Pondicherry trip - 2nd Feb 07 to 5th Feb 07

ek pal ke sannate mein...
sagar ki ek lehar uthti hai...
woh kinare se milti hai...
aur phir saagar mein kho jaati hai...

Pondicherry (or Puducherry in the local language) - one of the 6 union territories of India is blessed with some beautiful beaches. The first thing that strikes you on reaching there is the serenity and calmness of the beach - to the extent that it is almost inviting.

On Friday night, Reena, Neerja, Sujata, Janet and I started for Pondicherry. Our adventure started in Bangalore itself during dinner - the only veg item on Kairali's menu was the "Veg Fried Rice"!! Once in the bus, we realized that it was a sleeper bus, and we all conveniently took our positions and tried to sleep. But the windows kept opening and we kept feeling a strong chill, so the night was practically sleepless (except for Janet, who slept well enough to want to ask why we reached so early in the morning! :-) ).

We reached Pondicherry in the morning and spent around 15 mins trying to figure out how to reach the resort - the only glitch in getting the information was that none of us could speak any Tamil and folks wouldnt respond to anything else... So, I finally mustered up some courage and spoke the few smattering words of Tamil I know and bingo, we boarded the right bus - landed at the wrong bus stop and walked 2 kms to the resort :)


But the resort was almost a different world, and the water was inviting. So, we dumped stuff into the rooms and directly went to the beach.. A few hours at the beach and we realized that we were both tired and hungry. So, we quickly headed for breakfast and then it was time for a siesta :)

After lazing for quite a lot of time and trying to figure out how to get a cab, we decided to head to the city and go cycling. But the city was almost like a furnace, so we took a guided tour to Auroville (probably the only word which anyone told us that sounded familiar)

Our guide for the Auroville tour was Mr. Dinesh Panchal, who actually beat me and Janet both combined in terms of how much we can speak!

Auroville was an experience in itself. It seemed like a place to be experienced, but we didnt spend much time there - Mr. Dinesh was chasing us to stick to his timelines. So, a few photo-sessions later, we were in Pondicherry too tired to attempt anything else. We headed back to the resort and back to another round of lazying.




Nightfall came, and so did a lot of pending sleep. Just resting my head on the pillow was trigger enough for me to be engulfed in dreams of a morning jog on the beach.

I had the alarm set for 5:30a.m. Sunday morning. The alarm went off, and that is when I discovered that 5:30 is indeed too early. It was too dark to venture out all alone at that hour. So, reset the alarm to 6:00 when I finally woke up and went out to the beach. It was still dark and the full-moon still did shine bright.

However, the sun-rise brought with it an amazing array of colours and various changing wave patterns. It also brought forth the excitement of being in the morning warm waters of the Bay Of Bengal (Reena asked about why the water was warm and the answer was pretty simple - "since the sun had just come out of the water" :P )

So, morning 2 was almost a repeat of morning 1 events and surprisingly, it still felt equally exciting. After breakfast, the girls decided to go and catch some sleep, and I decided to go and shoot some crabs (ofcourse, only on camera!).

Learnt quite a few things about crabs that day - that they move sideways, that they have a keen sense of judging their surroundings, they have protruding eyes, and they can move really fast! Had an interesting session of crab and shell photography while Sujata enjoyed a late morning siesta under the beach umbrella.

On the second afternoon, we decided to visit Mahabalipuram. We rented a car and took off on the extremely scenic East Coast Road or ECR as it is commonly known. It was a pleasure just driving down the road and reaching Mahabalipuram.

The guide we managed to find in Mahabalipuram could speak only Hindi words and no sentences, so his explanations were kind of funny. :-) He would say a string of words and we would attempt to understand the story! That was an interesting adventure. Maybe we should have more such attempts (or maybe I should simply learn Tamil) !

But Mahabalipuram is interesting - for the simple reason that the concept of making a monolithic temple or a monolithic ratha from a rock is mind-blowing. Actually making something like that without the tools or technology of the present day - that is true engineering!


Also, the steps of the various temples and rathas made for good photo-spots. Here is the "Charlie's Angels" at the Pedestal of one of the "Pancha Rathas"


Mahabalipuram to Pondicherry was a better ride than expected. The road looked almost beautiful. :) But it was now time to return to Bangalore. So, we packed up and set up for the bus-stand. We managed to grab dinner at Anandha Inn and reached the bus-stand to catch up with Janet (she had another fun-filled adventure on her trip to Velankanni and back, but I'll let her write about it!). All of us fell asleep the instance the bus started and started dreaming about the things to do in our next trip to Pondicherry - like visiting the French settlement, cycling around the city, enjoying some exquisite French wine, visiting the Aurobindo Ashram, and spending days and nights just exploring the vastness of the sea and the skies....