Chennai/Madras:

We arrived to the city that is said to be blah…

Chennai was dirty, polluted and basically disgusting. I can’t think of too much to write about. Other than being in a bustling metropolis and being confronted again with the sights of extreme poverty and retched living conditions that so many are subjected to. There were some interesting foreigners staying at the same guest hose; the masters student who was gathering research for his thesis on the pollution and gathers in the sediment of the main river that passes through Madras, the Chilean girl who has been coming to India for 7 years (only returning to Chile, for a few months at a time) as a tour guide and to study the dance of Tamil Nadu, the Indian cosmetic surgeon who has lived in California for the past 30 years and who’s wife refuses to move back to India…

The beach in Madras was a sight to see. The beach is known to be one of the biggest in India. We chose to hit the beach a dawn, and found that the beach is almost 1 kilometer wide… When you start walking on the sand, you cannot see the sea, but only sand. It was crazy to see the thousands of Indians and the hundreds of Card readers offering to read our fortunes (without any English!) with the aid of their parrots. The parrot pulls the fortune cards from the deck, while the Tout interprets the cards… Then there were the small “human powered” marry-go-rounds, the endless fish and ice cream stands, it was like a monstrous carnival on the coast.

After a week in Madras we hopped on a flight to Goa.