Stilll in Madras. Its very hot today. I tried to walk to the museum but gave up. I think crossing over the incredibly stinky river finished me off. So, what do people eat for breakfast here? There seems to be two favourites. One is the dosa, basically a big pancake, folded over with something spicy inside, served with a small bowl of curry sauce and one of curd. Usually I've got a masala dosa which has spicy mashed potato inside. The other main one is the iddly, which is basically a big soft savoury cake thing served in a curry sauce. Sometimes they throw in a donut shaped piece of bread too. Sometimes there is a rice and curry combo available. Lunchtime is the main eating time, a lot of cafes (and most seem to be just vegetarian, every eating establishment is proclaimed as being veg or non-veg) serve "meal" between about 11am and 2pm, which involves a banana leaf, a big pile of rice, some types of curry and a samba (sauce) poured on to the rice. It is eaten by mixing with the fingers and then shoved into the gob. I've not found any eating place that could be called relaxing, most a big utilitarian cafe type scenarios where the service is fast, the bill comes before you've finished eating and you're out the door before you know it. This is all in the south of India, I'll soon be finding out what the north is like as I'm heading up to Delhi tonight. Anyhow, I can sort of see now why Goa is so appealing, as things definitely were a lot more relaxed there.
Black stream of sludge which passes for a river in Chennai
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