A trip to the seaside - avec le gay internet guy!

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We hopped on a local train for the short 40 minute journey to Thiruvananthapuram (better know as Trivandrum - and more easily pronounced) where our train to the state of Tamil Nadu would depart from. We were extremely lucky that we arrived at the opposite platform to where our train would depart from and we only had to wait another hour to board the train.

Sitting on the platform, again Neil had a strange Indian guy talking to him - this time about the bible...that went down well and as soon as we could get on the train we scarpered! Again with another stroke of luck, we initially had the 4 berths to ourselves so we had a mini picnic with crisps and biscuits while we watched Wall-e on the laptop (as an aside what a fab film, so cute!). It was only when it was time for bed and we reached Madurai that other people got on the train so it was a nice peaceful journey. We were thankful that our last train journey in India was super-smooth and as a bonus we were only 35 minutes late arriving into Villuparam, the nearest station to our destination of Pondicherry.

We teamed up with another couple and negotiated the taxi ride to Pondicherry, it took an hour and cost 600 rupees for the 4 of us. We had been excited about going to Pondicherry ever since we had read the book ‘Life of Pi’ and were fascinated by the idea of a French-Indian blend of a city. We found a place to stay, which arriving at 7am we didn’t expect to be able to check in straight away but were surprised that we could. The only problem with the room was that the fan was stuck on warp speed which made the room far too cold and the TV kept going loud then quiet then loud! We complained to the guy on reception who was reluctant to do anything and blamed the owner for not caring about his guesthouse. We were so tired at this point we couldn’t be bothered to argue (shocking isn’t it?!) and went to sleep instead!

Fully rested we went in search of some food and had a quick explore along the way. Pondicherry was a nice little city, great for walking around with a nice wide promenade which gets battered by the Bay of Bengal. In a funny way it reminded us of two places from home - New Brighton on the Wirral and Seaton Carew in Hartlepool - apart from the fact it was warm and sunny with no slot machine arcades but there was some ice cream for sale (no lemon tops though for the Hartlepudlians reading!). It was strange too seeing French street names and we even heard a lot of Indians speaking French. We had heard the food in Pondi was good, so we were looking forward to a gastronomic delight...hmmm well it was a lot more difficult than we thought to find a good restaurant. We started calling into each one we saw and the menu’s were a bit steep price-wise (as in 50 rupees - 70p - for a portion of plain rice!) we were starting to worry when we found La Terrase restaurant, just near the promenade. It was an Italian-French restaurant which served Indian food too and since it had been such a long time since we had eaten it - we both opted for pizza for lunch. It was really nice - a proper pizza at last. It was so good we decided to go back there for tea that night to try the Indian food and we weren’t disappointed ...for the price you got a lot of good quality food.

We spent our one night and two days in Pondi wandering the streets, buying spices and medicines to stock up our first aid kit. Wow, the medicines in India are very cheap so we got all stocked up on antibiotics, indigestion tablets (harder to find in Asia than you might think!), ibuprofen and, of course, our best friend Immodium! Pondi also had a couple of big supermarkets which were nice to shop in - air conditioned and not too crowded. The most surprising thing about these supermarkets was that they were staffed entirely by women...this was the first time we had come across this on our Indian journey and it made a pleasant change.

The internet cafes, however, were a different matter! We are so used to our laptop and the speed we get when we connect with the internet...Donna got very frustrated and almost threw the computer she was using out of the window of the internet place! It wasn’t helped by the fact that the people that were running the internet cafe were extremely nosey. So we were in the internet cafe on separate computers and this particular guy was very weird and (again!) took a real liking to Neil. He pulled up a chair next to Neil, leaned over and began reading everything he was typing/looking at. He then started questioning Neil about what he was writing, who to and why. At that point we were looking at each other very strangely but what happened next was even stranger again. The guy turned around and asked if Neil wanted a massage and invited him back to his house where he would give him the best massage ever. Hahahahaha erm, right, ok...at this point Donna started laughing uncontrollably and we called it a day in the internet place and left pretty fast with the weird guy looking mournfully after Neil!

Our short stay in Pondi was worth it, a nice relaxing place! Our next journey would be a short one by local bus to our final stop in India - Mamallapuram (another place hard to pronounce!)

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Photos

The King of Tat
what a great name for a chocolate bar

This was made with coloured powders every day
it was in our guesthouse lobby area

Pondicherry promenade
can you see the resemblance to New Brighton and Seaton Carew? no...ok just us then!

Comments

[LoneRunner]

Massage !
Quite similar offer to me in Eggmore station but luckily my train to Kolkata was on time ... Nice report ! LR

[Marty]

Interesting write up...Being a Pondyite, find it interesting to read the version of an outsider...