Chennai has its own Hop on – Hop off tours in two routes. One between Chennai & Mamallapuram (aka Mahabalipuram) and the other one around the city.

Hop on - Hop off Tour Bus

The Yellow A/c buses are between the tourism complex and Mamallapuram and the Blue A/c buses (run by TNSTC) are running between High Court, Marina, Valluvar Kottam and Ripon Building with 15 stops.

The Stake holders of these Yellow buses are some of the Prominent Hoteliers & Travel Operators.

One could also do an ONLINE BOOKING HERE and save time visiting the Tamil Nadu Tourism Offices.

Owing to the popular Chennai climate, thankfully the buses are Air-conditioned and unlike its famous counterparts at London, Munich, Paris its not open top. And they have a professional Guide in each bus.

For other options head directly here to the TTDC homepage.

This is the Mamallapuram Guest House inaugurated by erstwhile CM of Madras Mr K Kamaraj 51 years ago and was under the ITDC Management subsequently. Taken over later by the GRT group and rechristened as GRT Temple bay.

Hunc Pontem Peter aka Petras Uscan, the armenian trader is the visionary who built the Marmalong aka Maraimalai Adigal bridge over River Adyaru in Saidapet in 1726. He was the same Armenian trader who built the steps for St. Thomas Mount shrine too.

The Stone in the bridge announcing this piece of history shown below.

Happy Madras / Chennai day and have a blast on the 369th birthday.

Dinamani, the tamil newspaper, from the Express Group carried a report on The Chennai Photowalk.

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Mylapore Festival, an annual event in Chennai in the month of January is sponsored by Sundaram Finance and organised by Mr Vincent D’Souza of Mylapore Times. This year the festival was celebrated from January 3rd to 6th, 2008
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After witnessing the Naval Exercise at Marina this evening, to take the train to Velachery I proceeded to the Light House Railway Station. The Railway Station looked like Chennai Central or Egmore. People were standing in long queue to get the tickets.

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As CC started covering the places photowalked, I decided to cover the people we came across, which in some images include the people who photowalked.

While we were waiting for others to join at the Fort St George Parking Lot, we found a number of teams playing Cricket. Most of those present appeared to be from Sowcarpet area. This image of one such team waiting for their turn to play.
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With Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan announcing The Second Chennai Photowalk on December 9, 2007, I thought its time to post the concluding part of the First Chennai Photowalk. (Earlier posts on The Chennai Photowalk figure in the Best of Metroblogging )

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So, as some of you reading this blog will know, a few of us went on a little walk-about in North Chennai a month ago. You’d have seen the photos and or heard about the existence of said photos. Now, I am planning to go on the walk again, only follow a different route this time. If you’d like to join me/us (A few of the Metroblogging Chennai team will also be there), do read on.

As I mentioned on my blog, this second walk will begin where the last one ended. At fort St. George.
The route:
Fort St. George -> War Memorial -> University of Madras/Senate building -> Gandhi statue. All along, we’ll pause and photograph, if allowed to, the buildings that face the sea.
The walk will start at 9 AM on Sunday, 9th December 2007. If you can, join us.

As we came out of the Beach Railway Station, we had two options; one to walk along the Burma Bazaar or cross the Road and walk along many landmarks on the North Beach Road. We chose the second option , used the subway and surfaced in front of the Original Skyscraper of Chennai – TIAM House – Murugappa Group Headquarters, presently known as Jesus Calls Towers.
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