1, 2, 3...yup 1.1 billion!

This is sunday afternoon at the beach in Chennai; a week or so ago when it was one of the first really hot days (42 and really humid). The city kind of surrounds this beach, it's very central. It's also huge; ok, longish at about 1.5km but really wide - about 250m of flat sand from the water to the road. The building looming out of the mist is a lighthouse about 1 km away. The crowd is this deep in a strip about 50m wide from the water and all the way down! Elsewhere it thins out a bit and there are stalls and kids rides and food, and lots of picnicking.












Not many people actually swim as the rips are very dangerous all along this coast. The sport here is to do with these guys on horseback - the beach patrol! No Hoff or baywatch babes here. Basically these guys charge (caught in action, above) up and down the beach swinging their lathi (6-8 ft long sticks) at anyone who looks like they might be swimming, or about to. Forget about rescuing anyone, I think they'd actually hit them...if they could reach them from horseback. So as these guys charge their horses up and down the beach, the crowd rushes back from the water and then just closes back behind the horses again (and the swimmers go swimming again :-). To see this many people moving so fluidly was truly amazing. It reminded me of nature doco's like Blue Planet, when the tuna rips into a huge school of anchovie, which breaks up and reforms again.

The, when I left the beach I saw a similar thing happen with the auto's (the 3 wheeled taxis). Hundreds were lined up to take this crowd away, but it wasn't an authorised stopping zone. I was having problems getting the price I wanted when one single cop on a motorbike turned up...well, it was like watching a massive Le Mans start, drivers diving into their cabs, starting them and hurtling away in a swarm, resettling on the kerb a hundred meters or so down. Fresh ones were coming in behind the cop and settling where the others had taken off.. It was great for me, nervous cabbies, looking over their shoulders for cops, make poor negotiators.