Marina Beach

Last night we went to Marina Beach here in Chennai. It has the fame of being the widest beach in all of Asia, if not the world (I can't verify this claim). It is remarkably wide -- 437 meters at the widest stretch (almost half a kilometer). Apparently during the tsunami the waves covered the entire width of the beach and reached to the roads beyond, which is quite impressive to imagine when you're standing on that huge stretch of sand.

This Indian beach is quite unlike anywhere else I've ever been. Not only do you have people walking up and down the beach selling mostly food (this makes me think of Mexico), you also have food stalls set up on the beach. Nikhil's family was talking about how important food is in India, how the first question you'll get when you tell someone you've just been to Marina Beach is whether you ate one of these deep fried chilies they sell there. We did order some, though after one deep fried plantain I realized I didn't really want anything else deep fried. We also had ice cream.

Going to the beach here is much less a serene experience as a fascinating people watching experience. In addition to the food vendors you have people flying and selling kites, mini merry-go-rounds and feris wheels (hand cranked!) for the kiddies, these walls of balloons that you can shoot. We saw some teenage boys who were doing remarkable acrobatics (Nikhil got some great photos). If it weren't so hot in this city, I could easily imagine spending an entire day at the beach. One more thing -- beaches here are pretty dirty. With all these food vendors, many people don't bother to pack their trash. We also actually saw a man flinging bags of trash into the ocean. This made me upset. I was going to go chase after the bags but Nikhil insisted that he do it himself (probably for fear of the reaction it could create if a foreign woman were to do this instead).