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Tamil Nadu is an Indian state located at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It literally means land of the Tamil people. I used to think Hindi was the lingua franca in India, however, many inhabitants of Tamil Nadu do not speak it. The first question of the Uber driver at the Chennai airport was: “Do you speak Tamil?” Uber worked great in Chennai. It gave us a break from haggling with taxis and tuktuks.
Chennai
Chennai is the capital and the largest city of Tamil Nadu. When I came out of the airport, the humidity reminded me of South East Asia. Coming from Varanasi, it is hard to believe we were still in the same country. The road infrastructures are much better, and the city much cleaner.
We paid the hotel approximately the same price as in Varanasi. But, in terms of comfort, it was like night and day, we are talking about an old mobile home compared to a modern condo.
I am pretty sure I forgot my merino wool t-shirt with the inscription “World Traveler” at the hotel in Varanasi, so I was surprised they could not be found. I put some efforts (3 visits in person, texting and calling the manager who was really involved) to get a similar t-shirt from Decathlon in the Express Avenue mall, unfortunately it did not work out. In part because the delivery guy missed my package the day we left Chennai.
Shopping Mall
The Express Avenue mall is a good, modern but overall it is just an ordinary mall with a nice cinema complex on the top floor. However, it felt like staying at a palace just because we could enjoy simple things such as controlled temperature, good air quality, safe space to walk, paying by card, known international brands, variety of food, supermarket, pleasant toilets. Finally, many things we were missing were there in a single place. The Express Avenue mall felt like a shelter.
In the first shop we went to, we discovered the Bateel dates from Saudi Arabia. After an extensive tasting session, we bought a little box of delicious stuffed dates (around 7000 rupees per kilo or 77 euros). Bateel also have very beautiful and expensive boxes meant to be used as gifts.
Cinema
The cinema was fancy, but the films were relatively cheap: 180 rupees for Leo, 210 for Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott. We watched Leo in Tamil with English subtitles, a very funny action movie, and we loved it. Popcorn was delivered to our seats. The national anthem was played before the film. Some people sang. There was an interval in the middle of the movie. The first part of the movie was so good, if it had stopped there, I would have been satisfied. There were prevention messages while actors were smoking, for instance.
The Weather
It rained heavily during our stay. We tried to walk when it rained. I understand why people wore flip-flops. Sometimes, the puddles were ankle deep and there was no way to escape stepping in. Often times, the sidewalks can’t be used because of parked motorcycles, dumps, or shop signs blocking the way. Given the weather conditions in the region, the infrastructures are not so great after all. After we left, in December 2023, Chennai experienced even more rain, leading to serious floods.
Visits
In front of the temple, shops selling flowers fill the entire street. Behind the temple, there is a large pond/tank.
The Santhome Cathedral Basilica, like many churches in India, has nothing special. I would probably skip them next time. (Y says, knowing me, I would probably still go)
The Government Museum Chennai is supposed to have 5 buildings open to the public, 2 of them were closed (ticket price remains the same) and one is for children. We saw one building with bronze sculptures, which was pretty good, and one with not so well-preserved very average paintings. I can’t really recommend this museum.
We took Uber inter-city to go to our next destination. It cost us less than 1000 (11 euros) rupees for a 2-hour drive! What a good deal! For the inter-city ride, we had to provide a PIN to the driver when we started the journey and another PIN when we ended it. We forgot it so had to reach out to Uber to correct the ride which worked out.
Mahabalipuram
Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram is a coastal city and a popular touristic destination near Chennai. There are many Hindu monuments carved in the rock from the 7th and 8th centuries, built under the rule of the Pallava dynasty.
The beach is a relatively thin strip of sand with cows, fishermen boats and nets. During the day, nobody is on the beach or in the water. Do people wait for the sunset?
We ate fish in a restaurant on the beach. It was the first time we had fish in India, and it would not be the last.
A single entry ticket is needed for all the monuments, most of them are in the same park.
The temples are nestled within a rocky and jungle landscape, a stark contrast to the surrounding flat coastal plains and fields.
The hotel was cheap, 1500 rupees (16.50 euros) for a room with air-conditioned. When Y plugged the phone charger near the bed, she saw a bolt of lightning, a sharp temperature increase, after that the charger was dead. We had to kill a dozen mosquitoes before going to bed. The dim light made the task challenging.
We spent quite some time evaluating the different options to get to the next destination. The taxi stand and the travel agency offered a private taxi to Puducherry/Pondicherry for 3500 rupees. Information about local buses is hard to find or non-existent on the internet. We had to talk to a few local people. Actually, the information was partially in the Lonely planet guide. Finally, we took the public bus at the ECR stop for 210 rupees for two.
Puducherry
Puducherry, formerly known as Pondicherry, has been a French colony and was known as the “The French Riviera of the East”. The French Quarter, the colonial part of the city, near the beach, is the touristic destination, although it is modest in size.
Puducherry is the main territory of the Puducherry Union Territory, which is composed of four disconnected territories in 3 different states.
The road along the beach, called Beach Road or Goubert Avenue named after Édouard Goubert, is pedestrian. I can’t express how good it feels to walk on a pedestrian street. I was only honked at by police cars.
The weather was pretty bad. It rained almost every day. The beachfront was even closed for a day because of an approaching cyclone.
We had some time to eat at good casual local restaurants. We had some good French pastries and viennoiserie at Baker Street, which is a bakery, not a street.
When it was not raining, it was hot. It’s hard to believe December is the best time to visit India. We spent quite some time at Coromandel (the best place we could find in the French Quarter), in the restaurant and the newly opened salon de thé.
I visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I could not see much except for a nice flower arrangement in the court where people were praying. It provided me with the opportunity to read samples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother publications.
The ashram founded by the Mother, Auroville, is outside Puducherry. We haven’t visited it, although many people go for it. I heard there is a massive banyan tree that is worth the trip.
We had a cooking class at Sita Cultural Center. The teacher also had her own cooking class business. We went to the market, and then cooked chicken biryani, dal fry, eggplant curry, masala chai, and rawa halva. It was a great experience and among the best food we had in India. The teacher told us she cooked with a lower amount of spices at home compared to some restaurants, which is why eating out while travelling in India was sometimes problematic for her. The only drawback were the numerous mosquitoes in the center.
At the hotel, the owner and the manager spoke very good French.
Along Beach Road, there is not a lot of beach. For nicer beaches, you need to get out of the city; we have not been there.
There is slightly less honking in Puducherry compared to the places we’ve been before, I still had my earplugs on the streets.
It is hard to get a tuk tuk for less than 100 rupees, which is pretty expensive, whatever the distance. We walked from the bus station to the hotel, but we took a tuktuk when we left. It was too hot.
I replaced my phone charger (dual port USB C and USB B) for 700 rupees, I only found a 20 watts charger, 30 watts would have been ideal.
Train
The train to our next destination, Verkala, started from Chennai at 8 pm and stopped at Villipuram at 10:30 pm. We had to take the bus from Puducherry to Villipuram.
We had one ticket confirmed and the other on the waiting list. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) booking system did not inform us that the second ticket was also confirmed. It is stressful not to know if you are going to board the train. We had the information we wanted at the Villipuram ticket counter, which was 40 minutes away from Puducherry. We were prepared to take a night bus to a random destination if we could not get the train.
- By RaviC – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33314258 ↩︎
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