Chennai (Madras)

Today we tried to get money out of the ATM next door, but it wasn't working.

Nothing daunted we walked half an hour to the nearest station at Kodambakkam, and caught a train to Chennai Fort. This cost IR10 for both of us, equivalent to 5p each. I suppose if you need to provide affordable transport for 1.6 billion people these sort of fare levels are inevitable, but channeling investment into the railways must be problematic.

There was some form of official gathering going on at the fort, but they let us into the museum where we learnt to distinguish grape shot, canister shot and chain shot and were extremely glad to live in an age where none were shot in our direction.

Afterwards a lady tuk-tuk driver drove us to the Government Museum. This after the inevitable discussion as to why we should want to go to a museum quite far away when there was a perfectly good one just around the corner.

The Government Museum housed all sorts of religious statuary, zoological and ethnographic galleries and even a dusty geology section. We mooched around and then found a nice clean coffee bar in a nearby mall for lunch. After returning to visit the contemporary art exhibition, most of which seemed very derivative of European styles, we took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.

The ATM machine next to the hotel was now working, but dispensed only a maximum of forty notes. As it had been loaded with IR500 notes, that meant we were restricted to about GBP200, about half what we were hoping for.

We walked back to the Sangeetha restaurant for supper, not teeming like Sunday night but still incredibly busy. This time I ordered an oothappam. I've never ordered anything starting with oo before. When it came it was a thicker version of a dosai, somewhat soggy rather than crisp but very filling. I think I prefer dosai. Christine had a curried mushroom dish which was delicious. Total cost IR560, under GBP3 per head.