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Lard Air

Rhymer1
2005-03-26 19:10:04

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few Indian cities are nice, Chennai is pretty good compared to the uberdump that is Delhi and the megalopolis of Mumbai. Mainly because, weighing in at a mere 6 million people, it's kind of small, a big town really.

We were staying at the Taj something or other - the best hotel in Chennai and somewhere the Queen had once kipped. Its identikit international hotel feel was mitigated somewhat by a vaguely historic building and a very nice swimming pool whose water had a curious weight about it - like swimming in heavy water, deuterium oxide. We had been upgraded to a suite the size of several London flats (all for about Ł80 a night) and just sort of hung around for a day, recovering from the flight, with me nursing crush marks from the man who 'shared' my seat.

Despite its undoubted status as Chennai's premier lodgings, it came as something of a relief to leave the Taj. I find excessive luxury rather stifling -and this was about as bad as it gets. You cannot turn around without having someone offer you something you don't want. Moreover, as I discovered at the bar, you may not even take your drink the two metres from the mahogany to the table: 'Sir, please, I will call the boy.'

Babu the Bamboozler

For all this excessive swank, we still couldn't get a cab anywhere. While we looked for one, we visited Fort George, a large and OK colonial relic, now stuffed with government buildings and Marina beach, the second largest beach in the world. Miami is number one. As an Indian city beach, this is actually nicer than you'd expect and the water looked clean enough to swim in. But I had already seen the river flowing through the city and that was enough to convince me that a dip within 10km of Chennai would be a short cut to all sorts of unusual and exciting diseases.

By this stage we had wholly given up on cabs and elected to get ...