Everyone says you either love India or you hate it. I may only be one day in, sleep-deprived and delirious, but I am pretty sure it's a little of both. This place makes Thailand feel like Disneyland.

From the airport, we took a 7 rupee (about 12 cents) train ride to downtown Chennai. It never quite came to a complete stop and I jumped on as it rolled by. Chris had a harder time and several Indian men hoisted him in, I gave his backpack a final tug, and off we sped.

There were no seats left and so we rode standing up next to the wide-open door overlooking the waste-filled chasm below. Several beggars shook coin cups at us, including one man who entered the train and travelled down the aisle seated with his useless legs crossed, propelling himself forward with palms on the floor.

Exhausted and thrilled from our journey, we checked into a guesthouse. This proved to be a preposterously bureaucratic process involving filling out four separate forms (three more than usual) and having each and every character repeated back to us to ensure accuracy. With a deeply significant look, the clerk asked Chris if we were married. He answered yes and he called me "honey" to ensure I played along. Perhaps we'll shop for some cheap matching rings to ease future check-in processes.

Having been told that the best way to stay healthy in India is to maintain a vegetarian diet, we headed to a nearby "A/C Veg Hygienic" restaurant and ordered four different things on the menu that neither of us recognized. We ate them under the watchful eye of the restaurant manager. We nodded and smiled while we ate, but he continued to stare at us until finally I said with a subtle tone of dismissiveness, "everything is very good." These were apparently the magic words and off he went.

After lunch, we went to explore our neighborhood. People are absolutely *everywhere*, walking, cycling, motorbiking, in tuk-tuks (little motorized 3-wheeled vehicles), busses, cars, giant trucks, farm equipment, you name it. One guy was walking two large unidentified horned farm animals down the center of the road while vehicles whizzed past. To cross the street, we followed the lead of locals and ran like hell whenever an opening allowed.

With mouths agape, we walked through a maze of small streets on broken or non-existent sidewalks, over stinky polluted waterways, past men peeing in gutters, women balancing loads of bricks on their heads, children singing, "hello! hello!", beggars pointing to their stomachs and reaching with outstretched hands, and lepers waving their disfigured body parts at us.

Chennai is on the Bay of Bengal, and today we headed to the beach. It's a national holiday, so there were vendors set up, even some amusement park rides and of course, throngs of people.

We saw a crowd drawn around something going on and decided to take a look. Laying on the ground was a dead man. Next to him, his three children sat motionless, staring at his body through tears. My eyes welled up and I dragged Chris away because I desperately needed a hug. He said it was the first dead body he'd seen.

As we walked away, several people stopped us to pose with us for photos. I was still dumbstruck and did my best to smile for them. I asked two young men in airforce uniforms if they knew what had happened to the man. They said he had drowned and his body was spotted floating by onlookers. I still can't quite comprehend what we saw and haven't processed how I feel about it, but I wonder how I'll sleep tonight.

As if the day weren't surreal enough, we spent our evening at the circus. It was absolutely the silliest thing I've ever seen, sort of like amateur hour combined with stupid pet tricks, but entertaining nonetheless.

Though Chennai is not as poor, run-down or frenetically in-your-face as I've heard it is in the north, that's not saying much. In its own right, this place is intense, insane, hilarious and wonderful. Tomorrow we will go to Mamallapuram, a town about two hours south of here that is supposed to be on the chill side. I think I can already use it.