Day 11 - Pondicherry

I met Alan in Reception at 6:15am as we thought we might be able to get nice shot of the sunrise cast against the temples we visited yesterday. Alas, the sunrise was subdued at best but, nevertheless, it was good to stand there on the street in the cool and exchange travel experiences and talk about other "bloke" things like sheds and tools!

Nothing doing on the sunrise front so we headed back to the hotel for breakfast with the group. At 8:30am we boarded the bus headed further down the coast to the French-influenced town of Pondicherry.

Along the way we stopped to visit the village of Auroville. This was an unscheduled stop on the itinerary. Auroville was established in 1968, built on what had essentially become wasteland that no one wanted. The natural environment had been destroyed after centuries of abuse by the British and the French occupiers. The creation of the village was not inspired by the words of John Lennon's "Imagine" because its concept and the village itself were established well before the song was released, perhaps the former inspired the latter. Anyway, just think about the words and the message in "Imagine" and you'll understand what this village is all about. Three thousand people live in this community today. The original creators had envisioned 50,000 people. The community has some special status in Indian and International law. It's not really part of India. At the precise centre of the village is an ancient Banyan tree. Adjacent to that is a giant golden globe building (think of a huge golden golf ball and you're pretty close) which holds "the orb" at its centre. I won't go any further into describing this because I don't know a lot yet, but I will google it later on. Do the same if you want to find out more. None of us on the tour had ever heard of this place, so it was quite the surprise.

After our visit to Auroville we had a short drive to our hotel in Pondicherry. This little French enclave did not join the Indian union until 1960 so, not surprisingly, there are still strong French influences here. This was one place I was keen to see when we planned this trip. Having had a short rest we gathered again at reception and took our bus into town for a tour of the Pondicherry French quarter. The tour started in a little cottage industry factory run by the aforementioned Auroville folks. The factory produced hand-made paper products with the raw materials being sourced from recycled fabrics. We then walked deeper into the French quarter, which became evident in the names of the streets eg: Rue de Dupuy and Rue de Francois Martin. There is certainly a strong French influence obvious in the architecture, the heavily tree-lined streets and the grid layout of those streets.

Next we visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Sri Aurobindo being the founder of the sect group that built Auroville) for some quiet (that is, completely silent) reflection. Twenty minutes there and we headed off to visit a temple dedicated to the worship of Ganesh, the well-known elephant-headed god. Pooja told the story of how the boy Ganesh wound up with a elephant head, which I won't go into here. From here it was down to the Avenue de Goubert which runs alongside the beachfront. The street sports many attractive French colonial buildings including government buildings, hotels and cafes. Further along stands the world's third largest statue of Mahatma Ghandi. The street-scape is somewhat reminiscent of the Avenue d'Anglaises in Nice. We stopped in a little beach-side cafe for a coffee – the first good coffee I've had in more than a week! This killed enough time so that after a short walk in the quickly descending dusk we arrived on time at the restaurant Pooja had book for us named, of course, Le Rendevous. Once again we were blessed with a rooftop restaurant – not roofless but with low walls so the breeze could easily find its way in.

Unfortunately, the service was not at the same level as the restaurant facility. It took four attempts just to a drinks order taken. After quite some effort on Pooja's part we finally got some attention and placed our drinks and meals orders. The food was good, far from spectacular, but nevertheless my expectations were met. The best part was the three piece band. They played many great songs mostly from the 1970's and 1980's which suited our group down to the ground. We all got up to dance and sing during the courses of our respective meals. It was a really fun evening and the poor early service will be forgotten in time to come but the evening at Le Rendezvous will be fondly remembered.

The evening was warm and the streets were busy so what better way to finish the day than with a ride with a zealous tuk-tuk driver back to the hotel.