I had some vague images of Chennai Airport based on snippets of 90s Tamil movies where the heroin (or, at times, the hero) landed in the airport from studying abroad. But today, after landing here IRL, the reality completely wiped out whatever image and fear I had about it.
Firstly, the best part of Chennai Airport was the immigration officers. They were heaps friendlier than their Hyderabadi counterparts I had unfortunately encountered a few years ago. And aside from the mini-drama caused by Jik’s visa-on-arrival plan, the whole process was pretty smooth.
We were in Chennai for a stopover to Goa to attend my cousin’s wedding. Hence, the only Chennai I saw was between the international and Domestic airports for 10 minutes, including traffic.
Chennai International Airport was good, but I liked the domestic airport better. Why? Because of the two snack stalls inside, near the entrance.
Sri Krishna Sweets and the shop beside it, where I got a bottle of rose badam milk (rose almond milk), which looked a bit questionable but tasted a lotta amazing. I promptly declared to my cousins travelling with me that whenever possible, I only wanted to drink rose badam milk from then onwards.
After a semi-chaotic check-in to the domestic flight bound for Goa (sorted out by my cousin, who travels to India quite often and managed to bump us into the first-class seats), we sat in Cafe Coffee Day ━ fighting the fatigue of being awake for more than 24 hours, waiting for our next (final) flight to Goa.
The cafe didn’t have badam milk, so I only settled for day-old samosa (they also didn’t have vadai, how is it a cafe in a South Indian airport??) and filtered coffee while flipping through a local newspaper to see the pictures.
Filtered coffee and newspaper ━ took me less than two hours in Chennai to turn into my Appa.
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