Pondicherry

Our plane arrived in Chennai at nine o'clock, about an hour and a half late. We didn't know where to stay so we booked a pre-paid airport taxi to take us to the state bus depot, thinking that we might find a cheap hostel nearby and catch the earliest bus to Mamallapuram we could find in the morning. Then, driving through Chennai we saw what complete shit the city was. It was ugly, dirty, boring, and hot - everything the Lonely Planet's mediocre reviews prepared us for. We reached the bus terminal and thought we should at least have a look and see what time the bus would leave the next day for Mamallapuram. It was a total mess. No sign boards, people sleeping everywhere, people shouting, eating, begging, and using the bathroom everywhere. We found the docks for the buses going to Mamallapuram and Pondicherry right next to each other. No buses were lined up for Mamallapuram, but two were there for Pondy, gearing up to go. Neither of us much fancied staying a minute longer in Chennai, so Charley and I looked at each other with expressions of, "Why not?"

"I just have to pee really quickly," Charley said and darted off to a corner. Meanwhile I walked a few steps to buy us some mango juice for the ride as we hadn't had any dinner. Then I heard yells for "Pondy! Pondy!" and the whistle blowing and BOTH buses pulling away. I yelled out "CHARLEY" who was already zipping up and we ran and jumped to the bus. We made a split second decision to get on a four hour bus ride that wouldn't get into Pondicherry until 2am, not having any idea where we'd stay when we got there or if any of the guest houses would even be open to let us in.

It was nuts. Technically I was asleep for most of the time but we were clutching our bags hoping not to get pick-pocketed. We were the only white people on the bus and everyone was staring at us. I had to awkwardly change my shirt in my seat. There were five Hindu statuettes at the front with blinking lights that flashed between red and green. Charley tells me there was a dirty old man sitting in the seat over who was begging from him the whole time (for either drugs, food or money, he still doesn't know) and constantly staring. At one point he lit up a joint and the bus conductor stopped the driver, marched over, and forced the man to dump all his narcotics out the window before we moved on. Poor Charley stayed awake the whole time protecting me. What an experience for him on his first trip into a third world country! I've never even travelled like that within India before.

So anyway, we arrived at Pondicherry really early in the morning. Luckily we found a rickshaw driver who was obviously commissioned by this old French owner of a guest house to bring in travellers from the station, and he woke up the owner to let us in. Twenty four hours later I sat, writing in my diary, collecting my thoughts on the small former French colony. To my horror, I had already eaten two chocolate croissants, two mini quiche lorraines, half a chicken puff, one chicken and olive baguette, and was at the time working my way through a bottle of white wine with Charley. I didn't realize I was sick of Indian food until we found this amazing authentic French patisserie called Naker's Street. The town was so French! I heard the language being spoken everywhere. Our guest house owner was an old, pot bellied French man who walked around in a pair of swimming trunks and an unbuttoned shirt day and night. His wife was an Indian lady. All of the Indians in town seemed more likely to speak French than English as a second language, and definitely no Hindi so communication was quite different. We got around the city on a scooter that we rented out for 130 Rs a day. We only needed to put down a 500 R deposit on it too, it would have been so easy to run away with it! The streets weren't too crazy but I sat back and let Charley handle it.

It was so good to see the ocean again. We drove our little moto up to a small swimming beach in the afternoon out by Auroville, which is a sort of international colony where hippies from all over can join, meditate, and live in peace together. The water was amazingly warm but I must've been the only girl there and felt a bit self conscious - once again we were the only white people too, and we were really close-by to a small village and all its village fishermen who were looking on. A few young guys came up to us and within a few minutes declared us their 'best friends.' They made Charley jump in the waves with them and kept flexing their "gym bodies" for us. When they left, one of them pulled Charley in for a rib crunching hug. The look on his face was priceless. Then we retreated to our room and just lazed around drinking wine, looking out at the Bay of Bengal and enjoying the nice sea breeze.

We spent the rest of our stay in the town doing much the same thing. We rode around on that moped everywhere (or at least Charley did - all evidence concludes that I am too spastic for Indian roads) and we ate every meal, complete with chocolate croissant, at Baker's Street. We did find a famous temple dedicated to Ganesha while out one day. It has forty depictions of Ganesha's different attributes on its inside walls, and because Ganesha is the elephant-headed god, the temple also keeps a big Asian elephant outside to bless worshippers. The South Indian temple architecture is really reflective of its cultural surroundings - bright and colourful. Every face of its many sculptures was painted meticulously in blues, greens, pinks and oranges, and in the alley outside flower sellers sold lotuses in full bloom. On our last night in Pondy there was lightning in the far North. We got no thunder or rain where we were, so we just sat on the beach with a crowd of other people and watched the sky light up in silent flashes. An older lady came along and braided a strand of jasmine into my hair, the way that Tamil women wear it. Her smiles and affection made me feel like she was blessing me.

That next morning we jumped on a bus heading to Mamallapuram, or at least we hoped we did. It was really hard not being able to rely on my Hindi in the South as the regional language of Tamil is so totally different and the people that you really need to be able to speak English (like bus conductors) don't. We pointed to several buses and asked "Mamallapuram?" and got mixed head bobble responses, so we just had to follow our hunches for head bobble meanings. Thank god we made it there safely, uneventfully, and onto the next phase of our journey, and also with a few leftover pastries bought on take away in our luggage. I mean, just because we were leaving that sleepy French enclave behind didn't mean I was giving up my chocolate croissants.