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Published: September 28th 2008
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Pondicherry, or Puducherry as the new name goes, was a tourist's dream, but getting there was something else... It was our first trip without a guide. We started out from Bangalore at 9:30pm on a bus packed elbow to elbow. About seven hours later I woke up flying forward out of my seat. The bus was sliding sideways, tilting and everything was a blur. A woman screamed. The bus hit something hard and slowly coasted to a stop. I remember being so afraid that we had hit someone and killed them and for a moment when the bus was tilting I thought we were going to roll. Well, we didn't kill anyone... just something. We hit a buffalo. As we coasted by, never stopping, I looked out my window. It was very dark, but I could make out the carcass lying still and flat in the road. I looked at the woman next to me and there was a sense of relief in her face. I suppose she expected the worse as well. Needless to say, we still didn't stop until we were a few good kilometers down the road. Then all of the men proceeded to get off the bus
and inspect the damage. The bus driver never moved from his seat. I imagine he knew it was pretty bad, but I was never expecting what I saw. The entire front of the bus was obliterated. The exterior was mangled and part of it was missing. The metal frame was exposed and bent. After the men piled back on the bus they loaded the remains of the bus in behind them and we went on our way... very slowly. Nothing was said as they pulled into the next town, which seemed like a ghost town at 4am. There was no one on the streets and they made us get off. We had to walk until we found another bus. Thanks to the help of the woman sitting next to me we made our way to a street corner where a bus was going to pick us up and take us to Puducherry. It was interesting to wait and see the town come alive in the morning. Sleepy dogs rose and roamed the streets confused by us and men ran to jump on a colorful work truck that was leaving. One guy didn't make it, but he didn't give up and
ran after it yelling for quite some time...
When we finally arrived in Puducherry it was about 5:00am and the sun was rising. We took a rickshaw to our hotel, The Park Guest House, which is an ashram that sits right on the beach. There were men out in boats all along the shoreline. Everywhere I looked I saw men doing yoga exercises and families walking on the beach. I have never seen so many people awake at 5:00am. The view and the sunrise were two good enough reasons. We waited around on the beach until we were able to check in at the ashram at 7:00am. Once we were checked in we took one really long nap. All I remember was waking up in a sweat and feeling like I was suffocating. I was not prepared for the heat! Puducherry's weather is much different from Bangalores. I now realize how spoiled we are with the weather in Bangalore because of the elevation. At 5:00am it had been nice because the sun hadn't heated anything up yet, but around 11:00am it was like a sauna in our room.
Our first day there we explored the back streets of
the town looking for good places to eat. After a simple breakfast we stopped by a beach bar and I had a desert called strawberry fields, except in India they never have one or more of the ingredients so I had strawberry and pineapple fields... One of the places we found was a small library at an old French style building with a beautiful courtyard. Leslie, Mike and I wandered around for some time just investigating the old building. It had floor to ceiling bookshelves with glass doors and wooden floors with three flights of staircases that led to a roof with an amazing view. We stayed there for a while, reading the local newspaper and enjoying the breeze that came through the tall windows. Afterwards we literaly wandered into an Ayurvedic message clinic and we all got full body massages. Ayurvedic massage is an ancient Hindu art of medicine and a practice of prolonging life. It uses a mixture of oils and targets pressure points on the body. It was wonderful. Conveniently enough there was a secluded outdoor bar called Le Club right outside the clinic where we took shelter and ate heated cornflakes. They had to be the
best cornflakes I have ever eaten and I really couldn't tell you why. That evening we sat on the beach and enjoyed the spray from the ocean as it crashed on the breakers. The street was alive with families who were out with their children and I saw more foreigners there then I have during my entire stay in India.
On the second day we went to a different hotel that I loved. It was retro and mismatched with velvet snake skin patterned chairs and black gold flecked marble and, of course, a black and white picture of Sri Aurobindo and 'the Mother'. It had a balcony that looked out on a cramped street. The walls were white with yellow water marks and the paint was peeling. Only one light worked and the fixtures were sixties style seashells. The bathroom was a grey dungeon and I must say that I enjoy how there is never a bathtub or even a divider for the shower. It's just a simple open setup and its functional. There were two beds pushed together that three of us slept on. As we were entering the hotel I noticed some extra mattresses chilling in the
hallway with a stray cat sleeping on them. I told them those would be our extra mattresses and sure enough... After eating breakfast we hopped two rickshaws to the beach at Auroville. The gatekeeper had recently passed away so the facilites were closed-- meaning there was no way to change. We constructed a sheet shelter on the garbage filled pathway to the beach and proceeded to change... The beach was phenomenal. We spent the afternoon there. A vendor was selling coconuts at the enterance and the view was filled with yellow blue boats and alot of young Indian men. Got a good sunburn, enjoyed the rough waves and tried to avoid cameras. We ended up buying some watercolors from a guy who was wandering the beach selling his art. That evening we went to a restaurant and I got a really good vegetable sizzler with calamari, which was a good end to the night. The next morning we were out of our room at 7:00am and on the road to Bangalore, which was considerably less eventful because we didn't hit anything...
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