Today, we travelled to Pondicherry, a short distance of 140 km that usually takes 3 hours to cover if run straight. But as you know, we take more breaks than Bishen Singh Bedi. After a cuppa, we left at 7.15 am from Adyar, which was at the right end of town, and we reached our first stop Mahabalipuram after an hour.
Mahabalipuram (8.30 am)
Our friends at the MCC dinner had warned us to reach Mahabs by 7.00 am latest, if we wanted to avoid the heat. But you know us. There are certain non-negotiable constraints that prevent us from shooting off our beds at the crack of dawn and cranking the car up before 6.00 am. Consequently, it was already beginning to get warm as we bought tickets for visiting the Shore Temple. Notwithstanding the climbing mercury, we finished that, as well as the rock carvings nearby, particularly the more popular ones - Krishna-mandapam, Pandava Caves, Arjuna's penance and Krishna's butter-ball. Credited to the Pallavas in the 7th-8th century AD, the carvings are pretty big and have great detail.
Hotel Gracy Inn @ Pondicherry (1.00 pm)
We were in half-a-mind to peep into Auroville on the way, but it would have added an hour's travel to our journey, plus whatever time we spent at Auroville. It was my considered opinion that spending 30 mins there on a flying visit was not only grossly insufficient, but downright insulting. It's a place to be experienced, rather than seen, so we dropped it and made a beeline for Puduchcheri.
Our hotel was a small one in White Town, the erstwhile French quarters of Pondicherry. The locality still retained a snooty charm, and sudden flashes of old architecture drew our minds through the tunnels of time, cafes and resto-bars with sea-views jostling for space on the promenade, and streets sporting names prefixed by 'Rue...'. It was a French colony till 1954, after all. The White Town has narrow streets, so 2-wheelers are favoured, both by locals and by tourists.
Lunch at Escape In (2.00 pm)
We walked down the streets for 10 mins to the Promenade, a walkway along the sea shore, beautifully made and quite empty at this time of the day. No cars are allowed on this road. The Indian Ocean lapped the embankments, since there was hardly any beach at the high tide - just a row of black rocks wading into the waves and breaking up their fun.
We examined the cafes available on the beachfront, rejected Ajantha Cafe for being too ethnic, and climbed the stairs to a balcony view of the ocean at Escape In, enjoying their serving of chicken stroganoff (Panna) and Prawn Alfredo (I).
Dinner at Madame Shanthe's (8.00 pm)
After fortifying ourselves with a snooze, we hit the Promenade again by 6.00 pm. The streets on the way were all lit up like a festival night, and cafes and bars that had been enjoying a siesta during the day were up and about, belting out street music.
The seaside was just divine. Dimly lit, so that the phosphorescence of the marching crashing waves were clearly visible, the Promenade encouraged people to just sit and gaze at the ocean for hours. Anyone I looked at seemed to me a Vivekananda on his rock. We sat there for a long time and then walked up and down the road, which was teeming with speedwalkers and strollers. On the way back to the hotel, we popped into a rooftop cafe and dined lightly off french onion soup (honoring the history of the place) and Chinese noodles (perhaps the future of the place, like many other).
Tomorrow morning we leave for Tanjavur.