My bungalow is close to a large shopping mall, via a trek down a busy street. When you walk in Chennai, you mostly walk right on the street, along with everybody else and all the vehicles too. It’s amazing that I didn’t see a single person get hurt!

The mall was a bright, loud, sparkly kind of place with some familiar stores, like The Body Shop and some others that are specific to India. It’s very popular and it was quite crowded, with young couples walking arm in arm and generally everybody very happy to be there.

After having super-yummy thalis at a restaurant in the mall, we came home and planned a quick trip to visit the Kapaleeswarar Temple. It took us some time to figure out how to dial the phone, but we managed to get a call taxi and Mahesh arrived to drive us there. We only had about 30 min in the temple and bazaar area, and we couldn’t shake this guy who was determined to be our tour guide. But I managed to enjoy it.


The temple is surrounded by flower sellers who make gorgeous garlands that people use in the temples to adorn the statues. There are a lot of other sellers too, but they offer mostly junk.


A lot of people ask me to take their photograph. Here are some of them:


Finally, this evening, I strolled around my neighborhood, or rather walked carefully. There a small street with shops on it, mostly Xerox stands, I have no idea why. And there was a bridge over a stinky river full of trash and sewage and a group of boys who, I guess had caught a bunch of fish in this disgusting river and they were selling it to passersby. I couldn’t get a picture of it because I really did not want to feel obligated to buy any of their fish. The stench was incredibly awful.


There were also boys playing cricket in the street. I loved watching them.

I ended the day at some place that seemed like an Indian fast food joint -- akin to the taquerias that we have in SF, I guess. I had a rava masala dosa along with a veggie, chili fried dish. The food was superb! I think that it's impossible not to be astounded by everything you eat here -- even at the cheapest place on the street.