India, Sri Lanka and The Maldives - Days 51 & 52 - Chennai, South India

With Shareef, our driver for the last 23 days in South India

Day 51

Should only have been an hour or so to Chennai, but closed roads meant lots of disruption. We’ve met roadblocks on our journeys quite couple of times, once a seemingly marked police vehicle just seemed to want some money, Shareef basically said no. We were stopped coming away from Pondicherry where alcohol is dramatically cheaper to check we weren’t smuggling liquor. Then again I think to check we weren’t smuggling money to pay/bribe people involved with the upcoming election. We were also stopped on entering Mamallapurum but that was because it costs 75p to enter every day!

Talking of traffic, here's a short Youtube of some driving in India. It's an experience!

Not sure if these road closures are due to election ‘stuff’ or the big festival happening at the temple, or something else entirely, but they did slow us down a bit! We finally collected Mirli who took us first to the big Catholic Basilica. This is one of the three churches built over the tomb of a disciple of Jesus (the other two being St Peter’s in the Vatican and the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, with St James) St Thomas was buried here after being martyred, before being moved to Italy, minus a tiny part of a finger bone that is displayed here as a relic.

Meeting up with Mirli again for our visit to the National Shrine of St. Thomas Basilica

We then had a tiny walk along the section longest beach in the world (after Copacobana beach apparently) through the almost closed fish market. Glad it was almost closed, it was too hot and will open again later in the day. See our (very) short Relive video: click here. We then went to Kapaleeshwara temple which was absolutely buzzing due to the Panguni festival which is all about weddings, that of Shiva and Parvati, Devasena and Murugan, Andal and Ranganath and Sita and Rama. Apparently especially auspicious when it coincides with a full moon. There will be many weddings today and more celebrations at the temple. See of Relive video of the temple walk: click here

Lovely catholic church, built by the Portugese

We left our shoes in the usual holding place, though we let ourselves in and put them on the shelves ourselves which was unusual. I was happy with this due to the 4 cats that were there. We saw the build up of carriages for the gods tomorrow and then out in the street the arrival of an enormous float, for want of a better description, with Shiva in. The ropes used for hauling it were massive and it was obviously very heavy. We found ourselves deep in the crowd while we had a look, though fortunately (or unfortunately) we weren’t under the balcony where they were throwing buckets of water into the crowd, onto those towing the float to try and cool them down. It was an amazing atmosphere, even though we have no idea what was going on.

And, beneath, the tomb of St Thomas

Our last stop was Fort St. George, although the museum was closed it was still an interesting place to walk around. See our Relive video of the walk: click here

This is the relic of St Thomas

Then to our last hotel, 5 star no less. It was posh, but the staff didn’t really live up to the standard. Everything was controlled from an iPad, lights, curtains, blind, AC, all of which reset when you went out, taking the keycard with you, so you always came in to closed blind and curtains, all the lights on and AC at 20. Then there was the toilet, lid opened when you entered the bathroom while having a little spray round to ensure cleanliness, and the seat warmer was activated. There was a button for lifting the seat though obviously I’m not interested in that. Obviously there was auto flush, as well as a button for that. As for the other buttons! Never touched them! That was where it all fell to pieces really, the food options listed appeared to bare no relation to what was actually available. I managed to persuade them to let us have what we wanted in the Bike and Barrel pub, which was fine, until they turned the lights down. There’s atmospheric lighting, and then there’s dark! He was also very proud of the fact that it would be jumping in there till 03.00, shaking the hotel. I wasn’t sure he should be proud of that, but fortunately it didn’t affect us! We’d gone to the pub in order to raise a glass to my mum and do the final crossword we did with her the day before she died a year ago. We could do that although we had to write in the final two answers by torch light!

A very happy Jackie having found cats to stroke in the shoe store at the temple

And now we sit at the airport for our flight to Sri Lanka, though it did seem to be touch and go whether they would give us boarding cards. They wanted proof of our flight out of Sri Lanka, to the Maldives, which we’d already realised we don’t actually have. There is an email in with Explore!

Inside the Kapaleeshwara temple. Mirli wasn't entirely sure if photographs inside were allowed, but after getting in she said it was, but don't take photos of the deities she said

So what did I think of India? Everything I was put off by was valid, but there is a lot to see and all the people we have encountered have been lovely. We have been looked after extremely well, but this has led to a slight feeling of removal from the real India though this may or may not be a good thing. We’ve eaten in a lot of hotels which is very unusual for us, but without looking at a place or having a recommendation we could do an awful lot of driving around to find somewhere we liked the look of. 

We then walked outside where the parade was taking place. It was super busy and you might just be able to see a bucket full of water being thrown over the crowd pulling the 'float'

Then there is the feeling in the back of my mind that the driver is outside waiting , which I guess may be better than sitting in the carpark of whichever hotel we are staying at waiting to go to sleep. That has also made me slightly uncomfortable, Shareef has obviously been sleeping in the car. This has caused us no issues, he’s always beautifully turned out, as is the car, and it’s his choice. I remember the days of 'Schedule A' when I got paid a fixed amount regardless of how much I spent as long as I produced a receipt. The BBC did genuinely seem surprised when they stopped Sched A and put us on actuality that we stopped staying in the scummy B&B’s we’d stayed in before and went into decent hotels up to the amount they’d pay. So I do understand the thinking, but even so!

This rope is one of two long ropes being used to pull the 'float' by a team of people. Apparently its has some special meaning to touch the rope, so here's Jackie getting her touch in

There may be more ‘thoughts’ as time goes on, but Brian wants to publish…..

And that is what they are pulling. It's huge and must weigh a lot. It was moving very slowly!

A little bit from Brian on my thoughts of India (which might overlap Jackies):

This is a little video of the process

Overall, I loved it and I'm glad I persuaded Jackie to take the trip! Originally I'd planned to travel on our own, but was persuaded by a number of people that it would be better to have some assistance, even it it's just a car with driver. I'd originally Googled 'Car with driver in India' and found that it was not only possible to have that, but there are Indian based companies who will organise a bespoke trip for just us. I emailed three companies outlining the places we wanted to visit, the length of trip we had in mind and the standard of hotels we prefer and, eventually settled on Magic Tours of India for several reasons; they listened most to what we had in mind and offered a really good itinerary; their price was vert competitive and they have good coverage throughout India. We have not been disappointed, Deepa, the owner I originally contacted and Ranjeet have been excellent and we'd absolutely recommend them to anyone.

We only managed to see the church in Fort St George as it's still used by the military, so out of bounds

As Jackie has said, a fully organised trip means its fairly inflexible, so if we want to alter or add things its a bit hard (though not impossible, Ranjeet would be happy to do what we wanted, but it would have meant missing some of the other things), but the positive is that we've wasted no time searching things out and it has been absolutely worry free and we really got the most from it. I'm not going to write anymore now as our flight has just been called, so I'll write a bit more later....

We did, however walk past this building in the fort called Clive's Building. It was named after the notorious Robert Clive who originally was sent here as a clerk and had a room here along with many other clerk's. After he led a British East India army and defeated the French to regain Madras he got promotion after promotion and eventually became Govenor and had the whole building to himself

Outside the church in the fort. Apparently Robert Clive got married in here

A nice church inside. Apparently the painting at the end was left there  by the French

There it is alongside the church organ

Checking into our 5 star hotel

I wanted to put this photo on. See that spike on the bonnet of that car? It seems all official vehicles have them and its used to fly a flag from on special occasions. It's solid and fixed - it's literally like a spear! How on earth is it allowed?

Back to our posh hotel and this little control, believe it or not is to control the toilet. You walk in and the lid automatically lifts up, a light comes on in the bowl and it automatically flushes when you're done. Amazing. Sorry to put this kind of stuff on here!

This was last night in the bar, remembering Jackies mum, Pauline who died one year ago today. We're redoing the last crossword we did with her the night before she died. Here's to Pauline xx

That's it from us in India, our flight awaits. See you in Sri Lanka!