Taxi ride to Pondicherry

It is about a three hour ride from Chennai to Pondicherry. We stopped at Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) on the way to see the monolithic rock sculptures that were carved during the Pallava dynasty in the 7th century.

This is a UNESCO world heritage site. We resumed our journey to Pondicherry. The salt fields along the way are still there. Road tolls are new!

There is another party (two other PECites from Bombay) heading in our direction. They stopped at the crocodile park along the way. Both of us reached the St. James Court resort across from PEC pretty much at the same time for check-in. We spent the evening collecting sea shells at the beach (Bay of Bengal) and eating dinner at the roof top seaside restaurant within the resort. It was nice to catch up with others after so long. 

A night stay in Chennai

The deplaning at Chennai airport was very quick. The simultaneous exit from the front door was through the terminal bridge and the back door via a ramp and then onto a waiting bus which took us to the terminal. 

The Chennai airport is showing its age. Took a prepaid taxi to the IITM (Indian Institute of Technology - Madras) campus.

I had reserved a room at the Taramani guest house within the IITM campus through the alumni association. I did my M.Tech (1990-92) in Industrial Management from here. They don't offer this degree here anymore. It got converted to a MBA program. 

My first impression of Chennai after coming back more than two decades later is that, there are flyovers every where. The Metro is going to be operational in the next two years which should give relief to the traffic congestion. I could hardly recognize the IITM area. There is a flyover in front of the IN/OUT gates and there was so much traffic. It used to be a wide open road. 

The IITM campus hasn't changed much except for a few new buildings. The shuttle bus that runs between main gate and hostels used to be Brown in color but, is Yellow now. The over 600 acre campus is beautiful as usual. The difference in the atmosphere between inside the campus vs outside the campus is very stark. The free roaming deer and monkeys are still there. I never been to the guest house while I studied there. It really has very nice accommodations and a nice dining hall with good food. 

View outside the room. 

The Cauvery hostel which is close by was my home during my M.Tech. We used to play volleyball pretty much every day after the classes and ball badminton on some days. There used to be a movie screened at the open air theater every Saturday evening. All the students would head there after a scrumptuous dinner. Those 18 months were the best days of my life. 

We went to see the Cauvery hostel. Looks like an additional wing was added. Sahaj got a chance to see the deer roaming on the hostel grounds.

Children of two of my cousins work in Chennai. They came by to see Sahaj in the evening.  One of them did bachelors at my alma mater, PEC (Pondicherry Engineering College) and working at the same company (TCS) as I did! We all went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. Then back to the guest house for a good night's sleep.

In the morning, one of my M.Tech classmates who was also one of my TCS colleagues stopped by to meet. It was nice catching up after a long time. IIT opened a research park next to its campus to tie up with private industry. My B.E., project guide who later did his PhD from IITM is heading a Cognizant unit in there. We went to see him. 

We also stopped by the house where I used to live while working at TCS after I got married. The owners are still there. Bindu was months old when we lived there. We used to take her out on scooter to zoo and other sight seeing places. The house owners used to be very worried about Bindu because we were taking her out at such young age. They would eagerly wait for us to return home. The house lady was also a big help for Lakshmi while raising Bindu. 

Returned to the guest house after meeting them to eat lunch and check out. Asked the auto guy to wait for us to finish lunch so that he could drop us at the IIT main gate which was a rendezvous point for two of my PECites, one coming from Delhi and one coming from Hyderabad for the Silver Jubilee Reunion. We all headed to Pondicherry, which used to be a French colony, on a taxi.

Trip to Chennai (Madras)

I didn't get a chance to blog the last few days. Catching up now. The trip from Hyderabad to Chennai on July 24th was very pleasant. This was my first true domestic flight in India. HYD airport was superb. It was very clean and way better than several other international airports in the world.

Check-in and security clearance was a breeze too. The IndiGo airlines was very efficient and business like. We could buy snacks from the inflight menu. The one hour flight treated us with fantastic views. 

Chennai from the air.