Last night we woke up at about 4am to sweltering heat. It turns out that our electricity had gone out (it must have been raining – our electricity goes out every time it rains), and thus our ceiling fan had stopped working. I heard Priyanka moving around in bed, so I called out softly to see if she was awake (which she was). We both extracted ourselves from our mosquito nets and ventured into the hallway with my flashlight. Thankfully it was just a matter of resetting the breaker to turn the electricity back on, and we were able to go back to sleep.
Our alarm went off at 7:30 am (a much more reasonable time than 4am!) and we got ready for our day of exploration. Our breakfast even arrived before we left! We hopped on the train at about 10:30am and headed for Chennai’s Egmore station. Our first stop of the day was the government museum. It took us quite a while to figure out how to get to the museum once we got to Egmore station. We started off walking, but soon there was a heavy shower (or heavy pouring as it is called here) that even our brand new, Indian umbrellas couldn’t protect us from. At this point we stopped and auto rickshaw and had him take us the rest of the way.
The museum was kind of like the Indian version of the ROM. It basically had something for everyone! We started off in the “archeology” section where we saw many stone carvings of deities from various time points. Then we moved on to the natural history exhibits, including sea mammals, frogs, snakes, land mammals, and fish. It was pretty cool! They even had the skeleton of a 60 foot blue whale suspended from the ceiling. I have to admit the snake exhibit was a little freaky – it will definitely be on my mind the next time we have to do the “snake walk” after dark. After the natural history museum we took a quick tour of the stamp collection before heading to the Bronze Gallery. The Bronze Gallery was a welcome change because it was air-conditioned. We spent quite some time looking at the their beautiful collections of bronze figures (mostly Hindu gods). We really wanted to go to the anthropology section of the museum as well, but unfortunately it was closed for renovations. The last thing we visited in the government museum was the children’s museum. The children’s museum was kind of depressing. On the one hand, it was nice, because the city is obviously trying to provide a place for children to learn with the few resources that are available, but on the other hand, it was sad, because it was very empty, and the things that were there were really outdated.
After we finished at the museum, we tackled our next big adventure: lunch in a restaurant. We had gotten a recommendation of a restaurant from Priya, so we decided to go there. It was a cheap, vegetarian “fast food” type place. We each ate an Onion Uttapam, served on a banana leaf! It was really yummy, and the price was even more satisfying than the food, at only 32 INR (less than $1 CAD) per person.
After lunch, we ventured back through Egmore train station to find St. Andrew’s Kirk – a large, circular domed church. It was a very beautiful church! Walking down the palm-lined driveway, you almost wouldn’t think you were in India anymore. It almost seemed Caribbean in nature. Judging by the fancy cars out front, we were pretty sure that it serviced a relatively wealthy congregation. We did go inside, but weren’t able to look around much because there was some kind of music rehearsal going on. It was cool though – all of the pews are arranged in a semi-circle, and the ceiling was domed and painted with blue paint and gold stars.
Because our visit to the church was so quick, it was still pretty early in the afternoon when we finished. We didn’t know what else there was in the area, so we got back on the train towards home. We arrived at Thiravanmyuir station (our home station) around 5pm, so we decided to explore the IT complex Tidel Park before heading back to SPASTN. Priyanka’s dad had suggested that we might find some western options in the food court there if we got tired of eating assorted curries every day.
Getting into Tidel park was an adventure in and of itself. We had to go get visitor’s passes, but we weren’t actually visiting a company, so we wrote “Food Court” in the “Visiting?” section of the application, and “Visit” in the “Purpose?” section. Apparently that was good enough for security though, and they let us in and showed us to the food court. Tidel park is a huge and modern place – lots of modern buildings very similar to what you would find in Canada. The food court was also modern, and very clean. There were indeed several “Western” type options, including a burger joint (where you can get a veggie burger combo for 95 INR!) and a Domino’s Pizza! We were able to get a quick look around some of the other parts of the building (even though technically we were only supposed to go to the food court) and found several banks, and optician, a book store, a medical clinic and a “mini-mart” – pretty cool!
At this point is was around 6pm, so we decided to call it an evening and head home. We were both pretty tired from walking around in the heat all day, and looking forward to some relaxing.
We ate a leisurely dinner, and then I decided to do some laundry before the under garment situation got too dire. Scrubbing out all of your clothing by hand is a lot of work! But I was successful, and in about an hour I managed to wash, what I would normally consider a small load, of laundry. Lets hope it dries out.
Tomorrow we’re heading back into central Chennai to explore one of their big shopping centers, and then get some information at the India Tourism office. After that we’ll play it by ear for the rest of the day!
So Long for Now! Until I write again!
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