Chennai trip - Day 1

Before the memories of Chennai trip fades away from my mind, I thought of writing a quick blog on that trip. It was the most rapid trip planned, since my father-in-law was in Chennai on inspection. Initially everyone of our families had planned to go, but gradually, only myself & Soumya were left out to go. The train bookings were done within 10 days for the night of 17th Sept. Our initial plan was to cover Chennai, Kanchi & on the way back to Vellore.

We both landed in Chennai station at sharp 6 AM on 18th where my father-in-law had come to receive us. He had lodged very near to the station and all of us stayed together in a double bed room. As we were still feeling sleepy, we slept for sometime upon arrival. At around 8:30, we got up & went to have breakfast at the nearby Vasant Bhavan hotel. In Chennai, there are no popular dishes as such, so just had normal idli-vada and dosas.

The first look of Chennai was not pleasant as such. The railway station was built in Victorian style, like Mumbai's. There was traffic as early as 6:15 AM, a drainage flowing like a river next to the station, & huge garbage piled up on the streets making us difficult to walk even on the footpaths. People spat everywhere & if you are not careful, they might just spit on you!

After having breakfast, we came back to the room and her dad left for office. On the TV, there was nothing except for Tamil channels and a few Hindi channels here and there. We slept for some more time & finally freshened up. She called one of her college friend - Jagdeep & he told that he would come to meet us & take us round of Chennai. We waited for more than 1 hour near lodge & finally upon calling him, he told to come near Park Station. There too we waited for some time until he finally turned up. I had asked him to find the location of Snake Park as it was very famous here, but he didn't knew of the place. We asked others, but nobody gave the exact place. Finally somehow we could find the nearest station close to Snake Park and boarded the train to Kasturiba Nagar from Park Town.

On our way, we could see the famous Marina beach at a distance. It’s the longest city beach & the shores spread for about 0.5 kms from the sea waters. We finally arrived at Kasturiba Nagar station at about 12:30 PM and hired a rick to Snake Park. On the way, we saw IIT Madras campus. The zoo & the snake park are close to each other & by mistake we took the tickets for zoo. After some time, we realized that this was not the place we wanted to go, & exited the zoo & went to snake park.

The Guindy Snake Park here is filled with different types of snakes, all kept in glass cages, and some water snakes too. Some of the notable species are the pythons, rat snakes & cobras. All the snakes were lying lazily as if they were dead. It also houses a crocodile bank. There were some fossils of snakes, lizards & other reptiles too.

After spending an hour there, we left for having lunch. Jagdeep took us to Sangeetha restaurant near station and we had authentic Chettinad meals. We ate till the stomach exploded and walked down till the station. We waited for more than half an hour for the train and finally boarded the train to Park Town bidding adieu to him. We finally reached the lodge at around 5:30 PM and slept for a while. By that time, her dad was already back from office.

At around 6:30 PM, we all left for a round of shopping in Chennai's famous shopping area - T Nagar. Before that, we booked tickets for day tour around Chennai for the next day at our hotel. We went to Park Station and got into a train to Mambalam. The ticket fares are very cheap in trains, but its fully packed, like in Mumbai. We alighted at Mambalam and went to S Usman road, on which there are the famous showrooms of Saravana Stores, GR Thangamaligai, Nalli Silks, Pothys, Kumaran Silks, etc. It was a crowded area. First we went to Pothys, which was a 5 storeyed building for only dresses. We peeped into all floors & saw rates were same or more as compared to Bangalore. We didnt buy anything there & so next went to Saravana Stores, which is a huge retail brand in Chennai. This also was a huge complex, slightly cheaper than Pothys. We bought dresses for everyone in the family after shopping for more than an hour. By that time, one of her dad's friends turned up & so he decided to stay back at his friend's place for the night. We both took the train back to Park Station, had light dinner at Vasant Bhavan and slept. One day tour was next on our cards.