Spent a couple of days in Chennai, and just arrived in Bangalore on the second leg of my journey...
Chennai was a lot cleaner than I last remember from my trip 3-4 years back. A LOT cleaner. I guess JJ is better CM at least in one very visible manner! However, as a metro, Chennai still seems a very faraway cousin of Mumbai and Delhi. Yes, there is construction every where - with the Chennai Metro work in progress. But you don't see the zooming SUVs, the Beemers and the Mercs. The malls are few and far between, and you hardly see any of the hip young crowd one is so accustomed to seeing in Mumbai and Pune.
A lot of Amby taxis rule the roads, though a few call cabs are also making their presence felt.
Another shocking revelation was the overall lack of security consciousness. At the Le Royale Meridien, cars weren't even cursorily checked for entry, and bags were simply passed through an XRay machine while the handler chatted away, with not even a glance at the screen. At the airport, security again was extremely lax.. and finding bags lying around was extremely common and frightening for those of us more accustomed to those "normal security procedures". At the baggage XRay screener, an African gentleman removed a couple of boxes from his bag, got it XRayed, and then almost nonchalantly, opened the bag and stuffed the boxes back into it!
The airport itself is another interesting story by itself. Just 7 km from the city center, compared to all the swanky greenfield airports coming up. There's a new terminal coming up and a Metro project linking it to the city, but it's way behind other Indian metros. A single Taj-operated restaurant can be accessed through a damp staircase, serving expensive but very limited food. Imagine asking for a biryani at 655 and being told, pretty rudely, that it's only available after 700! Taj, no way! I wouldn't expect that even from a Shivsagar!
The airport screens kept showing our flight as delayed by 45 mins, with no Gate assignment, until we were barely 20 min from take off time. Finally, worried, we checked at the check in counter and were told, Oh, it's usually Gate 2 for Spicejet, and we rushed to the Gate, barely making it to the flight in time. Real crazy!
Getting a taxi at the airport was another story in itself. A little homework had told us our hotel was barely 7 km away, yet the taxi drivers first said it was 25 km, then came down to 15 km! LOL.
The hotel we stayed in - cost us 5000 per night, but had leaking AC, mosquitoes and damp, mouldy walls and furniture. And while it is a business hotel, we had round beds!
Net net, not a great experience!
On the other hand, as soon as we landed at the swanky Bengaluru International Airport, we caught a brand new Toyota Etios cab, guided to it by a very polite and "reliable" usher, and were zoomed in over the beautiful highway (even though a lot of work is going on, including the dedicated flyover into the city), the drive was wonderful. And the suite we checked into was almost a third of the cost of our Chennai pad, but clean, well maintained and very welcoming!
Good Bengaluru!
1 comment:
We as neutrals would consider Bengaluru to be the more hip and swankier metro but denizens of both cities have established blogs in a bid to show superiority. Cool!
Personally for me though, Bengaluru is definitely cooler(no pun intended) and more cosmopolitan. And the driving is atrocious in Chennai.
Where Chennai brags is their much powerful film industry and a charming coastline but just seems to me that the city is segregated on rigid social lines as compared to say a Mumbai or Delhi.
And oh yeah there is the IPL to drive the dagger even deeper.
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