Not the culture shock I'd been bracing myself for, I have to say. Naturally, over the course of travelling for just short of a year, we'd come across many people who'd already visited India, and I think that pretty much without exception the verdict has been the same: that you can't really prepare yourself for the poverty, the dirt, the intensity, etc; it's a tough country to travel in. But also amazing, in other respects. That old love / hate thing again (although now I think of it, not everyone has found love for India too). So I was as prepared as I could be for this Indian impact, and then it never really hit me.

One thing, of course, is that Chennai isn't Delhi, where I expect most travellers enter the country, and where I'm sure the levels of all the above are the greatest. But I also suspect that spending several months exploring South East Asia is good preparation. Chennai's streets are indeed dirty, chaotic, traffic and fume-filled, but no more so than parts of Jakarta, Medan, Bangkok, Saigon or Kuala Lumpur. General dilapidation, broken pavements, holes in the road, again nothing new. And nor is the visible poverty, sadly. Maybe it pongs a bit more than average here, as the world is clearly the Indian man's urinal, with not an ounce of shame or subtlety, and there are more small mounds of human faeces than average to be found behind trees and parked cars, and on subway steps. But overall, not a huge shock to the system, and in some ways quite the opposite. English is widely spoken, which always simplifies tasks. People haven't really batted an eyelid at us, even despite the lack of Western faces around, which makes it very different from the multitude of places where our pale skin has generated somewhat of a celebrity status. And a culture of tea drunk with milk and daily newspapers all around feels a bit like a stepping stone back to England! Talking of newspapers, I notice they've named one after the Oasis single "The Hindu Times". I gather it does reasonably well.

I must go back to my moment of entry into India, though, an instant and classic example of the legendary Indian bureaucracy! Off the plane, and standing at one of the "non-Indians" immigration desks. "What is your hotel room number, sir?". I assumed I'd heard incorrectly. She repeated. I hadn't. Who has ever, ever been informed of their room number prior to arriving at a hotel, having made a reservation?! "I don't know", came my truthful answer. "Sorry sir, you'll have to go the immigration office over there" (actually, I don't think there was any "sorry", that'll just be my British mindset recollecting how the encounter should have played out; in reality, it was more like a grunted "over there" and an accompanying hand gesture). I backtracked over to the immigration office. Reasonably happily, in fact, as I was armed with the both excellent and true explanation that my girlfriend was waiting for me in the arrivals section and would already have booked a hotel room somewhere, and I was also pleased that what they weren't quizzing me about was my flight ticket out of India, a recently discovered entry requirement that I didn't have (as had been needed, and was checked for, upon entry to Indonesia). I submitted my explanation. A frown, a sigh, not good enough. "Can you call the hotel and find out the room number?". "No, I don't have the number". A frown, definitely not good enough. "But you definitely have a reservation at the Hotel Himalaya?", she said, beginning to look through a file which probably had the details of Hotel Himalaya. No, I hadn't, but I couldn't remember where Paula had told me that we were staying. The previous twenty times I'd filled in the "address in… (name of country visiting)" section of an immigration form, I'd done what every other backpacker without an advance hotel reservation has done, i.e. virtually every other backpacker, which is to look in the Lonely Planet, find the name of one, and stick it on the form (and in the absence of a Lonely Planet, the solution is to just put down "Hotel… (name of relevant city)"). Which hadn't once posed a hint of a problem. Until now. I selected the path of honesty again: "no, it was a suggestion I made to my girlfriend, so if it was full, she'll have booked somewhere else. She's just waiting for me downstairs in arrivals". Another frown, a quite considerable distance from good enough. "Can you call your girlfriend?". "No, she doesn't have a phone. But she's just downstairs.". Frown central. In her defence, I guess in theory, despite the minimal walking distance, Paula was actually in India, and that was a status I hadn't yet achieved. Other new arrivals were now beginning to pile into the immigration office as well, including another bemused looking young Western guy, who presumably also had a room booked in either Hotel Chennai or Hotel Himalaya. I waited patiently for five or ten minutes, sufficient for my mind to start questioning whether or not my bag and / or girlfriend would still be downstairs in an hour or two. And then the lady was addressing me again: "do you have your girlfriend's number, and you can call from this telephone?". "No, I'm sorry, she doesn't have a phone". This explanation was clearly absurd in her eyes, so much so she must have just not registered it the first time, only that I hadn't yet attained one, and now she was just looking at me in eye-rolling disdain at my idiocy. I continued to look friendly and meek, the Louis Theroux-like character I'd selected for the situation. "But she's just downstairs", I offered once more. At which point, she finally devised the brilliant plan to send someone downstairs with me to get the hotel details from Paula. A very skinny young Indian guy was summoned, and with a real first-day-on-the-job attitude, he took my arm and we hurriedly negotiated the three or four checkpoints separating us from the arrivals section, each time exchanging a brief explanation for a frown, a shake of the head, and an ushering through (i.e. an "I'm important here", followed by "but I'm one of the good guys and am doing you a favour"). We reached Paula. Who, of course, I hadn't seen for about seven weeks! Not that a full flung embrace was ever going to be possible in a country where holding hands is considered part of the sexual domain, to be kept very much behind closed bedroom doors (let alone kissing on the lips!), but "hi, I'm not actually officially in India yet, because they need our hotel name and room number first" certainly wouldn't have been the hoped for or anticipated reunion script either. However, it had to do. Paula handed me the room key, helpfully with the hotel name and address on it too, and we rushed back up to the office, receiving a fresh batch of frowns on the way. Amidst the now chaotic immigration office (how many people did they really think would know their hotel room number?!), first-day-on-the-job man, on receipt of a nod of acceptance from the boss lady, then proceeded to rapidly fill my form in for me, and then rush me back out and through the newly arriving crowds to the front of the queue for the immigration desks, much to everyone's muttering, head-shaking disapproval, of course, and I was finally processed and in India. My bag was still waiting downstairs, and so was my girlfriend.

But looking back, why oh why didn't I just have the speed of thought to say "room number 103, didn't I write that down? Let me just add it to the form for you…".

After about ten hours of decent sleep in three nights, the next couple of days weren't filled with high tempo exploration. But we wandered around Chennai sufficiently for me to get a feel for the place, to get a feel for the warmth of the people, to reacquaint myself with my favourite cuisine (I wonder if it'll be possible for me to get bored of curry during a few months in India?), and to learn a handful of things. Which, of those not already mentioned earlier, include that food is unbelievably cheap (a banana: under five pence; a cup of tea: under ten pence; a coconut: twenty-five pence; a full meal: a pound), Chennai has no street drainage, so even brief bursts of heavy rain result in huge torrents of water flooding the roads (which, with Chennai being a fairly modern Indian city, I'm sure means the rest of the country is the same), and that Indian people like going to the beach, where men play in the sea (in all male groups) in just their shorts, whilst women (in all women groups) have to get soaked fully clothed. But they don't seem to mind. And it's very hot, in late July; so much so that despite having already spent months in tropical climates, I still got myself a red nose.

Next adventure: my first experience of the famous Indian railways, en route to Vijayawada!