Trip to India - Day 1 (April 20, 2006)

Colombo

We got up at 5:30 a.m. and had a quick snack before getting in the taxi for the long ride to Bandaranaika airport. The ride was uneventful, aside from a security checkpoint which the driver got through quickly enough using the password “foreigners” – this seems to be a Sinhala word meaning “I vouch for my passengers; they are obviously not terrorists.” The soldier repeated “ah, foreigners” and waved us through. The security checks in the airport itself were somewhat more aggressive: our carry-on luggage was X-rayed on entry to the airport, and again before entering the holding pen at the gate. We encountered a slight glitch on check-in; we were flying on SriLankan Airlines E-tickets obtained by cashing in some of our Emirates Airlines reward miles, and did not have the E-Ticket receipt Skywards provided us with. After about fifteen minutes of discussion between the check-in clerk and his supervisor, our tickets were honoured and we proceeded through Emigration. This was my first outbound trip from Bandaranaika since its expansion, and I found myself quite impressed. There is now a café which serves al minute Sri Lankan coffee. It is $US 2.00 per cup, but that’s quite in line with the cost of coffee at Starbucks franchises in American airports, and much tastier.
After a quick cup of coffee each, and a few minutes catching up on e-mails on Fay’s GSM phone/PDA, we headed to our flight’s gate. I made a pit stop in the new wing of the airport – it was quite clean (I considered the WC in the original terminal building unusable from the moment I arrived at its threshold). There is a slight scam here – the attendants leave nearly empty rolls in the stalls, and then offer you fuller ones once you arrive. Naturally, they stand reaching towards you as you leave. I do not think it is to shake hands.

The flight to Chennai was uneventful and quick. In spite of the short flight (about 90 minutes long), we were served one of the exceptionally fine meals SriLankan is famous for.

Arrival in Chennai

As we had only carry-on luggage, we were among the first to reach Customs and Immigration. I had thought that here, we might make up for the troubles caused by the Indian consulate in Toronto, but not quite so. The clerk at the counter told us we needed to fill out a three-part immigration form, one portion of which we were to give to him, one which we were to hand over when we left the Arrivals hall, and one to be surrendered when we left the country.

We found a bank and changed some money, then went outside to look for the driver who was to take us to our hotel. Colombo was very hot and humid; Chennai was just plain hot. There was no sign of the driver. We tried to call the hotel, but discovered that we should have put Fay’s phone in “Roam” mode before we left Sri Lanka – we couldn’t do anything with it from India. We arranged alternative transport. It was a minibus. In fact, it was the smallest minibus I have ever seen. It was about the size of a compact, but with more height. The driver was hopeless; he had to ask one of his fellow cabbies where our hotel was, and when we got to Egmore (the part of Chennai where our hotel is located), he had to ask another passer-by where to go. I don’t remember much of the trip besides the sense I had of crowds and population density. I also saw an advertisement which was almost the closest I got to Hindi in Tamil Nadu. It was in English letters, but had a picture of a little girl on one side, and of an air conditioner on the other. Over the girl, it said “India ka dil,” and over the machine, “India ka AC” – “India’s heart, India’s air conditioner.”
We got to our hotel and examined the room. No shower curtain, apparently no hot water, no towels (we didn’t notice this until later), but also no tell-tale blood spots on the walls suggesting infestation by bed bugs (or worse), and there was definitely air conditioning as advertised. We paid Rs 3000 in advance, and went out to explore the world.

Spencer Plaza and the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation

We took an auto-rickshaw (somewhat bigger than a Sri Lankan three-wheeler, but the same idea) to the nearest large mall, knowing that there was an Indian Tourism Office nearby. We ate a snack in a café, and drank slushies. After I finished my slushy, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have been a little more suspicious of the water used to make the ice in it, but it was too late to do anything by then.
We managed to cross the major thoroughfare outside the plaza, and found a private tour company. We discussed possibilities with the staff there, and thought that although the trips he offered sounded great, at $US 160 for three days, they also sounded a little pricey. We found our way to the offices of the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation, and found their prices rather more to our liking (under $8 each for a trip to Kanchipuram and Mamalapuram, including breakfast and lunch, and under $20 for a trip to Pondicherry 150 km south). We bought tickets to the Kanchi trip, but unfortunately, we had by that time missed the afternoon bus tour of Chennai, leaving us perhaps at loose ends. We returned to the tour company and commissioned a city tour on the spot. The driver showed up within five minutes, and lead us to his (air conditioned) van.

Tour of Chennai

We started off by going to the Chennai museum. We could have happily spent hours there looking at statues from various periods, displays of natural history, and bronzes, but we had things to see outside of the museum as well. In some ways, the museum was rather frustrating, disappointing, even provincial – it contains a plethora of interesting artifacts, but there is almost no context to let you where things fit in historically beyond dates and places.

Next stop was the Snake Park. I was not sure what to expect. A park where poisonous snakes ran free? Fortunately not; it is actually more a zoo, with various snakes, alligators, and other lizards in enclosures. It was so hot, most of the creatures were snoozing out of sight in the darkest shadows of their cages. It was rather like a display of stuffed snakes, but we did see the occasional movement.

The next place we went was actually the highlight of the tour. Not an official stop, but our driver took us there when we expressed an interest in purchasing a pashmina for a friend of ours. This is, naturally, an errand fraught with peril. I had only a brief e-mail describing what she wanted in terms of colour and style, and a budget. Fortunately, the Cottage Arts Emporium, a store specializing in Kashmiri handicrafts, has a huge selection of pashminas of various colours, materials, and budgets. We picked one in a sedate dusty blue-grey with a simple geometric pattern along the edge; the one tactical mistake I made was saying our budget was $Cdn 50.00, so naturally, whatever I picked, that was what the price came down to. (Fortunately, she loved it – she was described as being “shocked” that we had picked one she liked so much.) After taking care of my single Indian obligation, we explored the rest of the store. It is run by a syndicate of 72 families from Kashmir, and the gentlemen who showed us around were extremely personable combinations of showmen and salesmen. We started in the basement, which contains primarily mass-market Indian sculptures. More interestingly, it also contained some antiquities for which they claimed they could get us appropriate export permits. Horns made of conch shells, a 300 year old brass Buddha figurine, a dagger of uncertain vintage – but nothing we could justify spending any money on.

On the main floor, beside the pashminas and across from the jewellery department was the art department. We were shown the most extraordinary collection of thangkas (tradition Buddhist paintings on cotton canvas). The one we liked most was extremely intricate. It had a vaguely tantric theme to it, rich colours and a huge amount of detail. The price: $US 1700. We didn’t like it that much… We were shown dozens of these things, some from Lucknow, some from Tibet, and that first one we were shown remained the one we liked best. They turned up the pressure, but we were absolutely NOT going to spend that kind of money. I explained that although the beauty and workmanship of the item were beyond reproach, we hadn’t any budget to purchase such an item, and although they insisted on our making an offer, the only offer we could make would be an insult. Now I am not a particularly canny negotiator; this was simply the truth. We had a whispered conference, and agreed that we could not go above $US 500. Odds were not good that they would accept seventy percent less than their original asking price, of course, so in theory, we would leave empty-handed and full-walletted. I reiterated that any offer we made would be too low, and that we hoped it would not be considered an insult. I then walked away, as I have no poker face, or stomach for such negotiations. I heard Fay offer $400, but they found that just a little to low. The final price: $500. Their story is that, since Tamil New Year was the previous week, they wanted to clear out some inventory.

Next, we went up stairs to look at carpets. They were beautiful. I was tempted to get in to the import business then and there; I am not sure what more I can say about them. We were shown dozens of them, each of which I would have been happy to purchase, but at $US 1200 to 1400 each, we just couldn’t justify it. We were served saffron tea while we viewed the carpets – all in all, a very interesting experience.
We came back downstairs, picked up the pashmina and the thangka, avoided looking at jewellery at all, and returned to our taxi. I think we must have spent as much time there as at the museum.

Next on the official tour was a temple, probably Kapalishvara, in Mylapore, the southern part of Chennai. Our driver told us that foreigners were not permitted in the sanctum, so we went sari shopping at a nearby store instead. To be honest, I was exhausted by now, so I fell asleep while Fay shopped. Four saris and three sarongs later, we were ready to go. We returned to our hotel, and went to a nearby vegetarian restaurant for dosais.