Chennai

After a layover stop in Bangalore, I landed with two colleagues in Chennai (aka Madras) in the evening. The Hilton sent a car to pick us up and brought us to the hotel. We got nice rooms and checked out the pool and health centre. Unfortunately, it was already too late to jump in as they were preparing the evening bar on the roof top. So we decided to meet later in one of the restaurants where we enjoyed a great Italian buffet.

Hilton Lobby

my room

The next morning, I tested the roof top pool - very refreshing and a great view.

pool

Later, our conference on Megatrends Commercial Vehicle India started and we attended the different sessions. In the afternoon, I skipped the sessions and went to see some local dealers with our business manager. We visited the MAN dealer, Mahindra Navistar and our biggest customer before we returned to the hotel.

On the way, there was a lot of construction ongoing for a new metro line and I saw a lot of Volvo and Ashok Leyland buses. Especially, articulated buses fascinated me as they are not common in India.

Ashok Leyland Vestibule bus

The next day, we spent only at the conference in the hotel, but on Friday we had to be ready very early to go to the Daimler factory. Daimler has built a factory for light & heavy duty trucks near Chennai and will star selling trucks under the new Bharat Benz brand by September.

From the bus we could see not only the usual traffic but also some temples.

We returned to the hotel in the afternoon and I took another dive into the pool before heading off in a BMW 3 Series to the airport. From there I took a flight to Delhi and then a Volvo bus (not as good as last year:-( ) to Jaipur.

View on Chennai