Yahoo, Indian brekkies again. This place, the PurpleTree, has only toasts as a Western breakfast, but they have wonderful idly and dosa as well as eggs on the Indian side. At breakfast, we met two English women, Clare and Tricia, who were wondering how we got milk coffee and they just got black. Bill explained to them that you had to ask for milk coffee, not coffee with milk. Don’t know why it couldn’t be understood, but you were guaranteed to get black coffee if you asked the other way around.
Ever helpful Bill, invited them over to the table so we could give them some hints about Madurai. They got our Madurai chunks from Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, as we were heading back to Chennai at night. We made plans to meet for dinner OR we would leave a note under their door regarding what might be different.
After breakfast, Bill and I just hung around the room reading, getting ourselves packed up and organized for our trip.
We realized that meeting at 6 would be cutting our timetable a bit close as the train was earlier than we thought. We had assumed it was around 10, but it was 8:30. We left a note under their door explaining that a 6 pm dinner would be too late, and we were heading over to the Chentoor around 4.
We packed up, checked out just before 4. This is a good thing as the Chentoor doesn’t open their rooftop bar/restaurant before 4 pm. I ordered the chicken coconut curry. Really good. Bill had mushroom 65 and some other paneer dish, which wasn’t very good. Around 5:30 or 6 Tricia and Clare show up and we ask how their visit to the temple went.
This is the view from the Chentoor looking south. There are rules in the city that nothing can be higher than the Temple. Hence all the low rise buildings.
If you ever wondered what a sleeper train was like, worry no more.
The cabins have 2 “bunk” type beds on each side of the compartment. With a small table between the 2 bottom beds. You given sheets, blanket, pillows and a towel. At the start of our journey, there were 3 of us in the cabin.
Bill and the Indian gentlemen both took upper bunks, and I had a lower. At this point in time, the 4th bunk was empty. The 3of us sat around and talked before making up our beds and hitting the sack. This guy worked for IBM and lived in NJ. It was a pleasant discussion touching ever so briefly on local politics and not national. He helped me pull the “bed” part down. This was the seat back we were leaning on while we were talking. I made the bed and hopped in. I put my glasses on the little side table, in fact, you can see them in the photo. Lights were turned out and we commenced to try to sleep. The train never got up a steady rocking motion, it was a bit herky jerky and not very soothing.
Around midnight, the compartment door opens and the conductor and another man are standing there. The man asks if there is an unoccupied cabin that he can have. The door closes. A few minutes later, the door reopens and a man enters with luggage. There is much bumping into things, expected, noise while you try to find space for your suitcase. Perfectly reasonable. Then he knocks into the little table and my glasses go flying across the floor. He settles on his bed, pulls out his phone and proceeds to have a long conversation with someone at quite a loud volume. It wasn’t a hi, I made it call, but a how you doing, hows the kids, what about grandma, etc. (Of course, this is not the exact content of the call because I don’t speak Tamil.). It sure sounded like a mundane phone call that could have been made in the hallway.
We arrive in Chennai abound 5 am, and we sling on our packs and head to Hotel Pandian which was on Kennet Lane, which is directly across the street from Egmore station. Perfect! We check in, pay, and fall to sleep for a few hours.
Bill wakes up to get our laundry to the hotel in order for it be done within 24 hours.
Our laundry list! The hotel charges by the piece and we were so in need of clean clothes that we didn’t care what the price was.
Around 9:30 we headed down to breakfast, which was included, and I got my idly on. They also had vada and sambar. I was so happy. The coffee was milk coffee but presweetened and very sweet. They served it in tiny espresso sized cups, so we were constantly at the coffee thermos filling our cups. We met Lindsay, an intrepid English woman who has been on the road since June. I couldn’t help but admire her gumption and fortitude. Don’t know if I could do that. She was spending 3 months in India and doing the entire country. Good on her!
After breakfast we decided to get some culture and walked over to the Municipal Museum. This museum is famous for its bronzes of gods and goddesses. We breezed through that part being ignorant as well as overwhelmed with the sameness of the statuary. As we left this part of the display were ran into a huge group of school kids on a school trip. They were all trying to practice their English by yelling hello and shaking our hands. We felt like rock starts, running down the rows of kids giving them hi 5’s or down low’s. It made up for the lack of air conditioning.
We wandered into other parts of the museum and were fascinated by the skeletons of various animals and their comparative anatomy displays. Mostly, the explanations were rather cursory and vague with very little detail. In one case, the labeling of 2 North American species was incorrect. They had labeled the raccoon as an opposum and visa versa. I was particularly interested in their small mammal collection so I could try to figure out if indeed we saw a mongoose or an otter. The collection was not that helpful. The star of the day was the animated T-Rex display. At certain times during the day the T-Rex starts to roar and move about. a young boy, maybe 3 or 4, was there with his parents and it scared the piss out of him. He ran away and was crying his eyes out. The parents scooped him up and took him to a different part of the museum.
The entire museum was sort of a hybridization of a natural history museum and an art gallery. It was a great way to spend a sticky afternoon.
We wanted some sustenance and grabbed a tuk tuk to Amethyst, a combination floral shop, gift shop, and cafe. We grabbed a table under a fan and ordered pizza and I ordered they special khao soy noodles, along with water. We sat there a good long while reading and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. The grounds were a lush oasis that you would never know you were in the middle of Chennai with roaring traffic just 100 feet away. We ordered some masala chai, which we sadly let brew too long and tried drinking it without milk because we didn’t notice the pitcher on the table. Let’s just say milk is important.
We left Amethyst and headed back to our hotel bar and headed up to our room. Once upstairs, we received our laundry back. It was amazing. Each shirt was folded and between the front and back of the shirt was a half page of yesterdays newspaper to keep the shirt from shifting around. We thought it was hysterical.
All our bits were compared to the list that Bill made and we fell immediately into the arms of Morpheus.
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