Chennai Monsoons
One of the first pages for Chennai to upload and do not mean for it to be too negative, but the page is there and so it is time to add the photos. Talk about contradictions – one minute Chennai has too much heat and the next we have flooding in wide spread parts of the city! The monsoon is here is upon us and – combined with clogged drains, too much digging up of the roads, too much rubbish being dumped into the waterways, – you have water chaos! So far I have managed to make in into work alright, although a couple of times I have had to ring for a car to get into work! Marg is starting to pull her hair out trying to get the washing dry as it is running about 98% humidity! A couple of pictures of the rains are inserted here, taken mostly outside our hotel. The monsoon rains come to the city and the streets have been filling up with water as per usual! At least these years, there seems to be a quicker run off that when I first arrived in Chennai, but there are parts of Chennai that the Corporation does not look after so well that retains their clogged streets for days or weeks at a time. At least we have a little respite from the 1000’s of little Nano cars that are likely to flood the streets soon, thanks to Ms. Banerjee in Calcutta who managed to get the Tata car plant closed and finally to relocate. At 100,000 thousand rupees, or 1 lakh per car, these cars become affordable to a good percentage of motorcycle riders in the city and with the roads already congested to extremes, the influx of all these vehicles is going to create havoc! Add to the fact that the skills in getting a driving license is pretty well non-existent and if they drive the cars like they drive their bikes, I can imagine a lot more scraps, dents and scratches appearing on the sides of the cars as they try and scrap through gaps that are just not there!