Intelligent Structural Health Management of Aerospace, Mechanical and Civil Structures

8/5/09 - Chennai

At night out a tiny airplane window, every city looks the same. Sitting where I was, I honestly could not tell whether I was in India or in Minneapolis. But the second I took a step outside the plane, I knew that I wasn't in the West anymore. The air was heavy, sort of a mixture of humidity and dust. I could immediately smell the difference between what I was used to and were I was now. It wasn't too terribly hot, as it was around 11:30pm, but it was pretty humid. After going through security, which was pretty much the same as any other airport I've been in, we got our luggage at the baggage claim.

Right before we were about to go outside, Brad turns to me and says “Ready for the Chaos?”. I replied, “It's pretty late at knight, how bad can it be?”.

As soon as we step outside there was a solid wall of people stretching 100 yards in each direction, half of them carrying name plaques and the other half of them yelling, all looking straight at us. It was surprising, to say the least, and I absolutely stand corrected, Brad was right.

Stepping into the outside air, it was probably about 90 degrees outside, and you could immediately tell that you had changed places again, as the air was a little spicy and not as damp as inside the airport.
So our group found the Trident drivers who were to take us to the hotel, and since we all had different rooms, we all had different drivers.

Indian driving is so different from the driving I'm used to. The horn seems to be used as a “I am here” and “move” tool instead of an “I'm pissed off” type tool as it is most often used in the US. I think this makes sense to some degree. Also, for most of the road that we went on there were no lanes, to speak of. There was a highway type thing with a large median between directions, but the 3-lane width roads were unmarked and there seemed to be no logical order in where drivers chose to place themselves.