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Published: September 30th 2013
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It’s all your fault ! I told you we shouldn’t have come to this road yelled Maina. Times like these I am not so sure if she is my better half or just the other half J
We had cornered ourselves in this narrow lane with no room to travel forward and by now no room to reverse with all the traffic piled up behind us. There should be some alarms in these monster SUV to warn of narrowing motor able roads ahead . This event however highlighted the helping nature of this erstwhile French colony , Pondicherry. Well we had help from all around , literally. Someone in the crowd took charge of the situation and started guiding the traffic all around our car to make space for us to retreat from this mountain of a Jam that we were in .
All this had delayed us further from our destination which by now not only the kids but we were also looking forward to. It was a father’s promise of a treat to delicious Waffles , crepes and pancake in Pondicherry , which had built up the anticipation and expectation to such a high. After making 2 round on these very roads without luck in finding our famed restaurant ,we were fast reaching despair. We had stopped asking for ‘The Indian Café Express’ that we had read about in the internet. We decided to give one more restaurant a chance and if they also do not serve what we wanted for lunch we would settle for whatever they offered. There we were staring at the restaurant ‘The Indian Café Express’ , I and the boys knew what we exactly wanted. We had a memorable lunch which is going to be a topic of discussion for long. The boys had not had such good waffles and pancake since the time we returned from Melbourne 2 years back.
Post lunch we went out to experience the French quarter , the few streets from the coast which is well laid out even today and world apart from chaos and narrow lanes a few blocks away. The beach front road , the promenade itself is nothing great to write home about , I have seen better sea front roads in India like the Marine drive of Mumbai or the M G Road of Kochi etc. It looked run down , but then it did appear more south France north Africa sort of early 1900’s look , which on second look was interesting as it feels like time stood still here for the last century.
It was the long weekend with Ganesh chaturthi on the 9
th of August2013 we had planed our visit to Pondicherry. Beach vacation’s are a favorite in our family , with the boys Sohan & Shrey , aged 10 and 5, enjoy playing in the sea with crashing waves the most. One beach vacation in a year if not more has always been our target. Pondicherry has all the right element for a 3 day weekend getaway from Bangalore for a family. Its been a while since we had hit the road and its been a year since we had been to Goa ( in rains !!).
We had a late start with the alarm not going off and we getting up 2 hours later than planned. It was decided we would not get stressed for this and enjoy the vacation that lay ahead. The excitement of anticipation of going to a completely new destination is palpable and could be seen on everybody’s face including my mothers. I do not recollect going for a beech vacation with mom , well there is always a first time to everything. We reached Pondicherry by late afternoon to a very wet and stormy welcome ( some of the bi-lanes were flooded as we neared our resort). While checking in we inquired about the rain , and we were told that this is the start of the monsoon in this part of the world, so much for not researching enough.
The resort (Wind flower ) itself was very comfortable , we had booked a suite , which had a nice sit out , where the family settled in to enjoy the rain after hurriedly ordering something from the room service for our late lunch. The lunch was very good and all were appreciative of the quality of food. Personally I do not mind the rain , I enjoy just sitting and watching rain for hours . We did not brood too much and made our way to explore our resort .
Next day morning we got up early and saw the rains had vanished and not to miss this window of opportunity , I quickly had everyone out of the bed and after a good breakfast we were on our way to the beech. The resort is on the edge of backwater and a 10 minutes walk on the edges of the backwater take you to the actual beech. It was early morning and looked like an overcast and cloudy day, we did not complain , you could not get a better day to have fun in the beech with overcast sky blocking the sharp sun. the entrance to the back water was a great spot with shallow waters and safe waves to play in. Before we realized we had spent the better part of our morning at the beech and were now ready to explore the city and its famed French quarters and looking forward to our Waffle & pancake lunch as promised.
Pondicherry is an ideal vacation for a family with options of fun on the beach , some great European cuisine , and the best of the south India food. Staying in a resort with Swimming pool and other games add to the families activities to be engaged in. These resorts have some attractive packages to offer which includes buffet breakfast and dinner, we found such arrangement to be great when traveling as a family with enough choice to cater to all our needs. We promised to visit again after few years, when the boys will be older and we would look forward to some adventure activities like kayaking, snorkeling sailing etc , there are places here which offer beginners to advanced classes in these activity.
Next day as we planned we got some 2 to 3 hours of beach time before we checked out of the resort.
Adeus !! till we meet again Pondicherry …………………….
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