July 21, 2012
Riding in cars that have right-hand drive is not as strange as it should be. Every so often I'll get a split-second strangeness about sitting on the "wrong" side of the car, but it goes away rather quickly - faster than I'd expected it would. The first (and last) time I'd ridden in a right-hand drive car was in Dublin, but that was only for around five or ten minutes or so. This trip is seeing this happen daily, and experiencing a mirror image of traffic almost seems normal.
Driving, on the other hand... I can't even imagine what that's like. I really do want to give driving a right-hand drive car a shot and a colleague here offered to let me try it in his car, but the thought of having the pedals in the right place on the wrong side of the car and shifting a manual transmission with my left hand just blows my mind. I haven't decided if I'm actually going to do it yet, and I'm thinking that if I do, I'll rent a car for a day and blanket it with every insurance coverage available.
A week in Chennai was good to see the sights, and I saw quite a lot. At the aforementioned St. Thomas cathedral, I saw many interesting things in its museum - religious artifacts from long ago, latin bibles, stone carvings, and randomly placed among all of these relics was this guy:
...which pretty much meant it was time to get going. And get going I did, off to see some pretty impressive (and colorful) temples. There are a few examples of these peppering Chennai, and they're quite a sight once you get there. The camera has a hard time capturing the extent of the detail and colors.
With my Chennai visit coming to a close, it was time to move on to Hyderabad.
(02:45)
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