Trip to Chennai

Alex, Jack, and Jan drove to TO on Saturday and it was uneventful; the car should know the way by now since it has headed to TO for hockey, squash and family visits many times before. Jack drove the first leg and it was sunny; Jan drove the 401 leg and it started to rain and then really rained. This happens all of the time! Or so Jan says. Alex read a book and said that this discussion was a familiar one.
Sunday we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We tried to negotiate a lounge pass only to learn that Air Canada is a coding partner but that does not give you access to the lounge unless you booked an AC ticket. The story when we booked the flights was that AC did not fly to Chennai, India, so now we are owners of another Airmiles card with Jet Airways.
The flights to Brussels and Chennai were full of families. We watched the movies with the headphones on to minimize the verbal chorus of kids that did not like flying overnight or just being cooped up for 7-8 hour flights.
Arriving in Chennai was like going into some of the other places that we have already visited; Kiev or Ho Chi Minh City where the taxis are offering you a ride before you turn around. The airport is small and quaint and you wait a long time for your baggage; however, it did appear to the relief of everyone. We were picked up by a taxi; they drive on the opposite side of the road, and headed to the hotel at 130 am We thought that the city would be quiet. Not the case. Trucks are only allowed in the city at night so the roads were full of trucks and road construction was underway. Lots of people and a sign of the congestion that we would see if full daylight.
At the hotel, security was in full force. The taxi was inspected and sniffed by a dog and we went thru the metal detectors that were to become standard practice. Once inside, the hotel lived up to Sam’s advance billing; very nice; airy and air conditioned. However the big room that Sam talked about was on her side of the building not on ours. We crashed!

Day 1: Touring before the tournament.
In the morning we awoke to a shining sun pushing aside the haze and temperatures of 35C that are typical of Chennai outside of the monsoon season. From our window, we could see the green part of the city with lots of trees and the brown part with lots of garbage and piles of old brick and building materials on every roof top. The city is a mixture of concrete and tin roofed single story homes; few high rises pop up thru the greenery but lots of dirt and low rise concrete buildings dominate the central areas of the city.
We linked up with Team Canada at breakfast and talked about plans for the day; since the tournament started the next day it was training for them and touring for us. However before heading out we indulged in a great buffet that was a combination of western and eastern foods. Jack sees any buffet that has smoked salmon for breakfast as an excellent start and combining it with Nann bread, fresh fruit etc was a great way to begin.

As we started to get our bearings we saw that Chennai is not a pedestrian friendly city; especially for foreigners. The sidewalks are all under construction or end in huge holes and the traffic uses the lanes marked on the roads for general guidance only; there are bikes and auto-rickshaws and vans and scooters everywhere including the sidewalks. So we hooked up with Laura Letourneau from Calgary and planned to visit a couple of sights in the city by van.
Site # 1 was a hill overlooking the city with a church dating back to 1543. It is the Church of Saint Thomas; the doubtful; there is also a bone that is his and some other artifacts. The story is that Thomas hid in some of the caves in the area and successfully escaped when he split some rocks so that this area has lots of historic significance and has been occupied for the past 2000 years.
Then we headed for the water front. The beach is huge and the Bay of Bengal looked spectacular as we drove by. The beach was largely deserted during the day since it is so hot but at night it comes alive with many performers and activities and food etc. The team has already checked out the beach so we will do that another day; on this trip we headed for Georgetown; the original British fort in the area.
The Brits came in the 1600s when the East India Company got a charter to trade for spices in India. Then they made alliances with the Indian leaders to benefit trade. There was a fascinating record on display that dated to 1680 and detailed the births, marriages, visits etc of the folks at the fort. It seems that the agents of this company were just like their Canadian cousins who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company. They wrote down most things that happened so there are lots of records to learn about fort George and the activities from 100s of years earlier.
The museum collection is small but there was an assortment of guns and swords and huge photos of various things royal. The print collection showed how much the area has been developed over the past 350 years. Chennai has grown up around the fort and engulfed it totally. The fort is large; but it is hard to appreciate its expanse today since the moat is dry and the fort is now the government office centre. The lanes and “roads” and tracks are a mixture of mud and debris. However, the history says that it was rarely attacked during the wars with the French and the Dutch so it is scarred by changes rather than by battles.
We did not attack it either. Rather we headed back for R&R for the evening since the jet lag was starting to set in and the squash was starting tomorrow.