Chennai or Chain-nahi??

After being for two months in Bangalore, me and my friends had decided that it was time that we used the weekends in a more fruitful way.. by exploring South India.. All of us had the first opportunity to do so... So at dinner on Thursday night, I proposed that we go to Chennai for the weekend, one of the vertices of the Great Quadrilateral!

Even an hour before actually leaving Bangalore, we were unsure about what mode of transport we will be using. And this type of impromptu decision-making associated with traveling makes it so much exciting. When one sits down and plans for a trip, there is a certain expectation-level associated with the trip and we need to live up to that expectation. But for back-packers, any experience actually increases the value of the trip over the expected value (which is essentially zero).

So, we left home to go the Majestic Bus Stand in Bangalore at around 10pm on friday. After reaching the bus stand, we were totally dumb-founded. Not knowing the local language and finding that all boards on the buses were in Dravidian script left us moving around in circles when we were directed (or mis-directed) by a series of people. Finally we were able to locate the section where buses left for Chennai. But bad luck! There were no seats available and the private buses were charging too much... So we decided to use the Indian Railways for our journey.. And without a second thought, we got the tickets for the general compartment on the Guwahati Express which was scheduled just 15 min later. After desperate running around we did find the general compartment but it turned out to be occupied by military personnel! It was actually a blessing in disguise since they allowed us to enter and then closed the gates so that we were the only ones sitting at the door in the general compartment...

After some sleepless hours and attempts to pass time by playing cards, we finally reached Chennai Central! Since we surprisingly reached half an hour in advance (has the management of Indian Railways changed?) We decided to celebrate our arrival in Chennai with tea in a "High Class" hotel... but found that it was devoid of sugar. Thinking that this was the type of tea that people out there drank, we drank it all only to find sugar left at the bottom of the cup! (Atleast they should provide spoons if they find it too much to stir the tea!)

Notorious as the Chennai auto-wallahs are for charging exorbitant rates, we played it safe and got a prepaid auto to IIT main gate! We looked at awe as we passed the beautiful Mariana beach and were simply awestruck by its length! It seemed to be go on forever! We thought that we as we had reached IIT at 7am and my friend would most probably be asleep at that time, we could as well walk from the main gate to his hostel (saraswati or saras for short), a decision that we repented later as we had to walk a whole 4km after having a sleepless night in the train. We were very excited when we first saw the deer in IITM and took many pictures only to later realise that they were as abundant as the cattle back home in IITB!

Next after shocking shyam, who was in deep slumber and could not believe that we had actually come to chennai (he had thought that i was just making unrealistic plans), we went to Tiffany's (which is a fav hangout for iit junta since its located inside the girls hostel Shravati :D) and had a very delicious masala dosa.. After moving around for some time, we came back to shyam's room and dozed off!!

Later in the afternoon, we thought of moving out from iit but the sweltering heat was a bit too much... after having some biryani at a decent place, we set out on the baked streets of Chennai.. all the time we were looking for points which would help brand chennai a metro or a non-metro..
I met my sister and her friend (whose name i could not gather :D) and we explored some of the jungles of the iit campus... these were places which even shyam had not explored in his three years of stay at the campus... In the evening we went to the Besantnagar beach (which according to my sister was a good beach but then it didnt look like.. with all the litter and being crowded in the evening it was a kind of letdown.. ) it was also my first experience to travel in a south indian local bus (i hadnt done so even in bangalore) and well the less said the better about it... since we were just standing at the door and had to alight at every stop to let people get in and out..

there was not much to do in the evening and we spent some time in a ccd and ate some pizza before coming back to iit... on the way we just thought about getting into Dollars and Pounds (a clothes shop).. it was worth mentioning since it was one of the few cool places (literally i mean) in chennai... then we finally made our way back to Saras and found ourselves really drained out from our day out in Chennai...

The next day, we had two main targets to achieve, one the Birla Planetarium and two, the Mariana beach.. (actually there is not much to move about in Chennai and i realised why people were shocked when i told them that i was planning to go to chennai for sight-seeing).. But as always, the weather was hostile to travelling and we were soon finding us dehydrated.. We spent some time in the Birla Planetarium and the science gallery adjacent to it (which was quite average and not as great as the Vishweshvaraya Museum back in Bangalore)... actually at many points in the trip we implicitly made comparisons with Bangalore and found that we were quite lucky to stay in Bangalore rather than in Chennai! The four of us had a good time in the science gallery and clicked some pics with machines which seemed to come from a different era.. but it was an hour well spent and more importantly protected from the scorching sun!! Later we watched the planetarium show which was supposedly designed for standard V kids but once again it was a relief to enjoy the cool AC inside the auditorium.

Later we made our way through the crowded streets of T.Nagar and also went shopping. Later after having pav bhaji and ajmer halwa for lunch, we made our way through the vegetable market to Shyam's house. After spending some time there, we set out to achieve our last target in Chennai (which was the Marina beach) and again used the local bus for transport. But this time, Shyam had left back for iit and so we were all on our own with no Tamil-speaking person to guide us! Fortunately, we found a Hindi speaking fellow on the bus who helped us get down at the right bus stop and then we were enjoying the evening at one of the longest beaches in the world!

The Mariana beach would have been the most beautiful beach in the world, if only the government would have taken the effort to put in some dust-bins and the people would have cared to keep it litter free.. Nevertheless, its grandness was a wonderful sight and we enjoyed the couple of hours that we spent there... And now, it was time for us to go back to Bangalore (Oh! what a relief!) Aware about our weakness of not being able to speak in Tamil, we decided to play it safe and hire an auto from the Chennai Central station (which on the map seemed to be quite close by but turned out to be atleast a half an hour walk from the beach) .. But we could get an auto to the bus stand which was diametrically opposite the railway station and soon were at our destination. But we found that the auto driver who was supposed to charge us Rs. 75 returned back only 10 Rs in exchange for 100.. this resulted in a verbal duel between the three of us and the auto driver but we knew that it was a useless effort...

Finally after cursing Chennai some more, we got a seat in the driver's cabin of a bus for 300 bucks each... (actually speaking that was the best bet for us since we would anyway have had to take the ticket because of the cash crunch and no signs of a Citibank ATM..) After waiting for about an hour and feeding on biscuits in the meantime, we finally boarded the bus and were on our way back to bangalore... How nice it felt!! And what more? there were three other people giving us company in that small cabin in addition to the driver! But on the positive side, the driver played some hindi songs and it felt so soothing to hear them after a hectic day in the metro (so-called) Chennai...

At 6 am the next day we were back in Bangalore and it felt like paradise.. We soon made our way back home and crashed off...