Chennai Chronicles 5

Tags

chennai, chennai chronicles, drive, highway travels

Before I go to the next trip (yes Leh it is on Thursday) I thought I might finish the previous travelogue so that I can come back and start fresh, read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 before this if u want

So after having a sumptuous and satisfying lunch at Temple Bay we proceeded to explore the rest of the ECR which has many many good options if you ask me, on the way up we had seen a coupe of tracks with ATV (all terrain vehicle) and being the driving freaks that we are we were very keen to try it, so the next stop we did was one of those and heavens we loved it all of us including Ojas (a tip here there are two tracks there one closer to chennai and one a little further away on ECR, the one further away is a better bet. The ATV’s he has are in better condition, the helmets are cleaner etc..)

After spending a good adventurous time in the track we proceeded to another place which was in my must visit list since I had planned this trip. Dakshin Chitra Chennai, a place where cultures meet, lovely handicrafts are sold. A place which is all about culture of the four south Indian states. I am a sucker for exhibitions like these, dastakar, Delhi Haat give them to me any day over the popular markets.. (well errr I love the markets too )

One of my most favourite handicrafts that day, bought the car one for ojas room and sigh I still haven’t put it up

The whole concept of Dakshin Chitra is about showcasing houses of all four South Indian States, it was so nice to observed the differences and yet some similarities between the houses. And one the house from Chittor area of AP is exactly how N’s granny’s village house is… so we spent quite a lot of time there comparing small things which we have back in the village with what it was there. Some of the artefacts and display pieces just stole my heart

There were many artists at work too, the potter, the weaver and Ojas had a good time observing them at work and asking questions

There was also a play area for kids in which predictably Ojas freaked out

There is also a shop there which sells handicrafts item which though a tad expensive has some excellent stuff that I picked up

Post this we headed back home, freshened up and braved the chennai traffic (which BTW sucks) to meet a close friends family for dinner. We caught up with them after a long time and it was such a pleasure

The next morning I had to do what I couldn’t the previous day and had breakfast at Murgan Idly, when I think of it my mouth starts watering all by itself again   and post the breakfast I met the lovely uma for coffee, chatted with her while the boys went back for another round of ATV driving, post that meeting we spent some quality time with family again and alas it was time to head back to Bangalore.

Everytime I go to Chennai I get a strange feeling, I fall in love with some parts of Chennai and absolutely hate some more. I love the fact that there is so much to do there, I love the food there, I love the fact that it has beaches. The city has a soul which it stands by beautifully. But I hate its weather I can’t stand humid weather and Chennai is like a advertisement for humid weather. But more than anything what I don’t like about Chennai is the freedom I have in bangalore, I can wear anything here and walk down the streets without a second glance. I can easily walk up to a booze store, buy what I want and come back home. In chennai stares if you wear even a jeans are not uncommon. Another thing I don’t like about Chennai is the fact that they are so rigid about their culture, agreed thats what has helped them preserve it but still we don’t need to be policing all the time do we? So what I have with Chennai is a love-hate relationship. Love to visit the city but will hate to settle there  

So with this we complete the chennai chronicles.. untill next time Chennai you will be missed

Here is where you can read about the return drive

Chennai Chronicles 3

Tags

chennai, highway travels, travel, travel tales

Continued from here and here

So next morning alarms were set at 5am, bets in place that who will get up and who will not and the odds were highly against me but I was determined to prove them wrong and I think I got up just to prove them wrong 😛

So we were at the beach around 5:45 or so, with the weather just perfect to play around…. we enjoyed and overcome our fears, much fun was had playing in water, sand, feeling the sand slip away under the feet and making castles 😀 all the while when it was drizzling a bit making it even more fun… sigh beach is the only thing that makes me feel damn jealous about chennai ;P

Beach Fun

After spending around an hour and a half on the beach we all were hungry and the plan was to eat at Murugan Idly the place I start dreaming about the minute we start talking about a Chennai trip… We rushed to murugan idly only to be told that it opens at 8am for breakfast, disappointment is a small word for what I felt at that time I assure u 😦 however because I had one more day for eating that breakfast and we were hungry anyways P took us to hot chips, now that was a surprise as I didnt know that hot chips will sell idly dosa also. The hot chips here in Bangalore sell just what they are named for Hot chips and yummy ones too…. this hot chips had anything but chips 😉 the breakfast was decent though we thulped idly dosa, a dose of filter coffee and planned the rest of the day ahead while eating which was to proceed towards Mahabalipuram known as mahabs is what I am told 🙂

So after coming back home and scrubbing the sand away and making ourselves presentable we started on the drive towards mahabs on the ECR road of which I had heard so much about… and yet again all we encountered was crazy traffic, till quite sometime it did ease out when we crossed the toll booth a little though… the idea was to just decide if we want to stop somewhere on the way and see, if we dont find anything interesting we would head straight to mahabs, however the first stop came too soon – the snake and the crocodile park thinking ojas might enjoy the place… however it left me in pain just as most zoo’s in India too, apart from a couple of the like the Mysore zoo I always leave Indian zoos with a very heavy heart. This place was badly maintained, not clean at all, with tiny enclosures and the worst was the snake enclosure, they had placed the snakes in pots covered with a cloth, taken out randomly for display and hit nudged by a stick to fan so that the people there can get bribe tips

Having said that ojas did enjoy seeing all the crocs, for him the state doesn’t matter too much as of now I guess. There were also some turtles in the glass enclosures which he loved the most.

The aligators

Inside the snake park

There were also some nice and cute turtles in park, which excited ojas the most…. he refused to get away from them 🙂 so after seeing this and indulging in some pineapple with a generous sprinkling of red chillies we headed straight towards mahabs enjoying the lovely view on both sides of ECR

To be continued….

PS: can’t believe I am writing so much about chennai 😛

Chennai Chronicles Part 1 | Post 12

Tags

chennai, chennai chronicles, highway travels, NaBloPoMo, travel

We had been planning this Chennai trip forever and by forever I mean forever for multiple reasons N’s uncle who is almost like a father to him since N lived with him during all his schooling, wanting to show Ojas chennai, wanting to experience the brilliant chennai road in the Cedia and for my love-hate relationship with the city (more on that in the next post and yes that will be the post for u Pal :p) but somehow it just kept getting delayed and delayed and further delayed because we’ll think of doing in it winters and something will come up and later in march we would say naa its too hot now so this time we decided enough is enough we must go this time whatever happens we must. So phone calls were made to cousins and uncles, to some friends and off we started early morning a little after 6:15 or so, all backs packed and loaded, ojas buckled into the car seat, the windscreen cleaned and shining, juices and munchies loaded off we started with a lovely weather accompanying us, we secretly praying that we could pack the weather in the boot and take it along too 🙂

The idea was to zip across and cross hosur before 7am at any cost however God and my husband had different plans, as soon as we reached the toll booth N realized that he has left his wallet home, we pay a round trip toll and take a u-turn and thak go back home to collect the said wallet, poor N to his credit he has never done it before and on the way tried to drive as fast as possible to save time. Anyways by the time we started from home again it was some 7:10 and the trip-o-meter was set back to 0, we reached the poll gate and paid it one more time and headed again. The drive till hosur was pretty crowded and it felt that whole of Bangalore is headed that side for the long weekend… we reached Hosur (38kms) at 7:46, thought of catching a breakfast but somehow didn’t feel like stopping so close to home 😛 the hosur-krishangiri stretch is a pretty decent one, The roads are good but there is quite a bit of traffic and we made it to Krishangiri (87 kms) at about 9 am in the morning. And just after krishanagiri we decided to fuel up as well as catch up on breakfast, there was a MacDonald and Krishna bhawan at the bunk but guess what the krishna bhawan had some 25 minutes waiting and had run out of idlies, this on the highway so Bangalore was indeed headed out, we decided to grab something from the drive in of macD and eat on the go, though the drive in was not really working well instead of three counters for ordering, paying and collecting there was one window where he was making everyone halt and place the order in the main counter inside… what will it take for us to do things right? small things like that? so the new spicy chicken and spicy paneer burgers were sampled and duly passed as better than the earlier ones 🙂 and post krishangiri we took a left turn towards Chennai whereas the straight goes towards Salem etc

And this is when we found joy because the roads were relatively very empty post this turn and very very good, I think only fools like us holiday in Chennai that too in the end of April 😉 We started zipping away happily cruising at good speeds, reached yellore (160kms) at 9:51, vellore (206) at 10:21 and finally chennai outskirts (322 kms) at 11:50 and that is where it started damn the traffic jam…. from there to reach our cousin’s house we took about 1 hr and 2 mins for a distance of about 15kms … sigh traffic everywhere is the same I guess..

To be Continued in Part 2

Fact or Fiction

Tags

chennai, life, personal, strange

Ram finished his rushed morning routine and started his dear car to rush to his office about 5 kms away from home. As soon as he started the car he cursed himself for not fueling it up yesterday evening, now he would have to waste another 5 minutes of precious morning time. Reluctantly he turned his beloved car towards the petrol bunk not aware of the fact that this 5 minutes will change the course of his entire day.

Glancing at his watch again as he had only 10 minutes left for the conference call he drove out of the bunk. Just when he was outside he saw a lady a little older than him looking worried and asking for a lift, though he normally doesn’t give anyone a lift something in the look of the lady made him stop. She told him she needs to get somewhere urgently and has been waiting for an auto for the past 30 minutes but none is ready to go… knowing Chennai and its autowallahs he decided to drop her as it was just on the way to his office.

After about an hour, when his wife Shanti was cleaning the dinning table she realised that Ram has left his dabba home and called him up telling him the same. But to her surprise she found his cell phone coming as switched off which was very strange as she remembered him charging the phone yesterday night as they had argued on who will use the point for charging. Thinking he might be in a meeting or something she called his office and let him a voicemail. When he didn’t call back for the next two hours, she called him again… the cell phone was still switched off and the extension still going to voicemail. She decided to call the reception and leave a message for him and then what the receptionist told her shocked her… Ram had never come to office today.

This was so unlike her husband to go suddenly missing but she decided to wait for some more time trying his cellphone every 5 minutes. When there was no way she could contact with till 4 in the evening, she started to get nightmares and get really worried. All kinds of thoughts from an accident to some major health problem started coming to her mind how much ever she tried to keep them away.

She decided to call Ram’s cousin Surya and tell him everything. Surya reached their house and after hearing to everything got very worried himself, after waiting for another hour they decided to go to the police and check on all accidents that have happened in the city near his route. Fortunately there were none but inspite of this being a good news, it frightened them a little more… Where was Ram?

Shanti and Surya took the streets of Chennai and started searching for him. After 2 hours of throughly searching the route he usually takes from home to work, they decided to wait it out as there was hardly anything else they could do and just when Surya was getting really depressed and shanti was just sitting in the corner tears flowing down her eyes, at around 8pm they received a call from Ram saying don’t worry I am on the way home and will be there in another hour or so. He told them he will come and tell them and don’t ask any questions on phone. Surprised but relieved they waited for Ram to reach back.

And when he reached back, they both were shocked… he looked very tired and confused and when asked what happened, he told them what happened in the morning, that he had given the lady a lift for 3 kms and that he doesn’t remember anything after that. He only knows that after giving her lift they didnt talk at all apart from her saying thanks and the next thing he remembers is waking up in his car on Chennai-Bangalore highway near Yelagari and everything he had was with him… his watch, laptop, cell phone, cell phones, cash and cards… confused he just started driving bad and after getting a hold of himself he realised Shanti would be very tensed and called her.

Surya and Ram went to the police station and registered a complaint on what had happened. The police guys looked equally amused as they had not heard of anything like this before, its been an year now and Ram still doesn’t remember what happened on that day. Inspite of trying multiple times he is blank on that day… neither have police come with anything that might have been done with his car on that day…Needless to say he has resolved never to try and help anyone else

PS: The above is NOT FICTION…its a true story that happened to one of N’s cousin in chennai, names have ofcourse been changed but everything else in the story is truth….Ritu’s post return made me write this… strange things happen on the road and I think its important for all of us to be try and be very careful. The incident has left a deep mark on the cousin as well as us… how suddenly something can happen in life which we have no control on and worst we dont even know what happened actually