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Published: September 13th 2010
Frankfurt Emirates Lounge
A little piece of luxury before we depart...So after a night of frantic packing and organising the apartment, the day had arrived to set off to India. A comfortable (!) 5am start to catch the train down to Frankfurt (with a near missed connection at Leipzig just to keep the excitement levels up!) and some 550Km and 5 hours later (which, I suspect, is possibly the quickest I will be able to travel overland for some time!) I'm sitting in the Emirates business lounge enjoying some small canopies, and quite possibly a small glass of champagne.
6 hours to Dubai, and then 4 hours on to Chennai (unslept, but strangely energised - maybe just from the adrenaline of what was to come!) I emerged from the luxury of my flight into Chennai International Airport. Instantly, from stepping off the plane, my nostrils were smacked with an intensity of heat and moisture which I have only experienced during that briefest of moments when the water is ladled onto the red hot coals in the sauna.
After a tedious, but not exceptional, wait at immigration, we are cleared to enter the country and reclaim our baggage, after which we set about our next mission of purchasing some foreign
A small indulgence
Well, it would be rude not to! currency in order to pay for our taxi to the hotel. Now... it may be well known among you that the importating of Indian currency is prohibited (i.e. I had no cash). What might be less well known is that all of the exchange bureaus at the airport do not accept plastic in any shape, size or form.
Picture... 5 minutes at the foreign exchange counter - Krishna and I checking each and every pocket for a euro here or there and managed to scrape enough together to buy us some 1700 rupees... despite some stories you might hear about India, I can assure you that doesn't go very far!
Mission number 2, having successfully(ish) completed the first, was to organise the previously mentioned taxi and leave the chaos of the crowds, and their gun toting security at the airport. Diligently following the recommendation of Krishna (backed up my my trusty Rough Guide) we proceed to the "Government Taxi" booth and order a pre-paid taxi to our hotel. Very pleased with the price we were offered, we took our taxi coupon and set off in the direction that our assistant had not so much pointed to, but vaguely
waved in the general direction of to find our transport for the morning.
As we exited the airport, and wandered along a walkway, which ran alongside a barricade due to construction work, we round the corner and are confronted with what can only be described as a mob of some 2 or 3 hundred people waving cards offering taxi services, accommodation... or generally just watching as if waiting for some celebrity to arrive. Beyond this mob and across the road was our taxi.
Hmmm
Tom kindly volunteers me to go first (unfortunately, I had been a second too slow to offer him the same courtesy) so steadily (but not without some significant degree of apprehension) I push the luggage trolley into the crowd. To my relief, and surprise, a path forms in the crowd with such uniformity and ease that I don't even have to break my stride, and a quick glance back confirms that the path disappears just as quickly after we had passed through.
Then the road
Horns are blaring, cars bunny hopping forward, gaps are closed instantly... no quarter is given. Krishna walks on as if nothing is there and passes unscathed.
Encumbered with one of our fully laden luggage trolleys, I am not quite so fleet of foot and decide to go for the strategy of pushing the trolley of some considerable weight out into the road, on the assumption that any driver will stop rather than damage their car. Perhaps in hindsight, that assumption isn't quite as accurate as I would have liked to have believed! Nevertheless, the driver somewhat reluctantly stops his vehicle (some few centimetres from the trolley) and sounds his horn in protest, however i'm committed to my path now and cross the road, weaving around 4 cars that were already jammed in by the traffic.
So i'm alive and we have found our driver. The first problem emerges quite quickly - the "Ambassador" (favoured vehicle of the government taxis) is somewhat small... and our luggage was.. well, let's just say a little more than somewhat small. Our driver, however, doesn't even stop to draw breath to protest - and saw the problem simply solved by leaving the boot open, with nothing holding in our 150kg of luggage except a distinctly thin looking piece of red fabric, which he used to arbitrarily tie the boot lid
to the body of the car.
Slightly nervous now - i'm no expert, but I had imagined Indian roads to have a reasonable number of potholes... and any one of which conjured up images in my head of my suitcase being ejected up into the air to come crashing down on the road and exploding open, scattering bits of my life across the road, quickly to be snatched up by a nearby flock of goats and never seen again. So we head out of the airport forecourt and onto the main road. I cannot describe the chaos that confronted me... my hand had already found nothing but fabric and air earlier when I had automatically reached for my seatbelt... and now its continued absence was a source of increasing distress. Particularly when the bus in front of us swerves sharply to the left, revealing at the last second a somewhat indignant looking cow, which the bus clips ever so slightly on the side causing the cow to leap sharply to the right. All I could do was meekly whimper "cow..." not so much as a warning but more an acceptance of my fate as to how I was to
leave this world, however our driver doesn't so much as flinch. Calmly, he guides his car gently to the left and around the cow, displaying no more emotion that I would over, oh lets say yet another new pair of socks for Christmas.
Nervous giggles ensue, especially as I observe that the reason the driver isn't using his mirrors is because there aren't any, and that despite cars passing on all sides at less than 1 cm distance, our driver is content to watch the goings on at the side of the road... and yet somehow manages to continue to find a path through the incomprehensible mayhem played out on the road ahead. I draw breath sharply as I'm jolted from looking at my camera by the car braking hard and swerving sharply right and then left. I glance up just in time to see the driver narrowly miss a barricade placed across the road, with the words "Accident Prone Area" emblazoned on it. The irony didn't escape us.
To my surprise, we arrived unscathed at our destination... the hotel an oasis walled off from the surrounding chaos, with palm trees and a beach, waves gently rolling up
Coca cola in arabic
And old style ring pulls too!! to the shore and are greeted by the staff. "Ah, Mr John... welcome!". My name isn't Mr John. Nor does John feature anywhere in my name. But having had this argument already with the reservations department over the phone, I had conceded that perhaps there were bigger battles to be fought, and could only conclude I had been confused with a well known blend of Scottish whisky. There are worse possible cases of mistaken identity.
That evening, we were to meet some friends in town for dinner... but exhausted by the travel I was not in a hurry to put my life back on the line so soon by subjecting myself to the Chennai roads, so instead we opted for a barbeque in the beach. An excellent decision - with highlights such as trying to crack open crabs claw with my teeth.
Retiring to the room to consume a civilised digestif of whisky, I quickly fall asleep totally exhausted by the day and the travel. Tomorrow we will brave the roads again and head into the centre of Chennai itself!
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