Courte voyage sur Pondicherry...

... or a short trip to Pondicherry, as we say in English. Thursday and Friday were holidays for our team in office. Temesh and I decided that we will go on a trip to Pondicherry taking advantage of the extended weekend. Vimal, Sathish, Vijay and Kapil also decided to join us. Primary inspiration and information for this trip was gathered from Anu's digital world.

Thursday morning, six of us gathered in the Kempe Gowda Bus Terminus. The KSRTC Airavat (Volvo) bus started at 8:40. The bus stopped twice on its way to Pondicherry, finally reaching at 15:00. We checked in to our guest house, and soon came out to explore Pondicherry. A stroll on Goubert Street (or Beach Road as it is popularly known as), shows you the French connection. The buildings, clean streets, the old lighthouse, the road signs all tell tales of French colonial times. After sunset, we came back to the “Indian” side of Pondicherry. This side of the city is like any other small town in India – crowded, dirty and chaotic.

The next morning, Temesh and I went out at 5:40 to see the sunrise. An hour of roaming around the clean streets, clicking a few photographs was a perfect start to a long day. Later we went to the bus stand to bid adieu to Sathish – he left Pondicherry for his home town.

After breakfast we went to Aurobindo Ashram. Then we hired bicycles and explored the city. This is probably the best way to see the city. After three hours of cycling, we called it quits and took a taxi to Auroville. Auroville is a planned international city, for people who are spiritual and wants to live a divine life, without following any religion. We enjoyed our tour there and shopped quite a lot, in the end.

After coming back to our guest house, we relaxed in the evening. We sat on the roof top and shared drinks and stories. We came to know a couple of us a little better than we knew them earlier.

On Saturday, we went to a water sports complex called Chunnambar. This is a back water area. There were not too many options for water sports though. Just your usual row boats and paddle boats. We chose to take a ride to the nearby Paradise beach. This is a natural sand beach where we all enjoyed the water a lot. One can also play beach volleyball and football there.

On our return, we went straight to a French restaurant for lunch. We did not want to miss the opportunity to have French food, at least once, and we were not disappointed.

We checked out in the evening and went shopping. We got tired pretty soon and settled down in a restaurant soon for a couple of hours of food, drinks and tour recap. The bus started at 22:30 and by 4:00 we were back in Bangalore.

Some more pics are uploaded on flickr.