A delayed start in India

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  Chennai, India
Thursday, November 2, 2006

A bit of unfortunate circumstances kept Monika and myself in Kuala Lumpur an extra day longer than intended. This is mainly due to a blunder of not being able to set an alarm to wake up early enough to catch the flight. We woke 30 minutes before the flight left, but it takes an hour to get to the airport not to mention check in and immigration. So we arrived in Chennai today with no major obstructions or confounding circumstances. We even managed to get a 5 star breakfast from an executive on the train that was willing to share his high end hotel prepared breakfast with us.

On arrival in India we cleared customs quickly and even managed to not have our luggage lost. I am sure I am going to pay dearly later for this bit of fortuitous karma, but for now I am ignoring the balance of the universe. Once we made it out of the terminal we ambled about looking for the suburban train to take us to the city center

a respite in Chennai amongst the chaos

. As we wonder I finally spot it and we buy two first class tickets for the equivalent of $1.85. However, our train is to arrive on track 3 which is on the other side of 4 sets of rails and the underground tunnel to get there is flooded in waste deep water. There is of course a solution that involves us crawling out of a window in the terminal, across 4 sets of train tracks, and two platforms. This is all done with full travel gear on our backs and the scorching south India sun baking us.

We arrive at the platform and patiently wait for the train surprised at the lack of hassle and people trying to sell us things. The train rolls in 10 minutes later, but we are unable to locate the 1st class car. As we are running along the platform the train begins to move. As the doors are all kept open on all these trains we scramble on like Inidan Jones. Monika slams into me and I slam against the wall with both of us landing on ours knees in front of a staring Indian audience. "Hello, we are tourists. I'm sure you have seen the likes of us wandering about aimlessly and performing all sorts of strange things like using forks."

Anyway, several stops later we find the first class car after the train decides to take a 15 minute break. On arriving into Chennai Egmore station we locate a hotel fairly easily with only minimal wandering

Monika eating Indian style

. It's a bit dank and musty and the view which consists of a trash filled air shaft could be better, but at least there is a barely sanitary squat toilet and wobbly sink along with towels that might as well be sand paper.

Impressions of India are still forming so I won't jump the gun as we have only been here half the day. I shall report back soon when I have a clearer rendition of my new environment.

Tomorrow it's a 28 hour train ride to Kolkata which should be quite an adventure.

Thanks for reading.

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outside a restaurant

train to Kolkata

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