Our trip preparation started a week before our departure and went quite smooth. We left Ottawa on Oct 30th for Chennai via Toronto and Frankfurt. The plane ride was as awesome as it could be with a toddler. We arrived in Chennai on Nov 1st and stayed there till the 3rd. Chennai was crazier than I thought it would be. It had grown exponentially for the past few decades and like all other cities in India, the infrastructure development lags quite a bit behind the commercial growth (and population). If you are a tourist, Chennai is a good place to start your exposure to India as you can get all the amenities, ranging from cushy toiler paper to mega shopping malls and over-the-top luxury. We are not tourists and our intent for a stopover in Chennai before heading to my hometown, Srivilliputtur (Srivi), was to reconnect with family and to rest. Indeed, we had a great time in Chennai but the crazy traffic was getting to us. We left Chennai for Srivi on the Pothigai Express train (overnight journey covering roughly 600km) on Nov 3rd. We had reserved seats (+ beds) on coach A1 (AC, 2 tier). The train journey was rough as we had to share our narrow hard bed with a toddler, who was jet-lagged and over-stimulated. But one thing I love about Indian trains is the ability to open the door while moving and peek out to get some fresh air. So I did in the morning. It had rained. It was lush greenery and pools of water everywhere. It was quite awesome to experience cool morning breeze. We could taken a flight from Chennai to Madurai, which is about 80km from Srivi but you don't get experience a country over the air.
We reached Srivi at around 7 AM on Nov 4th. Here are some shots I took as we took an auto-rickshaw from the station to the our home.
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| Lydia is so excited to be here that you can't see how jet-lagged she is. |
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| Road to my home in Srivi. You have no idea how crazy this road will be just an hour. |
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| School kids starting their day |
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