Saris on the beach

The beach in Chennai
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Wow - what a sauna! Chennai is incredibly humid.

I took a long walk around the city and came across the worst poverty I've ever seen. I never thought I'd find living conditions worse than I saw in Manila, but unfornately I was wrong. Along the river there were people living in shacks made out of stray materials patched together, but the worst part was that the entire bank of the river was covered in trash. You couldn't even see the ground - basically they were living in a dump. It was heartbreaking. I tried to take some pictures of it, but I've bought several batteries and none of them have worked. I don't know if they're counterfeit or just old - probably a bit of both.

The Bay of Bengal
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My friend Sanjay came to Chennai a couple days before I left to see me off. We went to a shopping mall, looked pretty much the same as any other mall. Thankfully, I found some batteries at a music store that actually worked! We also went to the beach. Chennai is on the Bay of Bengal. It was really beautiful, but very different than going to the beach at home. There are a lot of people that hang out on sand banks next to the water without ever going in. I think some of them were just dropping by after work probably. It's an interesting environment, kind of like going to a parade or a circus. Lots of people selling things (very aggressively) - food, toys, jewelry, balloons, etc. But the most different thing about going to the beach was the difference between the sexes. The men would just strip down to their underwear and jump in... leaving nothing to the imagination. The women, on the other hand, couldn't swim because they can't wear bathing suits. They were fully dressed in their saris and would only wade up to their ankles. Young girls can go swimming, but somewhere around 10 or so, they stop. It's so engrained that I saw a teenage girl with her friends and she started crying because she slipped and got wet. You could tell she was humiliated, but not from falling. I can only imagine what they must think when visiting the US or Europe.