St. Thomas Mount and other weekend activities

On my second weekend in India, we started on Friday by going to a bar that always has a girls' day on Fridays. Since I'm not female, I had to pay for my drinks, which wasn't much fun in that bar, because a beer there costs around €4. By Indian standards that's a small fortune. So we concentrated less on the drinks and more on the "girls".

On Saturday morning Cecile arrived, a French girl doing an internship at a hotel, but only until August, because her sister is getting married then or something. Anyway, that Saturday I went shopping with Cecile and her TN manager, and in the evening we had a cosy night in…

The big plans were for Sunday. We were going to St. Thomas Mount, a hill where the apostle Thomas was killed. He's buried here in Chennai, but at a different place, St. Thomas Cathedral. That's for another day. Anyway, we set off around 11 and decided to walk to the station. It's about 2 km on the map. It ended up taking well over two hours, and that in what has become quite brutal heat by now. The train ride was then pretty relaxing: for just 4 rupees (less than 10 cents) we rode to St. Thomas station (about 15 km).

From there it was only a stone's throw on the map, but again only on the map, and it took another hour and a half or so. Cecile wasn't feeling too well, so we took several breaks.

The top was quite nice, with a lovely view over Chennai. Unfortunately you weren't allowed to take pictures up there. After a good meal at the foot of the hill, the way back went pretty quickly.

In the evening Eugen and I met up with Yuki and his friend, both Japanese. We went for Chinese food and afterwards they came back to our apartment, where we tried a few Indian beers. Cecile was there too. She was actually supposed to move out that evening, but the AIESEC people here in India aren't big on schedules, so she only moved out on Monday. Viefka, our Dutch flatmate, left for Singapore on Saturday to spend the week with her boyfriend.