Marking Time in Madras

Madras is an ambitious and sophisticated city, which is to say that the people here are less tolerant of American tourists pointing cameras in their direction. It was founded by the British 358 years ago, but it remained something of a backwater town until 40 years ago. Since then its population has jumped up to 6 million. This growth has been fueled in large part by the growth of large industry and hi-tech companies. This makes it somewhat unique in India and, in some ways, very un-Indian. As I said before, it makes a photographer's job harder. All of this is just a long way of saying that we haven't taken many pictures in the last couple of days. To tide you over, we are including some more images from our stay in Orissa. The last two were taken by Carol.

This morning we visited three churches here in Madras, including St. Thomas Basilica where Thomas the Apostle is buried. Or at least they say it was Thomas, but since he died in 72 AD and was buried on the beach, and it wasn't until several centuries later that the Portuguese came here determined to find his body and, yup!, they found a body buried on the beach and said it must be Thomas. In any case, the presumed Thomas was reburied and a succession of chapels were built over his crypt. There he lay until the 18th century when the Vatican decided Thomas should be shared with the rest of the Christian world, so he was dug up, and split up, and bits and pieces were sent all over the place, with the major bits ending up in Torino. All that's left of Thomas in Madras is a fingernail... I'm not making this up.

Tomorrow, we head off into the countryside of Tamil Nadu for five days. This is potentially five days that we will be out of contact with our faithful readers. If this is the case, then we will have only one more post to this blog before we return home next Saturday. I'm hoping for the best.

One of the hotels that we will be staying at is called the Temple Bay Hotel. It is located in a beach town. Now, are you all with me in assuming that this hotel will be located on the water? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.