Weekend in Pondicherry!

SATURDAY

Our trip to Pondicherry started off with a bang when I woke up with a start at 6:30 am and realized that our alarm (which we had set for 5:00 am) had not gone off. We had initially been planning on taking the 6:30 bus, but obviously that plan went out the window. We rushed around like crazy people to get ready, and managed to get out the door in an hour. Thankfully Priya had agreed to walk us to the bus stand (which is around the corner but we weren’t exactly sure where the bus was going to stop). The busses from Chennai to Pondicherry (or Pondy as it is called by the locals) leave every 15 to 30 minutes, and you purchase your tickets (which are a ridiculously good deal for only 55 INR (about $1.25 CAD) one way. The first few buses passed us without stopping because they were full (Pondy is a popular weekend destination for Chennai-dwellers and western visitors alike), and we auto’d to a different bus stop to see if we’d have better luck there. Thankfully we arrived just as another bus, which had two empty seats in it, was pulling out! We hopped on and settled in for the ride.

The bus was curious – picture a greyhound crossed with a school bus. The seats were more bench -like, but numbered, and there was a TV hanging from the ceiling to play DVDs. It was run down by Canadian standards, but it certainly served the purpose for us. The bus filled up quickly, and before long Priyanka, who was in the aisle seat, was getting squished in by a heard of people. All in all the bus ride passed fairly quickly and we got some nice views of the coastline since we chose to take an East Coast Road Express Bus. It took us about 3.5 hours to make the 160 k trip.

We got off of the bus and were immediately overwhelmed by a slew of people. We managed to find a reservation counter, and reserved tickets for our return trip on Sunday, since we were told that those buses get extremely crowded. We then started looking for a prepaid auto stand, but with one no where to be seen, haggled an auto down to 80 INR to take us to our hotel (which in retrospect was too much, but its always hard to judge when you’re in a new city).

We stayed in a place called the Lotus Comfort Hotel, which was not directly in the downtown core, but within walking distance of everything, and much cheaper than the centrally located hotels. We were initially a little bit nervous, since we booked it after researching on the internet (without any formal recommendations from anyone) and were worried that the photos (which looked really nice) might be outdated. The last thing we wanted was to pay 2550 INR to stay in a crap-hole.

Luckily the hotel was beautiful! The staff was really friendly and helpful, and nobody even demanded a tip. Our room was clean, and had the best bathroom that I’ve seen since we arrived in India. We dropped off our things and headed out to explore the city.

Our first stop was for lunch at a place we picked out of my guidebook called Le Terrasse. Pondicherry was initially a French settlement and still has a lot of European influence. Even the street signs are both in French and in Tamil! Lunch was tasty – we both got pizza. I had a paneer pizza (just to be different) and Priyanka had some kind of meaty concoction with an Egg in the middle.

After lunch we decided to walk to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral, supposedly the most beautiful church in Pondy. It was beautiful indeed – all red and white, with two enormous towers. When we got there we noticed a big crowd in front of the church – it turns out they were filming some kind of movie! We watched for a while, intrigued by the actress dancing in the wind, but eventually snuck around the crew to get inside the actual Cathedral. Sacred Heart was just as impressive from the inside as the outside – it had gorgeous stained glass work everywhere! It was actually quite different than most catholic churches I’ve been to in Canada – the stained glass was much brighter and the inside was much more colourful in general.

After visiting the church we wandered through the streets of “downtown” Pondicherry – or the old French area. It was really pretty. The houses look very different from houses that we’ve seen in Chennai – you could really see the European influence. Eventually we ended up at the beach. The beach in Pondy is again, very different than one in Chennai. It has a short strip of red sand, and then a steep embankment of black rocks heading down to where the sea crashes up against the shore. We sat there for quite a long time, enjoying the perfectly blue sky, the spray of the water against our faces, the salty smell and the warm afternoon sunlight. It was incredibly relaxing and peaceful. After a while we got up and began to walk down the beach. We came across a vendor selling fresh fruit, and we convinced him to open up a fresh pineapple and papaya for us (so we could make sure we didn’t get the ones that had been sitting in the sun for a while). It was a (delicious) steal for only 10 INR for a HUGE cup full of fruit.

We meandered down the beach, people watching (we started a count of how many white people we were seeing but we lost count after about 23) and just enjoying the sites. Eventually we found the tourist information center, which wasn’t super helpful, but did have a clean bathroom. We walked all the way to the other end of the beach (about 1.5 km) where there is a huge statue of Mahatma Gandhi. We then hopped back onto the road and poked around into some of the beach side shops that are there.

At this point it was nearing 5 pm, and we wanted to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram before it closed. This ashram is apparently one of the best known in all of India. It was founded by the philosopher Aurobindo Ghosh, and his personal assistant/disciple “The Mother”. It was very quiet and peaceful inside – there are flowers everywhere, and the smell of incense wafts gently through the air. People line up to touch/worship the mausoleum of Aurobindo and the Mother, and then they sit and meditate in front of the grave. It was slightly creepy, but oddly peaceful at the same time. After you’re finished meditating you get shuffled into a big bookstore – this is where we started to wonder a little bit if this place was slightly cultish. In the bookstore they sold such gems as “The Ideal Child” and “How to Raise the Ideal Child”. In any case it was a really interesting experience. The ashram is very wealthy and has a huge influence in Pondicherry – you’ll notice walking through the streets that many of the stores have “Auro” in their name!

At this point the sun was starting to go down, but we decided to take a walk and visit “Hot Bread” a café mentioned in my guidebook, for a quick tea. It wasn’t anything too remarkable, and we soon were on our way again, to have dinner in Le Rendezvous, another guidebook find.

Dinner at Le Rendezvous was good, but nothing too exciting. I had cannelloni and garlich bread and Priyanka had some kind of fish in mustard sauce. It was a cool place though – we were seated on a rooftop patio (though admittedly not as awesome as the one we dined at in Bangalore), where we could hear the sounds of the city. It seemed to be a popular place for Westerners (ex-pats perhaps?) to eat because the clientele was predominantly white.

Stuffed to the brink, we hopped an auto around 9pm and headed back to our hotel, dessert from Hot Bread in hand. We took some time to relax and read in the hotel (which was deliciously mosquito free) and then enjoyed our pastry flan and almond croissant before heading to bed. The end of another amazing day!

SUNDAY

Sunday was another early day for us – we decided to get up at 5:15 so that we could make it down to the beach in time to watch the sunrise over the Bay of Bengal. It was quiet and chilly when we left at about 5:45am. The early wake up was totally worth it – the sunrise was beautiful. It was such a surreal experience for me…I kept thinking, man I can’t believe I’m sitting here in India, watching the sunrise over the Bay of Bengal. This is an experience that most people only dream of. I think it hit me this weekend, just how special this trip is, and how much of a once in a lifetime experience it is. Its sad to think that I may never get to experience these places again, and certainly not in the way I am experiencing them now. I am so thankful for this experience…and proud of myself too. A few years back I never would have dared to go so far from home.

After the sunrise we walked back to the hotel, enjoyed hot showers (with the hotel’s totally luxurious shower head) and then ordered up our free continental breakfast of fresh watermelon juice, toast with jam and coffee. Yum!

After breakfast we headed back out and hopped on an auto rickshaw to Auroville. Auroville is just slightly North of Pondicherry and was inspired by “The Mother” sometime in the late 60’s. It is a curious place – its said to be the most new age place in India, with a population that is about 2/3’s non-Indian. In principal I thought it was amazing – they aspire to be a place where people from all over the world can live in peace, and they are very ecologically conscious. They cook with solar energy, grow most of their own food and have their own water treatment plants. They also have outreach programs for neighbouring communities where they teach women how to make paper products (a program called Well-Paper – products like coasters made from recycled newspaper) to provide a source of income for their families. So in that sense it was a really amazing place – but at the same time Priyanka and I couldn’t shake a slightly cult-ish feeling again. The other thing that we didn’t like was the commercial aspect of it – one of the first things that you come into is a pavilion of boutiques where they sell things made by Aurolites and the surrounding villagers. I understand that this is where a lot of their revenue comes from, but it was kind of off putting all the same.

One of the main sites of Auroville is the Matrimandir –a giant gold dome built near the geographical center of the “city” (its not really a city – very lush and green and we didn’t actually see any houses). The dome is apparently all white inside (you have to reserve a day in advance to go inside, so we didn’t get a chance) and has a crystal orb in the center. I guess it is a popular spot for meditation for the Aurolites. Next to the Matrimandir is a large amphitheatre – a red stone hollow where one can address a crowd of 3000 without any electronic amplification. In the amphitheater is an urn that contains the soil of 124 countries – symbolism of one of the things that Auroville stands for.

We sat for a while just looking at the Matrimandir (its pretty amazing) and then we walked back to the visitor’s center to grab some lunch at one of their cafes. Lunch was awesome – I had white bean salad, beet soup, carrot salad and ratatouille with brown rice. It was a huge meal for only 90 INR! Something that you could get at a place like Vegetarian Haven in Toronto but would undoubtedly pay WAY more for.

On our way back from Auroville we had a bit of a frustrating experience mostly due to a huge miscommunication with an auto driver. First of all we had to wait for a long time to get an auto (we were starting to worry that we’d never make it out of Auroville) and then the driver we got didn’t really speak English and ended up taking us somewhere totally different than where we’d wanted to go (which was back to our hotel). When we showed him on the map where we wanted to go he got really mad an demanded extra money. We argued with him for a while (which didn’t do much good since he didn’t really speak English) and finally a nice, concerned shopkeeper (who spoke excellent English) intervened. We ended up having to walk back to our hotel, but it turned out okay. After picking up our bags at the hotel we made a quick stop at Baskin Robbins and then spent our remaining time relaxing on the beach. Sadly it was soon time to catch our bus.

Getting onto a return bus was a whole different kettle of fish. We got to the bus station pretty early, so we wanted to get on an earlier bus than what we were reserved on. It took us a long time to figure out which buses were coming in (all of the signs were in Tamil) but eventually we discovered that they wrote the departure time on the front of the bus in chalk when the bus arrived in the terminal. We hung around for a while and ended up on the 5pm bus, rather than the 5:30 bus. We got seats in a three-seat bank, next to a man who was coughing his lungs out. Who wants to take bets on whether or not my next TB test will come back positive? This bus ride was an adventure to say the least. I didn’t actually have room to put my shoulders against the seat, but even worse, Priyanka was literally being crushed in by a crowd of people. There was one point where this one lady was pretty much sitting on her arm, and there was a baby balanced on the seat back in front and behind her. I was pretty much a traveling road show for the kids, so whenever one would start to cry the parents would put them on the seat back to look at me. In any case, we were both relieved when we finally arrived back in Chennai. We got off at the bus stop close to SPASTN and quickly auto’d back to the compound. Although it was still quite early, we were both exhausted from our early morning, lots of walking and the crazy bus ride, and we turned in pretty early.

What an awesome weekend. I can’t believe how much we’ve seen in the 3 weeks that we’ve been here – we’ve seen “normal life”, we’ve seen “opulent life”, we’ve seen slums, we’ve seen modern Western life (Bangalore) , European life (Pondy) and then New Age life. India is a country of contrast indeed!