smrti talks

Location: Coast of Tamil Nadu, > 150 Kms south of Chennai
Route: Chennai - ECR - Mahabalipuram - Pondicherry
We were: Nisa, Sanjeev and me

We had been planning to visit Pondicherry for quite a long time. I had gone there once for a short stay in the Pondicherry University, but in a hurry to return. So this New Year, we finally made it. Sanjeev, Nisa and me took a “break from time”, as the Tourism logo goes. And we did really! Feel so happy that I am back to my travel blogging, after so many travels.

Everyone knows about Pondicherry, the sea town in Tamil Nadu, the sun and the beaches, the French/Dutch/Roman influences, Aurobindo spiritualism, economical liquor. But to experience Pondicherry is always a personal one. For myself – I felt like saying in one of the tourism T-shirts – “Don’t ask me time, I’m just back from Pondicherry”. Yes! Truly!

Pondi, (people still haven’t started calling it Puducherry), is a calm seashore; crowded with local and international tourists, but still laid back; nobody is in a hurry. It has Past and Present standing together, putting a hand over each other’s shoulders; a combination of different cultures coexisting, and you take a walk down the history at each step. This is the capital of the Puducherry Union Territory, which has enclaves strewn around Mahe in Kerala, Yanam in Andhrapradesh and Karaikal in another part of Tamil Nadu.

Go there to relax, spend a day on a clean beach or in an old club with a beer. Do not run around to catch up with all that is to see. It is okay even if you miss a building or a museum – but do not miss that experience of taking a deep breath with eyes closed.

Where we stayed

We started our journey from Chennai on New Year’s eve. Quite a huge rush in the Chennai Pondi bus that we took. We could not enjoy the drive on the beautiful The East Cost Road (ECR)! Doesn’t matter, we had seen it when we had gone to Mahabalipuram.

We had already tried and failed to get accommodation in any of the guest houses. That would have been the right choice. So we had booked rooms in Ginger, Pondicherry; a big mistake! The self-service hotel for Rs. 3000/- per night could not manage it all well. The floors were sticky and paper pieces and wrappers were swept under the cote. The toilet exhaust fan was not working and we tried our maximum not to visit it often. AC was not fully functional leaving us open to the Pondi sun. Complaints do not work. Thank goodness, we had booked it only for 2 days.

We enquired with a few hotels and was lucky to get a very good hotel – Surguru at Sardar Vallabhai Patel Road - a very good hotel with very good service. It was was a total different experience from Ginger; neat, clean and full of warm hospitality for half the price! Very good location and the South Indian Vegetarian food is amazing! Even if you do not stay in the hotel, do eat at least once in its restaurant – really good South Indian Food!

What we did

Heritage Walk – One of the best things we did was to take the Heritage Walk. Do not miss this!
If you reach on a Friday or Saturday, the best way to start your Pondi experience is to walk. Go straight to Le Café on the beach road (The Promenade, as they call it) in the evening; that is walk South till you see Bay of Bengal, look for the only building on the beach. That is Le Café. Plan to reach a little early so that you can also enjoy a cup of coffee looking on the sea. Do visit the Tourism department office on the opposite side. Collect a free brochure. That would be very handy in deciding your days, eating, shopping and stay in Pondicherry. Very informative! Now about the walk.

INTACH organizes a Heritage Walk from Le café at 4.00 PM. INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) is an all India organisation, with headquarters in New Delhi, dedicated to heritage conservation and awareness. INTACH works with restoring the old French and Tamil houses and buildings. Check out their websiteto see how they restore buildings in the Before-and-After photographs.

The French quarter
There are walks that introduce you to the French and Tamil quarters of the town. We took the French walk, that is the longest. Ashok from INTACH, took us for the walk explaining each building and its history. The French quarter, that is the closest to the sea, is easily recognizable – very neat and beautiful with well laid out roads, distinct buildings with garden courtyards and large windows.
Hotel de l’Orient on Rue (street in French) Romain Rolland is a very good example of INTACH’s works. They have pictures taken during restoration framed in the hotel; the hotel as it stays now is beautiful. I loved the inner courtyard with big trees! We all got a welcome drink of Hibiscus juice, very refreshing!
Some photos from the French Quarters.

The Tamil quarter
Ashok stopped with the French walk, so we decided to take the Tamil walk by ourselves the next day. We could see only the Hindu streets on the Tamil quarter; missed the Muslim and Christian streetscapes. It was easy to get the streets located with the map Ashok provided, and it was much smaller a walk. I guess INTACH has to still restore many more Tamil buildings here. The houses were wall to wall. Look at the verandah and the sitting place. French houses perhaps do not expect a discussion space on the street like this.

The Promenade
The marine drive/walk is a traffic restricted clean and well laid stretch - a Promenade. Many people come to this beach regularly for evening walks or just to sit on the rocky beach. This stretch has all the proud monuments of Pondicherry: Mahatma Gandhi Statue, French War Memorial, old light house, Joan of Arc and Le Cafe.

Now back to Le Cafe. Nobody will miss this sole building on the Pondicherry beach.Le Cafe was a port house earlier, processing all traveling requirements for the ships. Do drop in for a coffee or sandwich, though it is expensive. Bay of Bengal looks so different from here – deep, blue and vast.

This is one place we visited several times during our stay in Puducherry. We came here first for New Year. Every road in Pondi was leading to “Rocky Beach”, so we followed them. It was amazing to see that when midnight arrived there were thousands of men, women and children walking around on the beach just to wish each other Happy New Year! There was nothing organized, apart from a few firecrackers someone got along with them; but there were thousands gathered. They hooted, shouted, danced around and welcomed the New Year of 2010. The police blocked traffic and controlled the crowd making it a very safe celebration. I was happy that we visited Pondicherry for the new year.

Plage Paradiso or Paradise Beach
Another very good experience is Paradise Beach. It is a beach outside the town. We took an autorikshaw who dropped us at Chunnambar. We can reach the beach only through water, and because of New Year tourism, there was quite a big rush for the ferry. We skipped all the games in the Chunnambar park and straight took a ferry for Rs. 75/- towards the beach. But once we reached the beach, it was worth the pain! A beautiful expanse of clean and see through water! Blue sky touching blue water with foamy milky waves that flows so beautifully! I have not see such clean beaches very often. You can spend a whole day here! Our daughter Nisa was just so happy!

Auroville
Auroville, 8 km from Pondi town, is a popular spiritual/tourist spot. I wanted to visit it more from a tourist perspective. It was really refreshing to see how a whole township has been raised. I was also interested in their work on renewable wind and waste water energy.
The Visitors’ Centre building has won awards for Architecture for the Poor. Do look around to see how cost effective and comfortable the place is. We had lunch also from here which tasted really good and different! There is a boutique with fashionable ethnic wear and other accessories like pottery, handmade paper products and candles. The items are made by various groups working in Auroville, like the bag we got that is made by Tsunami victims. However, they are all very expensive.

These were the main attractions! But the lingering feeling in mind is of calm and joy. We were lucky to end our Pondi trip in Le Club, behind the beach road. A very cool place in the hot sun, claiming to be the people who introduced French Cuisine in South India. I do not know about that, but good food and a very cool place to sit over a mug of beer. We didn’t realize that it was time to get back.

Do visit Pondi. Get back with a visibly tanned skin and more visibly relaxed and calmer being - at least for a few days to come.

Tags: auroville, ginger_review, heritagewalk, pondi, pondicherry, promenade, puducherry, suruguru

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Cityscapes, Travel Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.