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Published: September 23rd 2015
The flight… Long but uneventful. We watched Spy (decent), Hoff My Chest (a BBC mock-umentary staring David Hasselhoff playing David Hasselhoff in an attempt to revive his career in England) and fell asleep to Mad Max. Obviously things have got civilized again in the world (?) as it was the first flight in years where we had a proper knife and fork instead of their useless plastic cousins.
Arrived at 3:30am to a busy Chennai international airport. After such a long flight we were thankful that it only took about half an hour to collect bags, get through customs and immigration. My niece / wonder-friend, Dhvani had kindly organized a car to pick us up and we were thankful for that as it looked a little random if we were to get a taxi provided by one of the dozen or so folks offering us that service as we were leaving the airport.
After leaving the airport we had an hour’s drive to leave Chennai and head south to our first stop, Fisherman;s cove near Mahabalipuram. The drive was a calm affair (a first for me in India) maybe due to the time of morning,
Sunrise
6am at Fisherman's Covebut it seemed like everyone was staying to the correct side of the road. There were the usual sleeping cows, but Ganesh (our driver) avoided them with a practiced confidence.
Chennai itself looked like a city in the midst of modernization. In amongst the older shops and two story restaurants there was a lot of shiny new office blocks that wouldn’t have looked out of place anywhere in the world. We plan on making a trip back to Chennai soon to spend some time with Dhvani soon so I’ll take some photos then.
Fisherman’s Cove (or Vivanti as it is now called) was planned to be a relaxing first stop so we could get over any jet lag and get acclimated to our new time zone (11.5 hours ahead of Atlanta). It was odd to think that although it was early Tuesday morning where we were, Monday night football hadn’t kicked off yet back home.
We knew that this first stop is not representative of the rest of India. The beaches are raked every morning and the gardens are pruned. Most of India doesn’t have a swim up bar.
Breakfast
So glad to see English Bacon back on my menu However, we’d been to this hotel when I was a kid so I was looking forward to returning.
We weren’t sleepy so took the opportunity to watch the sunrise over the Bay of Bengal and after walk on the beach went for breakfast. Hello bacon my old friend. Breakfast was really tasty and included english (hurray) bacon and a buffet of various made to order Idli’s (Indian crispy pancakes stuffed with potatoes and served with a chimi-churi type ‘samba’) and other wonderful things.
In keeping with our relaxing ideas of the next couple of days, we then deposited ourselves at the spa. Rachel got a massage for the next hour and I got a haircut and a shave, then settled into a 90 minute facial. I’ve brought a photo of Olivier Giroud with me so I can show hair dressers an approximation of what to do. It’ll be interesting to see how they turn out when i make the transition from hotel spa barber, to side of the road barber. I also suggested to the barber to do ‘whatever he thinks makes the most sense’ with my facial hair so I currently look
a bit like my evil twin.
Due to the jet lag and the extreme relaxation during the spa, most of the facial was spent falling in and out of snoozes.
Lunch was eaten at the pool and consisted of chili dusted fish and ice cold beer. It’s nice to arrive on a Tuesday as we pretty much have the hotel to ourselves. There was one other person at the pool.
We then went back to the room for a quick lie down and woke 5 hours later in time for dinner.
The day was shaping up perfectly.
Due to the ‘fisherman’s’ aspect of the hotel, we decided to stick to seafood as much as possible and had south Indian spiced Tiger Prawns and some grilled calamari which were both good and tasty. Rachel also enjoyed some Pineapple martinis while I had a couple of basil / rum / something blue drinks.
All in all, a fun / tasty / relaxing kick-off to our adventure. Our next update will be from Pondicherry in a couple of days.
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Claire
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Hi guys Love reading about the start to your travels ... I will follow with interest as it's a part of the world I've never explored and with 3 little ones I don't think I'm going to get there any time soon. Have a fantastic time.