Our arrival in India all got a little stressful, and by 3am we were still on the dark streets on Chennai, with our bags, groups of men watching us, nowhere to go and a rickshaw driver who kept telling us how good his driving is.

We left Vietnam early the previous morning, had spent ten hours in Singapore and late the next evening Kat and I were two white faces on the plane in a sea of Indians, another guy from Spain sat next to us on the flight - they put all the westerners together, next to the emergency exit.

At midnight the three of us shared a taxi into town which was an Ambassador with comfy sofa style seats that
bounced along the road! After directing the taxi driver to the hotel we had made a reservation at, we banged on the front door and woke someone up. The owner opened the front door and told us "No reservation here, oh no no no" and shut the door in our face. It appears that ringing a hotel to reserve a room and then ringing a second time before arriving simply isn't enough to actually reserve a room.

Luckily we were along a street that was lined with hotels. Un-luckily it was also some special festival and the next four hotels we tried all said no room. A rickshaw driver decided to help us out, for 20 rupees, and take us to a very cheap and nice hotel a few streets away. With no other options we jumped in and drove around Chennai for the next hour going from one closed or full hotel to the next.

After the rickshaw driver had exhausted all his options he produced his trump card, a brochure for a very nice hotel and made a phone call. It turns out they had plenty of free rooms and off we went down a dark alley into the unknown. By 3am we had paid up-front our $25 for a room resembling a hotel room, swarms of mosquitoes ruled and we quickly put up our mosi net whilst also trying to avoid being decapitated by the low flying ceiling fan. We found a nice little room mate in the form of a cockroach in the bathroom and under the pillows about ten tiny black bugs ran off to hide under the mattress.

In the morning I had to visit the British consulate and apply for a passport renewal because it is full with stamps and I need some blank pages for Africa. We took a motorbike rickshaw by a man who wobbled his head like a nodding dog when we asked him any questions, very comical but apparently this is the way they say yes. Just like we nod when we are agreeing with a comment.

After three hours of Chennai we had had enough and took the bus two hours south to a town called Mamallapuram.

Cooper Out

Love Dan & Kat