So we went, we saw and because we're mad we are going back for more....

Chennai traffic at 8.00 a.m., this is usual traffic load accompanied by a strong whiff of smog, nice.

Fresh fruit and flower stands on many street corners of neighbourhoods, not Mc'D's :)

Family travel - Indian style, this picture is rather like those instructions you get on airplanes to put your oxygen mask on first before sorting your child out...

So why do people do pre-assignment trips? Is it to shock the living daylights out of you of what you could be bringing your family to, spend hours looking at inadequate housing that is over-inflated by a booming rental market? To feel like you are banging your head against a wall for simply asking why you can't have a hot water tap in the kitchen when you’re told "madam they are not standard in India".

Marvel at the cows jumping over central reservations on a dual carriage way and narrowly missing your car, or the herd feeding on the rubbish outside the baby mad dogs prospective school? (This image makes my pup's existing school look like something from an Agatha Christie - Miss Marple movie, all clipped hedges and nice clean vistas). Or, the numerous wild dogs we saw roaming around looking for a scrap or two?

We were warned by most of our friends and family who have visited India that it would be an assault on the senses upon arrival and this was true in our case. There was so much to take in. The traffic (maddest I have seen anywhere in the world, although I hear Bangkok can give it a run for its money), the unrelenting sun and its accompanying heat which defines its seasons by being hot, hotter and unbearable by April/May. We were visiting in hot. The poverty and the rubbish, the sheer number of crowds we encountered. The lack of apparent infrastructure in the city. We found it difficult to sleep and eat. The silver lining was that I did lose 6lb's so hence shifting some post Christmas overindulgences :)

If it was not for those lovely ladies (you know who you are) who took us under their wing and fed us Banana cake and tea, met for coffee and showed us housing I think we would have been in a more difficult place mentally. Thank you ladies!

But all in all I like the vibe of India, it's colour, it's optimism for the future, the way they drive in a passive way (although still mad) honking their horns (mind out I'm here behind you, not get out of the way). I did not feel threatened once as opposed to other countries I have visited. I love their Indian/British woven language, i.e., did you know that the word Bungalow comes from India. The Brit's took that word and well, they covered their tiny Island in them. Up and down the land in almost every cul-de-sac.

I liked that almost every house we looked at has a bedroom downstairs ready for the elderly relatives to pass their autumn years out, looked after by the respectful family. Not the endless elderly care homes that so many families in Britain resort to. But to be fair we have a welfare state.

India did not feel as different as I was expecting. Probably to do with our influence of the old Empire and the generations of Indian culture which have woven their thread into the national psyche of what is Britain today. I have only seen Chennai and that does not make up India, far from it.

But as introductions go, this was O.K., we will see some more please ............Next!?