Pondicherry, Puducherry, Pondy

We landed at Chennai Airport at 3 in the afternoon, and were met by the taxi driver we had booked to take us the 170 km down the coast to Pondicherry, or Puducherry (as its now officially called) or just plain old Pondy. Being its own small city state it has some more liberal laws due to its history as the only French colony in India, such as beef steak which you can get here, a big no-no everywhere else we have been. The liquor taxes are also very low here – e.g. a bottle of Gin was 250 Rps (£3.80 ) and you can pick up a big beer for a around 60 Rps (90p)! its around £2 in most other places. Anyway after a quick turn around we headed out in search of French food – namely steak! We found a restaurant but sadly many were closed on a Monday and the one we ended up in didn’t have any steak left – so it was Coq au Vin instead.

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The following day we had a wander around the old French quarter that runs parallel to the beach and inland for 4 blocks. The French were pretty good at the town planning, at least in this part of town. Past the canal (open sewer) you then enter the Tamil part of town which is typically sub-continental in style and order. We tried ‘Le Cafe’ on the promenade for breakfast, then went up to the Pondicherry museum which was a cute little collection of all sorts of local memorabilia and geology. In the afternoon we had a look at some very chíc boutiques run in conjunction with ex-pats and locals, its all very socially responsible and it seems to work. Weirdly we ended up with a bathrobe and a bottle of lemon concentrate after this expedition. Dinner was at a genuinely good pizza place that night, with a wood fired oven and stone baked, although the venting of the oven left a little to be desired as it was directed straight at the rooftop dinning area. On the way back to the hotel the skies opened and we saw the quickest movement of any locals so far as they scurried for cover while taking their evening promenade.

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We awoke the next day to a similar scene to the night before, the wind was gale force and it was drizzling, which steadily turned to into a full on storm which kept us inside until 4 that afternoon. Thankfully we had the 2nd ODI between India and NZ on so that helped kill sometime. At 7pm we got a taxi to Villupparam somewhat slowly due to some flooding here and there, for the 21:55 train to Trivandrum in Kerala.

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