When arriving in Chennai at the airport you have four options to get into the city: taxis, auto rickshaws, bus or train. The taxis and auto rickshaws are negotiable, but you should not pay more than 50RS for the rickshaw and maybe 100RS for a taxi that will probably be shared. If you have not booked a room, walk across the main thoroughfare to the train station. Here you can ride to Egmore, in the center, for 6RS. Once you exit the station, you will find a myriad of lodges, guesthouses, tourist houses, residencies, hotels and hostels. The prices will range from 100-1000RS per night per room. As with everything in India, the price is left to your bartering abilities.

From Egmore, Central Station and Georgetown are walking distance, or 20RS or less by the plethora of auto rickshaws buzzing and tooting about the streets in their haphazard way.

Georgetown offers Mint Street and a few local temples interspersed between merchant shops selling onions, spices, jewelry, burlap bags and whatever else you can find. There is also a harbor there. But unless you are interested in container cranes, you can give it a miss.

South of Georgetown is the Fort. This is still an active fort, so you may get some static walking in at certain entrances and snapping photos of barracks. The police usually save their bamboo sticks for the out castes and I have yet to see a constable use one on a tourist. The old fort has a COE church and a museum with a lot of old portraits of British gents and their porcelain dinner wear. Notably, it costs an Indian 5RS to enter the museum and a non-Indian 100RS! This is comparable to the Government Museum on Pantheon Road: 2RS for an Indian and 250RS for a tourist…

A further stroll south through human urine and feces drenched streets you will find Marina Beach. This beach is what you would expect of a city beach with an Indian edge: that is, it is slapstick filthy. It makes for a nice walk away from the din of the streets.

If you have had enough of the tirade of disturbed traffic, unbearably horrible stench of baking human effluence and din of tooting horns, head to the Theosophical Society in Adyar.

The tree-lined avenues weave somberly through a stoned park. Temples and churches stand side-by-side and verdant trees provide a respite from the scorching sun. The air is breathable and they seem to have figured out how to dispose of their sewage. It is worth a whole afternoon to stroll, mediate and refresh oneself.

Chennai is an brutal Indian city: unconscionable amounts of refuse everywhere, piss soaked and shit drenched streets, dead bodies lying on the curb waiting for the river, people en mass, vehicles driving by their own rules as recklessly as possible, great tasting food at inexpensive prices. If you want a part of the real India and do not mind witnessing naked 7-year-old girls shitting on the street in front of you, start here.