chennai airport (tamil nadu), wednesday 23 january
i'm ready to go back home. i'm now at chennai airport waiting to board my flight to delhi. pipi's relatives here in chennai were incredibly sweet and i'm really thankful to them for trying to make me feel at home... but home is home, there's no equal to sleeping in your own bed and using your own bathroom (at some point, i gotta write about bathrooms in india... that was a whoooole experience! maybe dana would like to write about them! :)
i'm sad to leave, i feel that i've learned so much about this culture and about life in general, and i feel that there's still so much to learn. however, i also feel that there's much more time for that and, after a whole month in this country, enough is enough.
chennai seems like a much more civilized place than the other big cities we visited, like delhi or mumbai. yes, people still honk but not as much and there's some respect for other people's lanes on the road. also, poverty is not as in-your-face as it is in those other cities. something that has caught my attention during my stay in the south is the number of christian churches and images of jesus i've seen all over. i knew the portuguese had been around for a while but i ignored they had such a profound long-lasting impact. also, people here seem to speak way more english than in the north, and there are a lot of billboards, signs, and names and descriptions of stores (like vijay plumbing) in english.
the conclusion to our trip was very chill. we arrived yesterday at 6am, pipi's uncle picked us up and took us to his aunt's place. there, we just relaxed and had a delicious breakfast prepared by vanitha, pipi's cousin, south indian style. around 10am, we left for mahabalipuram, literally the great sacrifice village. this is a beautiful archaeological (also a unesco world heritage site, like suomenlinna in finland and the red fort in delhi, etc.) site located by the sea. the temples, many of them in ruins, are about 1300 yeras old, and must huge carvings made out of one single piece of stone, stunning! the main temple, however, which by some divine miracle survived intact the effects of the 2005 tsunami, was built with the same stone they used to construct angkor wat in cambodia, very beautiful.
it was very hot, maybe around 33-34 degrees (celsius), and the heat made us very tired, so we left after 2-3 hours. on the way back, we stopped by a crocodile park and it was cool to see all the crocs just chiling in the sun. then, true to my fresa roots, we had lunch by the beach at fisherman's cove, the taj hotel in chennai. it's really crazy that for $25 you can eat at a place like this---including drinks! but when remember that i've had entire meals for less than $1, then i realize how wide the income gap is in this country.
anyway, the best part of our stop in chennai was undoubtedly getting to know pipi's relatives. in general, people in india are very welcoming and generous and these relatives were a super-augmented version of the average indian possessor of these virtues.
i'm sad to leave, i feel that i've learned so much about this culture and about life in general, and i feel that there's still so much to learn. however, i also feel that there's much more time for that and, after a whole month in this country, enough is enough.
chennai seems like a much more civilized place than the other big cities we visited, like delhi or mumbai. yes, people still honk but not as much and there's some respect for other people's lanes on the road. also, poverty is not as in-your-face as it is in those other cities. something that has caught my attention during my stay in the south is the number of christian churches and images of jesus i've seen all over. i knew the portuguese had been around for a while but i ignored they had such a profound long-lasting impact. also, people here seem to speak way more english than in the north, and there are a lot of billboards, signs, and names and descriptions of stores (like vijay plumbing) in english.
the conclusion to our trip was very chill. we arrived yesterday at 6am, pipi's uncle picked us up and took us to his aunt's place. there, we just relaxed and had a delicious breakfast prepared by vanitha, pipi's cousin, south indian style. around 10am, we left for mahabalipuram, literally the great sacrifice village. this is a beautiful archaeological (also a unesco world heritage site, like suomenlinna in finland and the red fort in delhi, etc.) site located by the sea. the temples, many of them in ruins, are about 1300 yeras old, and must huge carvings made out of one single piece of stone, stunning! the main temple, however, which by some divine miracle survived intact the effects of the 2005 tsunami, was built with the same stone they used to construct angkor wat in cambodia, very beautiful.
it was very hot, maybe around 33-34 degrees (celsius), and the heat made us very tired, so we left after 2-3 hours. on the way back, we stopped by a crocodile park and it was cool to see all the crocs just chiling in the sun. then, true to my fresa roots, we had lunch by the beach at fisherman's cove, the taj hotel in chennai. it's really crazy that for $25 you can eat at a place like this---including drinks! but when remember that i've had entire meals for less than $1, then i realize how wide the income gap is in this country.
anyway, the best part of our stop in chennai was undoubtedly getting to know pipi's relatives. in general, people in india are very welcoming and generous and these relatives were a super-augmented version of the average indian possessor of these virtues.
posted by adrián at 12:24
1 Comments:
Well said.
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