Spent three days in Chennai. we experienced modern India – really poor people and dirty rubble strewn streets with bubbles of wealth – massive shopping malls where everyone has a better mobile phone than me and is very middle class. We ate at the mall (chinese) and in a smart Mexican restaurant and also ate with the people in a roudy street restaurant eating with our hands off a banana leaf. We got hassled a lot by beggars – one girl said she wanted rice becuase she was hungry – then asked for 25kg of the stuff! No really. We had a proper nights sleep for the first time last night – from 11pm – 9am – actually sleeping at the right time! Three days ago this time was 5.30pm – 3.30am so no wonder it has taken a while to get used to Indian time.

We went to a small touristy, beach village called Mamallapuram today with a Californian guy called Jessie who we accidentally adopted a couple days ago and now seems to be part of our three. It was just a two hour bus journey. The hotel has a decent internet cafe and restaurant and the rooms are small but quite nice looking. Sasha and Jessie checkde out four hotels while I guarded the luggage. I guess we’re just gonna hang out here, swim, eat fresh sea food and relax. The place is famous for it’s rock carvings which are done today and have been done here for thousands of years and also the shore temple. There are loads of Buddhist mats, rugs, rupas etc for sale here and many would look tempting if I didn’t have to lug them around for a year: and it’s pretty much travellers paradise – though many of us look like we first came in the 60’s!

Hope you are all well – we are and we’re really unwinding and beginning to relax…..  ahhhh…

phew…  sea air, no sewage, less people trying to sell us stuff/ beg for money. ahhh……

tom

PS I don’t think I have anyone’s e-mail. It might make more sense to e-mail rather than send long things on the site