Blogs from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, Asia - page 39

Hey everyone, Well it's day three and we have been to three of the most incredible places that we could have imagined. The first two projects were great and today we went to a home for women and children with HIV/AIDS that have been shunned by society. We were able to play and eat with them and touch them to let them know that they are loved. I will let the others share their own feelings about that as well. We also went into town again to do more shopping and the experience of walking on the street is overwhelming. Riding in a van can make you numb to reality and not 5 seconds after we step on the street we had people asking us for money. The brothers and sisters here are more accomodating than ... read more

Wow where can I start! These last two months have been absolutely mind blowing and I’ve been so busy absorbing everything around me I’ve not had a chance to write anything down, and now the task seems phenomenal! The first thing that struck me like a great big hammer was the noise. Chennai is never quiet, the auto rickshaws blare Tamil uber-pop straight into your ears at a hundred million decibels a second and all the vehicles have snazzy little messages like ‘Be horny round the corner’ emblazoned on their rears. Indians take it seriously and sometimes the roads sound like an experimental brass ensemble from the sixties. Not even death is quiet here, on my first week I saw a huge procession of people banging drums and shouting while pulling a huge float decked out ... read more

We visited the tomb of St. Thomas, one of Jesus's twelve disciples, today and offered our prayers to the mannequin of St. Thomas. The San Thome Cathedral is above the tomb and is one of only two churches that are above the graves of one of the disciples. We sat in on mass and listened to an Indian priest musically recite verses from the bible. We then spent the afternoon at the beach. We met an italian man who was the lone swimmer. Bean joined him for a dip in the Bay of Bengal while I entertained the crowd of locals that had surrounded us. We finished the day off with a visit to the Kapaleeshwarar Hindu Temple where a hindu woman gave us some insight into the daily hindu practices. She also told us that ... read more

Our departure was chaotic as usual, nothing new. Finally we managed, all our stuff was packed into boxes and send to a storeroom in Barcelona. We were short of time and in the end several loose items were stuffed into some miscellaneous boxes, probably we will never find the fitting parts again! However after ten months of travelling who would care about such small details. We had got a cheap flight with Gulf Air with one stop in Bahrain where we changed planes, from Bahrain to Chennai (former Madras) via Oman's capital Muscat. Now you will probably understand why it was so cheap. Having safely arrived in Chennai at 6:00 AM local time we lacked orientation since it was 1:30 AM in Europe. After finding an ATM where the Maestro card worked and with the first ... read more

I'm writing from Ooty which is a hill station in the state of Tamil Nadu located in Southern India. This place is touristy but its currently low season so I've only season a handful of westerners. The scenery is beautiful as there are tea plantations and eucalyptus trees in the surrounding areas. I ended up taking two tours which only cost me about $3cdn each and perhaps it was a good thing I didn't have high expectations on the tours. One of them had a guide who didn't speak english and the other tour started an hour late as we drove in circles to pick people up and then stopped back at the same place 10 minutes later to pick up other people. The second tour was amusing as it highlighted places used in Indian Bollywood ... read more