Widening Horizons Programme, Chennai, India

Day 12-Thursday 27th of August

After a much needed full night of sleep we all awoke feeling refreshed and ready for our travel back to Chennai. The bus journey seemed to be one of the liveliest of the trip with a playlist of Scottish music entertaining us immensely and even being enjoyed by the Italian member of our party. Eventually the playlist ended and everyone began to drift off into a peaceful yet uncomfortable sleep.

We reached the New Woodlands hotel in Chennai, which was now considered almost 5 star to us, at around 4pm. This meant that our lecture scheduled for earlier that day had to be cancelled. Luckily Professor Ramu Manivannan worked around this and arranged for the lecturer to attend our evening meal in the hotel so we were still able to learn even more about India. The few of us that were sat around the lecturer were treated to a question and answer session over a dosa. We learned more about the struggles still occurring in the fishing villages which added to the information we had received from the fisherman when in the South of Tamil Nadu. We also found out about how the Indian government are trying to return to a more traditional India and how this is causing some problems in Indian society. We retired to our rooms around 11pm and all took the opportunity to go straight to sleep, as we had learned to appreciate a full nights rest.

After travelling for the last 6 days everyone was glad to have returned to Chennai where we had a little luxury back. But with the final couple of days imminently approaching all of the group were beginning to realise that we can’t stay in India and that we would sadly be leaving very soon.

The back seat boys enjoying some sleep