Arrival in Chennai
The flight was a long one, even taking the fairly direct route I did. It took two flights: Seattle-Dubai (14 hours), then Dubai-Chennai (4 hours) for a total of more than 19 hours from takeoff in Seattle to landing in Chennai. I took off from Seattle around 5pm on January 2nd and landed in Chennai around 2am January 4th. On top of this, I had only just arrived back in Seattle after some Christmas vacation time, taking a flight home at 6am after staying up all night on New Years Eve. Needless to say I arrived in Chennai not in top shape.
The flight itself wasn't as bad as I expected, and the Boeing 777-200LR that made the Seattle-Dubai leg was probably the nicest commercial aircraft I've been in. Legroom wasn't perfect, but the seats in front of me had room underneath them such that I could stretch both legs a bit farther forward, which helps considerably. Overall the comfort level was good enough, and I dozed off a handful of times during the flight, an hour or two here and there.
The entertainment system was considerably less 90s than I've come to expect from big jets, and it was dangerously close to being pleasant to use. I watched a bit of Now You See Me before I realized I hated all the characters and stopped, then moved on to 2 Guns and Rush , both of which I enjoyed quite a bit. Aside from that I spent most of my time reading, and managed to finish the last available book in the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series along the way.
The older 777-300 that took me from Dubai to Chennai was older and less comfortable (no foot holes!) but the measly 4 hour flight felt like just a quick hop after the previous leg. Upon arrival in Chennai I had to wait through the immigration line, which always seems to take longer than it should. This checkpoint didn't have any special counters for domestic vs international visas, but as I stood in line I realized that your best bet is to pick the line with as few foreigners as possible. All the groups of obvious foreigners (mostly French for some reason...) seemed to take forever to get through. This made me sweat a little, but when it came my turn the agent had a look at my passport/visa, stamped it and waved me on.
Past immigration, I grabbed my bag and headed outside. Even in January at 3am it was noticeably warm and humid. I found my driver waiting for me outside and we headed over to the car. For some reason there was another guy with him, who gave me brief instructions and provided me with a cellphone that I could use to call the driver when needed. It seemed that this guy spoke a bit more English than the driver, so that may have been why he needed to tag along. Either way, being greeted by two-man taxi team made me feel like a VIP :)
The car ride back to the hotel was fairly tame from what I understand of the standard Indian driving experience, but was interesting nonetheless. My takeaways from the drive were:
- Lanes are just a suggestion
- You'd be surprised where you can fit
- The horn is an essential communication tool, use it often
- If you keep coming, they'll eventually stop for you
There was an immense amount of construction going on along the highway we took back to the hotel, mostly for the Chennai metro and a surprisingly long stretch of raised highway running parallel to the existing highway one.
Eventually we made it to the hotel, where I was surprised to find a Lamborghini parked out front. After our drive I couldn't imagine who in their right mind would want own such a vehicle in Chennai. Nothing would be fun to drive on those roads.
I was greeted warmly by the hotel staff and was soon enough checked in an given a short tour of my room. The room has a nice, clean design and a view of the city:
After some putzing I was off to bed around 5am, but managed to get up at 10 in an attempt to normalize my sleep schedule. This allowed me to make it down before the complimentary breakfast buffet closed, but I was still feeling pretty lethargic for most of the day.
I ended up spending the day lazing around my room: reading, watching TV (most of it is in English), etc. After a midday nap that ran a bit long, I got downstairs just in time to grab dinner from the Chinese restaurant in the hotel.
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