The Chennai Flower Market

My sister and I failed to properly book train tickets to Bangalore for the weekend, so we ended up having to settle for the bus. Not so bad, except that we had to get to the bus station... The CMBT as it is known is about 10 km north of where I live, and nearly inaccessible by train, which is totally irritating. This means, the methods of arriving at the CMBT are rickshaw, or local public buses... Both are slightly difficult options for tall westerners trying to fit into Indian sized things. Happily, everyone knows exactly where CMBT is, as it is the largest bus terminus in all of Asia!

However, we had no idea how long it would take us, so we caught a rickshaw to make sure we could get our bus tickets and board the bus in time. We overcompensated. Our bus to Bangalore was at 10:30 AM, we got to the bus terminus and had tickets in hand by 9:15AM. So we went for breakfast and looked around a bit.

What's this? A huge market across the street? Why, yes I will go explore that for an hour.

It turns out, that Chennai's Flower market is directly across the street from the bus terminus. Crossing the street to get there is mildly harrowing, but once we each made it in one piece (one piece each) we had some good exploring to do. Funny enough, all the pollution seems to have disappeared in the market. It is the first time I have been in a large area of Chennai without having to endure some really bad smells. Generally, one will be lucky enough to walk by some fruit vendors or flower vendors on the road and get quick olfactory reprieve from the dust and dirt and filth and piss that pervades the rest of chennai's air, but here was all flower smells! This market is also quite large and sort of reminded me of a huge farmers' market in the south or midwest, but selling almost exclusively flowers. Here are some pictures to demonstrate (courtesy of my sister's camera).