Trip to Pondicherry..

I spent an awesome 'Long weekend' in pondicherry.. We started at 10.30 pm on the friday night.. i.e on 23rd Jan. We were to reach pondicherry in 6 hours.. but we took 10 hours.. :P kudos to our driver.. I dont regret a bit.. We enjoyed everybit of the delay. Finally when we reached and settled in the hotel.. Soon we were ready to go to the Pondicherry city beach(The main beach in the city). Its a beautiful one.. Its a rocky beach.. a stretch of around 1.5 km. You can't get inside the water.. but it was such an amazing experience to just be there on the sea shore.. be it afternoon, midnight.. I could sit there infinitely.. sometimes thinking a lot of things and sometimes nothing at all.. And there is a cute little french colony adjacent to the beach(with streets and restaurant's in french names).. It was so relaxing to walk on the clean streets of the colony at 11 o clock in the night with cool breeze from the sea.. It felt great.. On saturday night there was this country music being played on the beach.. The beats were such that it rejuvenated all of us..

On the first day we also visited the famous Aurobindo ashram.. The silence there with atleast 50 to 60 people around at a time amused me.. People were meditating(Atleast I could see people sitting with their eyes closed.. so I am assuming everybody was meditating) Now, I have a reason to mention this.. one of our friends had slept sitting in the ashram(the crowd there thinking that he is in deep meditation).. The funniest part is he snored after a while and everybody was looking at him and laughing.. We all ran out in embarrassment.. :) The ashram has a small garden but a beautiful one.. Every single flower looked so fresh.

The next day we visited this place called Aurovill.. Its little away from the city.. I guess around 10 kms. There is a temple called maitri mandir.. its like a golden globe.. looks beautiful from outside.. We couldn't go inside because it was sunday and the temple closes by 1 on sunday. The temple has a crystal on which the sun rays fall and gets scattered in a way which is worth seeing. Also there is a beach here which is not so clean.

There is a french museum and a botanical garden(established in 1826) also in the city.

On the third day we visited a beach called paradise beach. There is a resort called Chennambur resort.. From here we took a streamer that sailed through the backwaters and we reached the beach.. And then the adventure began.. We all dived into the sea and did not feel like coming out of it.. We played catch catch.. I tried learning swimming also.. :P.. It was real fun..

The climate there was normal coastal climate.. hot and humid in the afternoons.. and cool and windy in the evenings..

The food.. Oh My God!!.. Me being the only eggetarian could not try a lot of things.. but my friends who were non-vegetarians ate almost every species found under the sea or over the sea.. they ate crab, prawns, squids, and a few things they even couldn't recognize.. On the whole french food was yummy.. few of the well known restaurants are Rendezvous, Sathsang(The environment is exactly oppsoite to the name), The Promenade.

Then while coming back we planned to go to Mahabalipuram through the ECR(East coast Road), It has back waters on its sides.. Looks beautiful.. The road is well maintained.. well maintained would be an understatement.. I felt like taking the drivers seat and driving fast.. faster..

One of the 'not so very good' part about Pondicherry is that all the beaches are closed for tourists at 6 p.m. except the main city beach..

On the whole I could, to an extent fulfill my expectations that I from a vacation.