The main attraction of Pondicherry is the French quarter, which is situated along the Bay of Bengal on the east coast of India. Pondi is about 4 hours south of the main city of Chennai. After a couple of hours of much-needed sleep, we headed out to the French quarter to check it out. There’s an interesting way of transportation in Pondi called the share-auto. It’s a slightly bigger version of the auto-rickshaw and they cram about 10-15 people in the back on benches. Kind of a fun experience except for the camera phones in our faces. But anyway, it’s only 4 rupees (9 cents) each way…dirt cheap!! The French quarter had some beautiful architecture and all the street names are in French (e.g. Rue Saint Ange). It was a charming little town and it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I thought it would be. First we went to the coast/beach (tiny beach, mostly it was rocks) and hung out for a bit and dipped our feet in the Bay of Bengal. The most fun was walking underneath the pier, hopping from plank to plank (they weren’t really planks but I don’t know what else to call them) and taking pictures. Afterwards, we went to a café that was playing Kenny Chesney! You have no idea how happy that made me. It was all country! We had some beers and hung out for a bit but decided not to eat lunch there, as the menu was a bit pricey. The alcohol in Pondi is relatively cheap compared to Bangalore because it’s Union Territory (not part of the state of Tamil Nadu). By 2pm we were starving, as we never had any breakfast, so we stopped into Madame Shaste, a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet, for lunch. Marie, Steve, and Vanita had some tasty looking pasta dishes and I just had some stuffed paratha and a cheese naan. We fixed a plan for the rest of the afternoon and decided on the famous ashram in town. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram (http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/index.php) was founded in 1926 and it is most famous for “the Mother,” a woman who was entrusted with everything spiritual at the ashram. Her face is everywhere! It was peaceful to go sit in silence for 5 minutes and just be. I did not get the chance while in India to go to an ashram for a stay (at least staying a few nights) but I think it would have been an ‘enlightening’ and distressing experience for me. After the ashram we were all completely exhausted from the long day, barely and sleep, and hot sun, so we stopped at a bay front café to have ice cream (I had black currant flavor! Yum) and then went back to the hotel to rest before dinner. We headed back down to the water via share auto for dinner around 8, and we were really lucky to see a live rock concert! At the same café where we had ice cream, a large crowd had gathered and a 3-man band of young guys from Bangalore was covering songs by Jimi Hendrix, Dire Straits, and others… then they had some of their own material too. Young and old all listening to this band…big crowd, right on the water, lots of fun! They had a lot of those plastic chairs they love so much put out and lots of old people were sitting in them, listening to an Indian band cover Purple Haze…awesome! After we had enough of the concert we went to a dimly light restaurant with lots of options, however, almost all of us ended up having delicious brick-oven pizzas. Pondi has lots of good pizzerias so I wanted to try it. I had “Hawaiian” which strangely enough was nothing like a traditional Hawaiian pizza with Canadian bacon and pineapple- actually it had neither of those. It had chicken, capsicum (green pepper), and some other veggies. Really tasty, but not Hawaiian. We had dinner with some guys Corinne met-one was from France and the other from Quebec. So, the 7 of us had dinner together- American, Indian, French, Canadian (Quebecois), and British.
Sunday we had an amazing breakfast at the same café we had ice cream at the day before. We had cheese omelets, toast, and coffee while looking out over the bay. Corinne and I even split a pain au chocolat J, which is kind of like a croissant filled with Nutella. We went to the rocky beach again and just hung out for a while, but the sun was way too hot to sit there for long. We took a rickshaw about 15 minutes to Auroville, a town nearby (http://www.auroville.org/). Auroville is “a universal city in the making in south-India.” The website says: "Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity." It reminded me a little of scientology…slightly creepy. We got dropped off in the parking lot and then walked into the visitor center, which was a combo of museum and gift shop. We watched a short video on the whole “meaning” or Auroville and what it’s supposed to be about, then we took a walk over to this giant gold golf ball looking structure that looks just like the Epcot ball. The ball is called the “Matrimandir.” We took some pictures then went to the cafeteria for some cold coffee and fresh lemon soda. They put a small amount of the lemon concentrate in the bottom of a glass, then they give you a bottle of club soda and sugar to make it yourself.
After Auroville we headed to the beach and I rolled up my pants to say I’ve been in the Bay of Bengal. Steve went in the water, but that’s easy for him to do because he’s a guy and no one is going to stare at him! He lost his glasses in the water L and was pretty pissed… I guess I would be too. We went to lunch at a restaurant nearby and waited- I kid you not- an hour- to get our food. By the time we ate it was 3pm and I was starving! We got on the local bus afterward to head back to the hotel and my wallet got stolen!!!! So annoying—I always keep such a good eye on my stuff and pride myself in being alert and careful not to let something like that happen, but somewhere in that crowded bus someone must have reached into my bag and taken it. I think I got really lucky though because also in my bag was my cell phone, my iphone, my passport, and camera…and they didn’t get any of that. The only thing in my wallet was about $80-100 US dollars worth of rupees and my ATM card, plus my room key at the Annex at St. John’s. The key was about $5 to replace (the sister was NOT happy) and I had my dad cancel my ATM card immediately so there was no fraudulent activity. Losing the money sucked, but I would have wasted it on shopping for clothes anyway. Such a crappy way to end the Pondicherry trip, though. The bus ride back was awful too- we literally got the last 5 seats on the bus and they were in the way back, over the engine, so despite it being AC it was hot as hell and they took the old, bumpy road again. The seats don’t really recline back there either so I got basically no sleep. Luckily when we got back around 6am I could go right to sleep and not have to worry about waking up for my internship. I slept til about 11! I remained pretty lazy on my last full day in India.
Irony at its best
Scooter ride- Indian style!
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