Travel Tips for Chennai (Madras)
Recommended Background Reading
by tayloretc
A brief annotated bibliography of the basic guides...
Culture Shock! India - I think the author is a northerner, but the content is dead on. "Someone once said that whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true." So true. Highly recommended.
Rough Guide Chronicle: India - brief history and timeline, 30,000 BC - 2002 AD; very interesting, if you don't have time to read more in depth. Recommended.
Madras (Re-)Discovered - a historical guide to the city of Chennai/Madras, beginning about when the British arrived. (I've heard that many well-educated natives of Madras learned Indian history starting at the time of British occupation.) Good pre-British info, great old photos.
Lonely Plant: South India
Rough Guide: South India
Footprint: South India
These are all on the budget-travel end, and all are reasonably good at picking out interesting things. None of the phone numbers seem to be up-to-date, though. I doubt that's the publishers' fault.
Ponniyan Selvan (by Kalki) - fictional retelling of the flowering of Chozha history. Very telling, probably hard to find outside of India.
At Home in Madras: A Guide to Chennai - From the Overseas Women's Club, this is a practical guide to settling a family in Madras. Most of the details change fast. (The club is open to foreign women living here [foreign = not from Madras].)
If you want to learn Tamil script to read signs, try by learning to write it. Damned if I can tell you what it's called, but there's a workbook ISBN 81-277-0002-9 that shows how to write all 246 characters? figures? letter combinations?. You'll need to find someone to tell you what the corresponding sounds are. But it's good. Dravidian history and culture is at least 5500 years old, one of the oldest recorded on the planet. It's well worth learning something about it before you come. Note that the south is radically different from the north in tradition, language, and culture, so if you've studied Hindi and related history/culture/philosophy/religion/social studies it will mean nothing in the south.
traditional indian sweets and snacks
by vpas about The grand sweets and snacks
This shop has hygenically made good quality indian snacks and sweets(both south and north indian)The products used are of high quality and the packaging is good.it is professionally run Murukku,seedai,thattai(south indian savouries)
powders to mix with rice or with vegetables(garlic podi,coconut podi,parruppu podi)
Pickles(they are just too good -- onion thokku,tomato thokku,lemon pickle)
the variety of sweets is too much to be listed!
Just go taste and buy might be very slightly more expensive than the low end shops,but the quality is reliable,and the place is hygenic
Health Food, Tastier Than Anywhere
by tayloretc about Cholayil Sanjeevanam
I’ve been here for lunch and dinner, and everything I’ve had has been excellent. Lunch offers something unusual, though, and well worth going out of your way for.
This restaurant is attached to an ayurvedic line of health and beauty products and some spa facilities, and as such offers only healthy foods. It’s all pure veg, all natural and whole foods, all cooked according to healthy principles, mostly light on spices, and servings are big. The food is mostly Keralan, the decor is mostly bamboo.
So, the lunch. Little bits of perhaps 18 different items, including delicacies like plantain stems and stews, and several kinds of drinks, all served and arranged in a particular order to benefit health. (It’s better to go with someone who can identify and explain what everything is, but if you don’t have someone, eat everything in the order they put it down.)
St Andrew's Church
by Willettsworld
Also called `the Queen of Scottish Churches in the East,' St Andrew's Church is one of the finest specimens of Georgian architecture in the Indian sub-continent. The Church, also known as 'the Kirk,' was built in 1780, on the site of Freemasons Lodge and was consecrated in 1821. Inspired by St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, it was designed by Major Thomas de Havilland and Colonel James Caldwell of the Madras Engineers at a cost of £20,000.
The body of the church is a circle, with rectangular compartments to the east and west. The circular part, 24.5m (80ft) in diameter, is crowned by a shallow dome coloured a deep blue by crushed sea shells mixed with lapis lazuli. This is painted with golden stars and supported by 16 fluted pillars with Corinthian capitals. The steeple is 50m (164ft) high and features a bronze weathercock. The entrance features a double colonnade of 12 polished Ionic columns.
Chennai disowns Madras
by IoannaE
A few days before flying to Chennai I came across a weblog in which a young man pondered the effects of the city's name change. He concluded that it was a good thing because the town's much more fun as Chennai than it ever was as Madras. I'm no judge of the local nightlife, but certainly in many other ways the city has changed drastically.
Ten or twelve years ago guidebooks to Madras described it as a charming city with a slower pace than the Northern towns, full of old mansions and green spaces. Well, the pace has become much more hectic, the old mansions are being demolished at an unseemly pace to make way for even more highrises, and flyovers and billboards disfigure or conceal many (formerly?) green spaces. Pollution, especially noise pollution, is diabolical, and despite all the new roadworks very little provision is made for pedestrians. Having to dodge Chennai's traffic is nobody’s idea of relaxing and everyone’s of scary!
This fast pace of 'development' is largely due to the IT revolution. Economic change has certainly brought increased prosperity to Chennai, but I don't think it's made much difference to the poor. You need only make a detour off a main street in central Chennai to come across a poor neighborhood or slum.
That said, you shouldn’t just head straight out of town once you get here (although it might make sense to do just that, spending a few days there just before you leave South India to see the town and do some shopping).
The museum has, among other treasures, a fabulous collection of Chola bronzes, impressively displayed to boot; many beautiful colonial-era public buildings have survived; the Kapaleeshwar temple can serve as an introduction to Dravidian temple architecture and ambience; and for all the frenzied modernity Chennai is still the cultural capital of the Tamils– that is, the cultural capital of a very old and very rich culture. On no account miss the annual music festival, held here in December-January; and check the local papers (cultural pages in The Hindu) to catch performances all year round if you have the slightest interest in classical music and dance.
And remember, when the heat, traffic and noise get too much, there’s always Marina Beach….
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