India

Well I'm back at the Uni today as we were meant to be working in the Department of Geography but it turned out that it is a Holy Day today in Tamil Nadu so the lecturers said they would take us on a walk along the beach. Not really sure it's going to happen so we're going to go off and do some site seeing. The auto-rickshaw's are an amazing way of getting around Chennai, death-defying but also lots of fun.

We went out for a night meal at the Taj Commermara hotel where Hamish, our Staffs Lecturer is staying which was a shambles. There is alot of confusion between everyone as there are around 4 tutors at Madras Uni that are contradicting each other. Fun and games all the way though. It was a nice meal though and it was nice sitting in a beautiful air conditioned room :-)

We met a lady called Heena yesterday at the Uni who is going to meet us at our hostel tonight at 4pm and is going to do a tour for us. She is from up in the North of India in the mountains and has really good English making a great contact for our time in India. We also made friends with a French girl called Clementine who has given us her number if we have any problems.

Our hostel is really nice. I can actually say we are cold at night with the air conditioning which is great after we sweat constantly during the day. The city of Chennai itself is very un-touristy meaning people were looking at us all the time with surprise. Kids will come up to us and say hello and wave with huge grins. It was brilliant but as soon as it gets to the evenings all the homeless settle down on the streets getting ready to sleep and you can really see the hierarchy of the castes. You can help but feel sorry for them but there are so many that you really cant do anything for them. It really makes you appreciate the standard of life we have back in the UK.

The plans for the coming week aren’t set in stone yet but we have a guide book now (in French, but my translating has been going well) so we have some interesting local sites to look forward to.

Heading back to the beautiful air conditioned computer lab now for a chat with a Geography lecturer. Should be rather interesting! That’s all for now.