Travelling from Thanjavur Junction station, our next destination was Puducherry (previously Pondicherry, fondly known as Pondy), the former capital of French India. The only direct train was at a terrible time, as is often the case in India, but we found that we could get to Villapuram Junction (around 18Km away) relatively easily and then try to get a train/bus from there, or taxi if not – so Steve worked his magic on the IRTC website and secured tickets for the 4 hour journey after deciding to try/risk £7.50 each 2nd class tickets as it was a relatively short journey. On the morning of travel, Debbie was playing with the Indian Railways app and found a route map function, which showed that the train actually stopped to the South of Puducherry before taking a further hour to skirt around the outside to Villapuram on the West. Could we actually get off at Tirupadripulyur instead, and be 8Km closer to Puducherry as well as saving an hour on the train? A quick WhatsApp question to our accommodation confirmed that to be the case and they re-arranged the taxi to pick us up there. They charged the same for just over half the distance though!
Thanjavur station was very easy with illuminated boards showing exactly where to stand for your carriage, and golf buggies to transport people and their luggage down the platform if the required carriage was at the far end. Indian trains are VERY long! 2nd class on this train was actually nicer than 1st on our journey from Varkala – it was just missing the sockets for appliance charging and a closing/locking door. We were sharing our 4-berth compartment with just one Indian guy, who was on the upper bunk and decided to meticulously lay out his bedding (odd for a daytime journey), seemingly taking an age while we stood with our bags waiting to sit down. Once seated Debbie noticed that she’d sustained an injury while getting bags onto the train and down the carriage (we’d got on at the wrong end) – she’d trashed her toenail gel polish – so spent the journey researching pedicure salons in Puducherry and Delhi as this could not wait until we get back to the UK. Priorities eh?!!
We’d been wondering whether anyone would ever check our tickets when the inspector arrived. Steve was trying to locate them on his phone when the guy stopped him and said “No need sir – Digital India – I know who you are Steven Greenham”. Wow! India is so far ahead of the UK in many ways and the juxtaposition of this technology on a railway system that sees people hanging out of windows/doors of packed non-airconditioned cattle class carriages was ‘interesting’.
The waiting taxi driver carried our bags across the train tracks and whizzed us efficiently to our accommodation. Debbie had found La Maison de Bitasta on AirBnB and then searched for them directly to avoid the additional fees that a booking through AirBnB attracts. A tiny bit out of budget at around £77/night (Debbie will have dreamt up some justification or other) but my god it was worth it. Our room was the penthouse built on the roof of a magnificent period house – owned by an artist, stunningly designed and furnished with antiques – in the heart of the White Town French Quarter and less than 100m from the seafront promenade. A perfect home for 3 nights with a cook whipping up a fabulous breakfast each morning on the terrace outside our room. New favourite brekkie item – cheese & onion dosas 🙂
Debbie found White Town Wine Shop and discovered that the cheap booze prices of Goa were back (it turns out that Pondy is it’s own principality or something similar), and stocked up on Kingfisher (Rs 90/can) and Indian Sula wines (Chenin Blanc and Cab Sauv, Rs 900 and 1,100 respectively). The wines were fairly crap and relatively expensive but Debbie was craving. We do wonder why wine is so expensive in India when beers and spirits, even imported, can be very cheap – we must Google it.
Pondy is quite big with around 250,000 inhabitants, and as cluttered and chaotic as any Tamil Nadu town, but the compact centre is tangibly more Gallic. The bazaars give way to leafy boulevards , mansions and rows of houses whose shuttered windows, ornate balconies and colour-washed facades would not look out of place in Montpellier – even the Starbucks! White Town is the centre of French Pondy, a lovely area butting up against a wide pedestrianised promenade, and filled with period properties, beautiful restaurants, cafes and cute (expensive) shops.
We spent time just wandering – we visited the famous Sri Aurobindo Ashram (not for the spiritual experience but for the calmness amongst the chaos), marvelled at the size and gaudiness of the Catholic Churches, enjoyed the sea breeze on the promenade, listened to the French spoken by almost every Western tourist. We went by (extortionate, they saw us coming) tuk-tuk out to Chunnambar Boat House and took a 15 minute boat ride through the mangroves to Paradise Beach – pristine but too rough to swim, we sat under an umbrella for a couple of hours, watched the world go by and somehow got sunburned for the first time in India, before returning and catching an even more expensive tuk-tuk back to town.
And Debbie got a pedicure and new gel polish on her toes! On finding a Toni & Guy salon (really) who could do it immediately, she told Steve that it would only take half an hour and he could sit in reception and play chess on his phone. 2 hours later, after having to explain to the therapist how to remove builder gel and wondering what the hell she’d let herself in for, she’d had the nicest pedicure – but it was reminiscent of the scene in Love Actually where Alan Rickman is sneakily buying the necklace in Selfridges for his secretary and Rowan Atkinson takes an age to gift wrap it. Every time Debbie thought the pedicure was finished, the therapist would layer on another treatment. Luckily Steve was so engrossed in his chess he didn’t have the hump at the time taken.
Food is a big thing here, and there are some gorgeous places to eat. We arrived with Debbie having not really eaten for 2 days, ravenous and craving pasta. Villa Shanti was well rated on Trip Advisor and they did pasta, so off we went in search of a table. A beautiful place, full of beautiful people, with delicious cocktails and nice food, but rubbish service. Awkward as ever, herself wanted the Penne Alfredo with prawns, not the spaghetti with prawns, as we were sitting at a low table and spaghetti wasn’t going to work well. And Steve had his first steak since Goa, so everyone was happy.
La Villa was a cosy outdoor restaurant in the grounds of a stunning (and expensive) boutique hotel, and where we had a delightful fine dining 3 course meal – the highlight of which was Steve’s prawn curry served in a coconut. We had crispy poached hen’s egg (Steve obviously) and pistachio-coated halloumi with pomegranate for starters, baked fish with potatoes in cream for Debbie’s main, and a tarte tatin to share. We thought about wine, but really couldn’t bring ourselves to pay 30 quid for a bottle of Jacobs Creek and that was their ‘best’ wine.
We aimed to do something less fancy for our final night but ended up in probably the most delightful setting of the Pondy visit – Coromandel Cafe, an ornate period house with modern styling, served delicious cocktails (Debbie’s concoction of rum, tamarind pulp and ginger was stunning), a chorizo & curry leaf pizza (genius), fresh fettuccine with truffle, and a cardamom sticky fig pudding with velvety vanilla ice cream.
So 3 days of excellent food, a welcome change from curry, in beautiful surroundings and although pricier than we’ve been used to on this trip were still excellent value compared to home at about £30 per meal for the 2 of us (including drinks).
Overall Pondy is lovely, and very different to anywhere we’d been so far. It is plagued by mosquitoes though (lots of open draining and stagnant water, quite stinky at times), and they seem to be resistant to repellents so Debbie left with an impressive collection of bites to accompany the memories. They don’t seem to be as keen to bite Steve, so his strategy was to sit close to Debbie and let them bite her instead.
Auroville
10Km north of Pondy on the way to our next destination we visited the most ‘new age’ place anywhere in India. Debbie remembered seeing a TV programme about this place, inspired by “The Mother”, a spiritual guru, where people from a multitude of nations live in communities (with names such as Fertile, Sincerity, Revelation etc) envisaged to eventually become the ‘ideal city’ for a population of 50,000 spread over 50 sq Km.
Our taxi driver dropped us at the visitor centre with instruction to WhatsApp him when we were ready to leave – he said the visit usually takes about an hour and a half. Debbie insisted that we took our daypacks with us as it seemed foolish to leave our laptops, passports & credit cards with a random. She soon regretted this on finding that the hour and a half visit time was because of the amount of walking!
An impressive visitor display detailed the history and vision of Auroville – all very worthy, spiritual nonsense but beautifully done. We think it’s probably like a mega-Kibbutz or similar, with lots of yoga, meditation and mindfulness going on. The central ‘attraction’ – but they point out that Auroville is NOT a tourist attraction – is the Matri Madir, a gigantic gold spherical space-age meditation centre conceived as a symbol of the Divine’s answer to man’s inspiration for perfection. Nope, not a clue what that’s supposed to mean but it was a very impressive sight nevertheless.
Back to our taxi, to find that the driver hadn’t run off with our luggage and dirty laundry and so onwards up the coast…..
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