Bienvenue à 2011 de Pondichéry

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Happy New year.

We are now in French colonial Pondicherry where the boulevards are quiet and baguettes and croissants plentiful. We had a nice new year on the beach, ate some massive fresh prawns, drank some very strong cocktails in a bar then at midnight went down on the sand along with seemingly everyone from Mamallapuram to watch the fireworks and wish everyone you met a Happy New Year.
We've had it easy since then, taking the speedy two hour bus down to Pondicherry, we're staying in the old French part of the town in a French run guest house where we've wangled the top floor room with a thin tin roof and private terrace where we can hide from the sun and watch the rainstorms come rolling in. The town itself is like a nugget of provincial France in India and you can see it everywhere in the street layout, parks, hotel de ville and police hats just as you could see a flavour of London in Kolkata.
It's a relaxing place to be although it has been pretty hot of late getting 35-38C by the afternoon, today though the heavens have opened and it's more like a wet weekend at home with people running for cover and newspapers over their heads.
We are hiding from the rain in this sweltering internet place now then going to try to find a temple which allegedly has an elephant that blesses people by patting them on the head (we'll try to get photographic evidence) then we plan to leave tomorrow on the nice manageable hour bus to Trichy which apparently has a temple as big as a city.
We are well, sweat levels are up but we had some baguette, beer and cheese last night so couldn't be happier.
Love to home, C&A x x x x x

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