Chennai - Hampi

The next morning, V took us on a quick tour of Chennai, his home town. The Lonely Planet had not given us high hopes for Chennai. This is what it has to say about V's home town:

"No matter how determined you are, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find much to
gush about when it comes to Chennai. The streets are clogged with traffic, the
weather oppressively hot, the air heavy with smog, and sites of any interest are
uncooperatively thin on the ground."

I think the Lonely Planet, once again, is wrong. I love Chennai. It's a really pretty city, built around water and with a beach. The Courthouse is beautiful (although poorly maintained) and the city generally has a great feel to it. It is far more relaxed than Delhi and feels a bit more affluent. There were far fewer beggars and impoverished looking people. That meant I could be a tourist without suffering the constant flashes of white middle-class guilt I felt in Delhi.

After our brief tour it was off to the train station. V, G and I were catching a train to Bangalore and then a sleeper train to Hampi.

The first leg of the journey we were in Second AC class. This was the best class available for that train. However, it was not comparable even to business class in English trains (which, as you know, has not impressed me). For example, as V put it in an email to us before we arrived, you can not take a crap on the train. This isn't due to lack of facilities. There are facilities in the form of both a European-style and squat toilet, which have a hole in the middle through which you can see the train below. Rather, the inability to take a crap in a train is more (as V delicately explained in his email) due to issues of comfort and hygiene. There were also a concerning number of cockroaches on the train. At least in V I found someone who is as terrified of the little beasts as I am, and much of the train journey was spent with V and me squealing and recoiling in horror as G squashed the cockroaches coming dangerously close to our chairs.

At least there is a ready supply of food on the trains. There was always someone walking up and down the isles shouting out "bread omelet" or "soup, tomato soup". G discovered a previously unknown skill in imitating the monotonous shouting of the food sellers, which provided an endless source of amusement for him and V for the rest of the trip (another example of the ability of men to repeat the same joke endlessly and still find it funny). G and I were rather tempted to sample the wares on offer, particularly given we had packed only rather soggy looking subway rolls for our dinner. But every time V caught us looking at the food going by he would simply shake his head and say "no, that will DEFINITELY kill you." So we avoided the certainty of an immediate death and stuck to our subway subs.

I can't even remember how long the first leg of the train journey was. I think it was somewhere between 4 - 7 hours, but it went pretty quickly thanks to having good company to keep me entertained.

After that train journey it was another train, this time a sleeper train. Again we were second AC class.

A second AC sleeper train carriage consists of small compartments containing four beds (two bunk beds). Each compartment is separated from the one next to it by a thin dividing wall. The compartments are open to the train corridor, with only a curtain for privacy.

G and I were in one compartment and V was down the corridor. My bed (on the upper bunk) was surprisingly comfortable. However, neither G nor I slept a wink. This was because we were surrounded by snorers. And not just snorers of the ordinary kind; this was high-volume snoring. Both the men in our compartment were snoring, as were the men in the opposite compartment and the two compartments on either side of us. It got to the point where, sleep deprived and delirious, I started imaging tunes comprised of the beats of the snoring. V fared a little better. Aside from some noisy German tourists, his part of the carriage was relatively quiet.

Finally, after our long and sleepless night, we arrived in Hampi.