Chennai

Date arrived: 23rd January  2024

Date Departed: 24th January 2024

Favourite sight: A whale skeleton

Average Cost: £17.23 PPPD

In our busy mid-January rush, we had but-an-afternoon in the massive city of Chennai to sample it's splendours, and the Government Museum won our time - and our hearts.

23rd January 2024

After a four hour bus journey, arriving into the bus station in Chennai was filled with a little bit of frustration, as the fixed price tuk-tuk stand was "not working" according to the chap sat in it, and the rickshaw drivers seemed to want between 300 and 500 Rupees for what should have been a 150 Rupee journey. Not in the mood for being ripped off, and aware that getting Uber drivers to pick up from transport hubs tends not to work, we chose to walk the 200 metres to the metro line that would take us most of the way to our accommodation.

60 Rupees later, we were most of the way there, but unfortunately still with about 1KM to walk. Normally this is no issue even with big bags, but I was still struggling a bit having barely eaten for 4 days. Anyway, we got to the hotel at about 14:20, which was jast in time for a conference call that Julie had scheduled for half past!

After Julie's call, we decided to spend our afternoon in Chennai at the Government Museum, and we were now within Uber range of this so managed to get there quite straightforwardly. The museum was super cool, and while it was far from polished, had an array of exhibits from Indian historical and religious art (sculptures) through the natural history - including a full 60' long whale skeleton, and a Dinosaur exhibition! 

As well as great exhibits, the building - or should I say buildings, as there were several of them arranged in a campus - was brilliant. It really looked like the sort of place they should fim night at the Museum, or a re-make of The Mummy, or something similar. Random staircases just blocked off with nailed on planks, doors that seemed to go nowherre, and even a graveyard of exhibits stacked outside that mustn't have made the cut.

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It was a bit of a shame that we only had a few hours here before the museum closed, as we ended up doing a flying visit to one of the contemporary art galleries, which did have some quite cool stuff!

Following the museum, we headed to a Brownie cafe where we pushed the boat right out and shared... a plate of chips! They did also make an excellent hot chocolate, which was really enjoyable and, of course, highly calorific - something I very much needed.

From here we tuk-tukked back to our hotel room, where we got everything ready for the next morning's pre-5 alarm, and turned in for a noisy night's sleep, due to quite a lot of road noise.

24th January

An early alarm, and stright up and out for the 20 minute walk to the station. As areas around transport hubs tend not to be the nicest, this wasn;t particularly fun - but we got there okay, and managed to get on to our 6:00 train, ready for the 71/2 hour trip to Mysore!