The French Riviera of the East

Pondicherry or Puducherry, also known as the French Riviera of the East, was a place we had been excited about visiting for quite some time now. And with the Mathurs in town, we made a plan and decided to make a weekend trip of it.

Now anyone going to Pondicherry, should ideally drive down from Chennai on the East Coast Road. We wanted the full experience of "visiting" Pondicherry, and so we decided to travel to Chennai on an overnight train, and then drive down to Pondicherry. To help us in that, we did some research and found out that one can easily rent "self-drive" cars through Avis and Hertz, and for a very nominal price.

We got to Chennai early in the morning, and there was the Avis car we had booked, waiting for us at the Station. It was a black Ford Ikon Flair (1.3), with all papers in order. So we set out. On the way, we made a small detour, taking us through the heart of the city, so that we could pick up another fellow passenger, Shishir. Luckily we had a print out of the map of the entire road route from Chennai to Pondicherry, and so once we were on the ECR, driving was a piece of cake.

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We drove through Thiruvanmiyur, and stopped for a very slow, long, distasteful, and very expensive breakfast!

Moving on, we drove along the coast, contemplating driving off the road, and straight into the beach! Luckily we did not do that. Our next stop was the Crocodile Bank.

There were many different varieties of crocodiles, turtles and snakes. After spending half an hour there, we decided to move on, and stopped 10 minutes later for the "Coast View Point"

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After a few photos, we drove on, quite sure that we would not stop again untill we get to the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram. And sure enough, we stopped next only at the Shore Temple, which is actually a temple on the shore at Mahabalipuram, built during the reign of the Pallava King Rajasimha (c. 700 - 728 A.D.)

 

After spending nearly another hour here, we drove on, untill we got to Pondicherry at about 4pm. Pondicherry as such is a small, quiet town with thin roads and lots of people. Other than that, there is nothing else that one would really notice about Pondicherry. 

We spent some time walking around, looking for a nice place to eat, and surely enough we found a "Daily Bread". After a nice meal, we decided to hit the "Rocky Beach", which was a nice walk. 

Now the interesting thing was that at 9:30pm, India was to play Australia in the T20 World Championships, and we were in the mood to watch the match on a big screen! Hence we maroed fight and got ourselves a table with an excellent view of the big screen in one of the most posh hotels in Pondicherry, called The Promenade.

 

And what a match it turned out to be! We had great fun, watching the 1st innings on the big screen and cheering the 2nd innnings from our hotel room!

 

The next day, we decided to visit the Auroville Beach in the morning, before the sun got too hot for us. We spent some quality time wading in the water, although the waves were quite pugnacious!

 

After the beach, we got back to the hotel, got cleaned up and headed out to "explore" Pondicherry. We went to visit the Aurbindo Ashram, which was quite quiet, except for the sound of the car reversing on the street outside!

We had some time to kill in Pondicherry before we left for Chennai, so decided to try and visit the Pondicherry pier. We were very fortunate that day, because the pier was opened to the public as it was Ganesh Chathurthi. We got to take part in the Ganesh immersion of Pondicherry! 

Soon it was time for us to head back to Chennai, if we were to catch the train back to Bangalore on time. On the way back, we decided to stop at the Hotel Ashok (on the ECR)

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which was quite majestic, right next to the beach. The drive back, was after sundown, so there wasnt much we could see, except for the headlights of on coming traffic. The ECR, beautiful as it may be is just a single lane on either side, without even a divider in between. Thankfully, the traffic was down to a trickle in the evening, and so driving was not that bad.

Since we had an hour or so to kill, we decided to stop at a Karting track called "Kart Attack", and what a wonderful decision that was. We raced around the track, which was a nice long one, with some great turns and a wonderful straight! The Karts were peppy, and great fun to drive. Soon it was time for us to head back, and drive through Chennai to get to the Trident Hilton Hotel to drop the car off, before we went to the Station to catch our train back to Bangalore.

All in all, it was a very fun trip. The company was awesome, and made Pondicherry a fun place to be. Lastly, we must thank India for winning the match against Australia and making our stay even better!