Exploring Madras

Early morning wake-up. We were up at 5:00 a.m. and ready to start our day. We once again attempted email via the acoustic coupler and manual dialing- to no avail. So, we resorted to telephone calls. At breakfast, John got a lesson on Indian breakfast food. We tried something called Idly – a rice pancake. With a multitude of sauces on top, it had a nice kick in the morning. We actually got onto the Internet at the hotel’s offices…no messages, but we managed to get an email sent off.

John discovered the “Training Cell” in the bowels of the hotel—complete with padlock.

Not really hungry, but loving Indian food, we headed for lunch at the Grand Canyon. This time, we tried sabza khala march (?). We decided to become vegetarians!

The city tour of Madras kicked off with the Government Museum and the bronze collection.

We started to get our first whiff of the Hindu religion. The three gods – Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu, (the Preserver and Restorer, who’s come back in nine incarnations as Buddha, Rama and Krishna) and Siva (the Destroyer) and the amazing stories about the gods and their wives. The favorite god is Ganesh- the elephant headed god of prosperity and wisdom. The story goes that Siva (Shiva) and his wife, Parvati (pronounced ‘Poverty’-goddess of welfare- and also a very popular goddess in India) had a son named Ganesh. Siva was out traveling a lot and came back several years later to find a man in his wife’s bedroom. Overcome with anger, he chopped off the mans’ head- only to discover that it was his son- who had grown up quite a bit since he’d been out of town. Parvati was angry and upset and forced Siva to bring their son back to life. The only way he could do this was by giving him the head of the first living thing he saw- which happened to be an elephant.

We left the museum and headed to Fort St George – the British fortification. It’s the home of the oldest Anglican church in India (and makes one wonder what possessed the British to come over here- most of the memorials were to men and women who died in their 40’s of all manner of tropical diseases).


After a drive past Marina beach, we stopped at an ancient Siva temple, the Kapaleeeswarar temple. We left our shoes in the car and walked barefoot through the temple watching the people praying, giving offerings to the gods…. There were “holy cows” everywhere.

We finished the tour at the Catholic Church where the body of the Apostle Thomas (Doubting Thomas) is supposedly buried.

After a quick dinner, we did a late night transfer to Central Station for the overnight train to Trichy. Not really knowing what to expect from Indian trains, we were pleasantly surprised to find them clean and fairly cozy. We got an upper and lower berth in 2nd class with A/C. Fortunately, we were exhausted- so we got a great night’s sleep.