The bus to Chennai...

---

...was the sort you see in all the pictures. Unglazed windows with bars across, and an engine that had probably been put together c.1953. If the coach were a human body, you'd probably call it 'lived in'. As it was in fact a bus, I'd say it had demonstrated a long history of near misses. Oh, and it may not have been cleaned since 1953 either.

But the big excitement was a motorway. Well, perhaps not a motorway, but a toll road anyway, with dual carriageway, a hard shoulder and a central reservation.

The road surface was indifferent, but so superior to anything I've previously met here that I can understand why everyone told me it was a fast road to Chennai.

Anyway.

- 2 lanes doesn't mean slow and fast. Everyone uses both lanes indiscriminately and over or undertakes at will.
- Goats use the 'fast' lane.
- Cows use the central reservation.
- Bicycles going the opposite way to the prevailing traffic use the hard shoulder. As do pedestrians,
- Men pushing handcarts use the main highway.
- The hard shoulder is also for bus stops.
- There are zebra crossings. God knows why, nobody ever uses them.
- Pedestrians cross whenever they want to. Not at the zebras, obviously.

So I was vastly cheered to reach the outskirts of Chennai a whole hour ahead of schedule. I didn't realise what a chaotic city Chennai is. It makes Bangalore look like a market town. Busy busy busy with chaotic housing and business districts jumbled together with shanty towns and piles of uncollected rubbish. I thought I'd got used to all that, but this was in a different league, especially after Pondicherry.

My CouchSurfing host, who's lovely, plans to spend the weekend with me, but as she can't after all put me up, she booked me into a local hotel, the only one in the area. The Manager and I immediately fell out when he first of all denied the booking, then I declined to pay 3 days' money up front, and it's gone on from there really. I had to get up at 2 a.m to ask the manager to turn down his Bollywood DVD he was whiling away the night with, and the traffic and hotel clamour began well before 5.00 a.m. I complained about the shower, because I've stopped being nice (Response: 'Well, is there water there or not? Yes? Well then!'). I've been stomping round the area looking for another hotel, but it's true, there isn't one, good, bad or indifferent (indifferent would do).

We're meeting at 10 ish, to spend the day exploring Chennai, and tomorrow is action packed too. Monday shopping, then hit the airport easrly for a 4.00 a.m. flight home. Think I'll go and see what I can find for breakfast: it's only 8.30, but I've been around a long time today already.

---