Only two days!

Yes it's only two days since I left Dunedin - but so much seems to have been packed into it. Well, only the last 24 hours was interesting, since Wednesday was almost entirely taken up with sitting on planes - for 15 hours in fact. I arrived in Chennai late at night, into a dream-like scene of heat, humidity and humanity; quite a lot of each. Ravi the taxi driver was waiting for me as arranged, and his ancient Mercedes swung, tooted and rattled its way through the packed streets (3 wheelers, more taxis, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, pedal rickshaws, bullock carts, trucks, buses, people walking all over the road, people asleep on the roadside) ... all with no obvious rules, no obvious delays, and apparent goodwill!
Somehow we arrived at the Radha Park Hotel, supposedly only 3 stars, but very grand and excellent air conditioning, along with an endless supply of cold Kingfisher beer, thank heavens. Fell asleep exhausted and had breakfast late, then spent the morning assembling a Movie Maker montage of pictures from the Polytechnic prospectus. Picked up just after lunch and taken to TANUVAS - Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Science - where I spent a fascinating afternoon talking with Dr. Balakrishnan (prof of Animal Nutrition) and Dr. Balasubraniam (from the Commonwealth of Learning) about the work that is being done there largely funded by CoL. Both organisations have extensive experience in flexible delivery for continuing education of vets, training of paraveterinarians, and Lifelong Learning (L3 as they call it) for farmers. On Sunday I will be taking a 7 hour train trip to a rural community which is involved in this programme, and staying there for a couple of days.
Its ten o'clock now and I have just returned from an excursion with Ravi (he's from Kerala, I'm from Dagenham, and we converse as best we can) to the beach. An eerie experience at night, walking over the wide (about 500 metres), fairly clean stretch of sand where the tsunami wrecked boats and flung people about almost up to the main road. Also visited the impressive St. Thomas' Cathedral. There are some (not very good) pics here... I'll probably do better when I get over my fascination with Indian women in saris on motorbikes. I have to say that I think this country and its people are just wonderful. I'll keep you posted!
Cheers, Terry