Taxi rides are almost a white knuckle experience. The cab routinely misses motocycle riders, other cabs, and pedestrians by inches. Sometimes by inch.
Pedestrians have no right of way.
There is constant horn blowing by the taxi, which I think means, ‘You can’t blame me if something happens, I warned you’.
One the way back to hotel there was a wagon blocking up too much of the street to pass. The cab driver just about held down his horn until the wagon driver ran out. The cab driver gestured toward the wagon with his hand open and palm up as if to say, “Seriously?”
Once inside the office building (I’m still struggling to remember to walk on the left) the elevators cram full. Not full with respectful distance, but full with no respectful distance.
I felt better today, yet still somehow crashed for three hours as soon as I got back into my hotel room this evening. That’s from about 6pm to about 9pm local time.
This afternoon you could see the smoke, but I was late to hail the taxi that had been waiting and didn’t snap a picture. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from.
They’re building some cement buildings that will be part of a college. They use felled trees, about 3 inches thick, with their limbs lopped off and lash them together to create the scaffolding on the outside of the building. They use this scaffolding to build the building from cement.
Chennai has a movie industry called Kollywood, much like the Bollywood industry, that is becoming popular for its musical movies. The ChennaiTimes section of the newspaper is generally about Kollywood star news.
I heard today about a 2000 year old temple in the outskirts of the city that I might be able to visit, but it’s about 30 miles away, out of range of renting a car for the day. Maybe I’ll spend the weekend by the pool.
If I had this to do over, I’d fly out on Wednesday, arrive Friday morning, and adjust over the weekend. The partial day I had alloted myself was insufficient.
I saw kids on the streets on the way home today in their school uniforms.
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