The Park Hotel - Chennai Chennai (Madras)

Hey its Nick here writing from the state of Kerala in Southern India ...........Myself and Jen just had THE most amazing meal ........complimentary starter of Apple, honey and Mint (Mmm).......then king prawns and a beautifully cooked chicken dish.......some rice ,Poppadoms,Chipathi........and salad..............followed by complimentary desert ............2 fresh watermelon juices......and two amazing masala chai's.............the bill came to 5 english pounds Total!! i feel terrible for only ...

I was only in the airport for about an hour between my flights. I did learn a valuable lesson though: if you pay someone, they will help you as much as they can.

My flight from Delhi left late and so when I landed, I only had an hour to collect my bags from baggage claim and then take them to the departure area and recheck them ...

... bad case of hives in rankus skankus Mammalapuram. Bingo, it's all coming together now. I've got a shocker of a rash all over my body that i now know (after googling it of course) is a delayed reaction caused by contact with a rather hairy caterpillar who left it's poisonous hairs in my skin when i was watering the vegetable gardens at Sadhana Forest. They were difficult to remove from the skin and spread wherever i touched skin surface. I now know that ...

... The hotel was another high-point - a posh 5 star hotel and possibly the best I have ever stayed in.  The views over the lake were wonderful.  Enjoyed a wonderful 2 nights here before traveling back down into Chennai.  This involved a 3 hour taxi ride followed by an overnight 10 hour train journey.  The top bunk of the train was surprisingly comfortable and I managed to get sleep from 9pm until 1am until being rudely awakened by a chronic snorer on a neighbouring bunk.  The trip ...

... before it shuts down. It's not so bad passing the time in an Airport, in general. There are shops with things to look at, restaurants and coffee shops, and electric outlets so I can plug up my laptop and work. I got lucky on the flight to Paris, though. The Delta plane had television screens where I could watch a variety of movies and shows. There were even some games. I didn't sleep a wink, though I should have. My neighbor slept. All around me I heard snoring ...

... is famous throughout India for its ancient rock carvings, and the town itself (although its population is now around 12,000) was once the second capital. The town, and surrounding area was affected by the 2004 tsunami (there are before and after photos in some of the beach restaurants we went to, and in fact, all along the stretch of coast betwen Mamallapuram and Pondicherry were signs such as Tsunami Rehabilitation Project ...

... Mutton, yes. Fish, yes. No eating chickens!" as they made choking gestures around their neck. Great, if Indian guys won't even eat the chicken, what the hell am I doing? Oh, by the way, they have this little thing called bird flu affecting areas in India. After changing hotels in the morning, I was quite pleasantly surprised to have located a real, authentic, local Indian veg restaurant and got back on board with eating good Indian food instead of ...

... of the trip thats used for the hotels and things and then logging where it all goes.....sound familiar??? yep its pretty much budget management on the drago truck. even as we speak one of the drivers is sitting next to me doing up a kitty spreadsheet and im showing him how to do the formatting and formulae!!! ah just like the good ol days, though perhaps not dealing with the same kinds of figures. anyway we just finished up the kitty for this leg and we ...

... busy customers and the loudspeakers playing the latest movie songs or devotional songs depending on the time of the day. The driving in Chennai is terrible. Coming from Bangalore, I felt like I stepped back in time in Chennai. I don't know whether it is worse in North India or Chennai because I was feeling the driving in Bangalore was better than North. Of all the states I visited, Tamil Nadu is probably the most underdeveloped, more ...

... faces of the children was amazement, they had never seen white people like us before. They all fought to hold our hands and lead us down the street to the heart of the village. We walked along the road and every few minutes we would stop for the men to perform for us dancing and martial arts. The children climbed up our shoulders, and I carried one girl on my shoulders down the road. They had drums to march us down the road, and people were talking in excited voices in every ...