirrels was running around on it.   Jen came over to look but something other than squirrels soon caught her attention.  She spotted a man on a balcony of a nearby building who was cleaning his teeth and not wearing very much.  In fact, for all we know, he might have been wearing nothing at all, but the balustrade of the balcony was just at the right level and thickness to spare our blushes.

Breakfast was really yummy.  I had a veggie korma, tomato, hash browns and boiled eggs with watermelon juice and coffee.  We met the last members of our team: Reg and Pam from Canada, Andrew from Australia and Bella and Steve from England.  With 18 of us, it was a large group.

Guruprasad

Harish

Lukose had a briefing with us at 0900 and we were on the bus at 1000 for the city tour of Chennai.  Our driver was called Guruprasad and he had an assistant – Harish – who had the very important task of keeping the cool box full of bottled water and selling it to us at Rs20/bottle.  It was a brilliant scheme which worked out well for everyone, even if Harish and Guruprasad might have made a small profit on the deal.

Ripon Building under Restoration

Chennai Central Railway Station

As with any other city tour, Lukose pointed out buildings while we drove past.  The first was the white Ripon building, which was undergoing a serious renovation.  Lukose said that this was the corporation building where people paid their taxes.  Next was the Victoria Memorial building, which was pink, and then the main railway station, Chennai Central.  It would have been nice to have stopped for a moment as there was a steam engine outside the next building.  After we had passed the High Court of Madras, we turned right and could see the cranes of the port in the distance.

St Mary's Church, Fort St George

We crossed the River Cooum and reached the original British area of the city.  Lukose explained that this was the part of town from which Madras had got its name.  It had been called Madraspattinam before the British arrived.  Another part of the city was called Chennapattanam which had given the city its current name.

Parrot nesting in St Mary's Church Wall

We walked into the fort area, which meant passing through a security check.  There were lots of police about, many of them young women.  I mistook them for soldiers at first until Lukose corrected me.

Clive's Building, Fort St George

As we walked past the parade ground, I saw two parrots and a mynah flying overhead.  We turned left just before the building where Robert Clive had lived and went to St Mary’s Church.  I saw a ground squirrel in a tree and looked at the gravestones outside.  I spotted one which was dated 1697 – this is a very old church.  Spring was in the air and I saw two crows flying out of a tree with twigs in their beaks.  Jen told me to go round the back of the church, so I did as instructed.  An old lady was sleeping in the covered walkway and a gardener was watering the garden at the back.  I was so happy to see a parrot sitting on a bare limb of a tree.  After posing for a photo, it flew to a hole in a nearby wall where it obviously had a nest.

Bandstand?? Fort St George

Telephone Building??

We walked back towards the entrance to the fort, but stopped for Diane and some others to use an ATM to withdraw some rupees.  While they were busy, I followed some singing and tracked down some mynahs in a tree and took some photos.  On the way out, I passed a building with rows and rows of arched windows.  A sign said it was the Telephone building, but the phone company might have just been occupying part of it.  Very near the exit was a band stand-like construction, just like the one we had seen at our first stop on the Kolkata city tour.

Our exit was next to a shrine.  A woman was praying and I noticed that the base of a tree was covered in an orange powder, which was probably a spice, offered to the god.

Miscellaneous Corner

The Road Home?? But only just got here!

A Black Ambassador - I love these cars!