Initial impressions
[Sorry to be so slow posting. We’ve had Internet problems. Things will be quicker now.]
We arrived in Chennai at midnight. It was warm and muggy. The city is a jumble of endless lines of shabby small open-fronted shops lined up against the front of business and apartment buildings four to ten stories high. There are crowds everywhere, men mostly in grimy shirts and pants, women in bright saris.
Most striking feature: the traffic. A torrent of motorcycles, bicycles, cars and small trucks, with some cyclist and the occasional bullock cart. Drivers weave in and out, jockeying for tiny advantages, often with only an inch or two clearance. The melee would enrage American drivers, but the Indian drivers don’t get upset; we never saw any display of irritation, they don’t even look at each other. The confusion, which is wilder than a carnival ride, is punctuated by a constant chorus of honking. You honk when you’re going to pass, when someone’s passing you, and for reasons we couldn’t discern. Motorcycle riders are often barefoot. Women passengers sit sidesaddle. There’s only the occasion woman motorcycle driver, and she’s always on a step-through model. Four people on a motorbike aren’t uncommon (two kids up front, mom on behind). One guy had twenty-five live chickens dangling from each handlebar.
Over a couple of days we rode in three wheeled auto rickshaws, which are like half a golf cart attached to a scooter. We drove through mile after mile of dense, cluttered, confused heaps of buildings. There is no sense of any separation of functions, no “downtown”, suburbs, residential, industrial; areas; everything’s mixed together. The air was filled with fumes in some sections.
We visited a crocodile part and temples south of Chennai. The temples have a complex conglomeration of stone gods, snakes, demons, elephants, monkeys etc. You have to take your shoes off; John left his socks on, but Caye went barefoot, and the rough stone surface made her feet sore.
[More soon.]
We arrived in Chennai at midnight. It was warm and muggy. The city is a jumble of endless lines of shabby small open-fronted shops lined up against the front of business and apartment buildings four to ten stories high. There are crowds everywhere, men mostly in grimy shirts and pants, women in bright saris.
Most striking feature: the traffic. A torrent of motorcycles, bicycles, cars and small trucks, with some cyclist and the occasional bullock cart. Drivers weave in and out, jockeying for tiny advantages, often with only an inch or two clearance. The melee would enrage American drivers, but the Indian drivers don’t get upset; we never saw any display of irritation, they don’t even look at each other. The confusion, which is wilder than a carnival ride, is punctuated by a constant chorus of honking. You honk when you’re going to pass, when someone’s passing you, and for reasons we couldn’t discern. Motorcycle riders are often barefoot. Women passengers sit sidesaddle. There’s only the occasion woman motorcycle driver, and she’s always on a step-through model. Four people on a motorbike aren’t uncommon (two kids up front, mom on behind). One guy had twenty-five live chickens dangling from each handlebar.
Over a couple of days we rode in three wheeled auto rickshaws, which are like half a golf cart attached to a scooter. We drove through mile after mile of dense, cluttered, confused heaps of buildings. There is no sense of any separation of functions, no “downtown”, suburbs, residential, industrial; areas; everything’s mixed together. The air was filled with fumes in some sections.
We visited a crocodile part and temples south of Chennai. The temples have a complex conglomeration of stone gods, snakes, demons, elephants, monkeys etc. You have to take your shoes off; John left his socks on, but Caye went barefoot, and the rough stone surface made her feet sore.
[More soon.]
posted by John Francis & Caye Poe at 8:35 PM
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