2nd-6th January 2013.
A lot was promised (by others) of Pondicherry but for me it didn't really deliver. Which was a shame because we had flown from Ernakulam to visit. This may also be partly due to my first bout of 'travel fatigue' and my only case (so far) of 'having to be near a toilet all day' which also happened to fall on my birthday. Hip hip hooray!! The trip was not in vain though as there were plenty of other wonderful experiences in Tamil Nadu including our visit to Mamallapuram.
More can be read about Pondicherry here. The defining aspect of the place is that it was controlled by the French from 1674 until 1962, so I was expecting to really feel the influence. But I didn't.
Yes there are lots of French influenced buildings but many of these are government or other official buildings with little or no access.
A lot was promised (by others) of Pondicherry but for me it didn't really deliver. Which was a shame because we had flown from Ernakulam to visit. This may also be partly due to my first bout of 'travel fatigue' and my only case (so far) of 'having to be near a toilet all day' which also happened to fall on my birthday. Hip hip hooray!! The trip was not in vain though as there were plenty of other wonderful experiences in Tamil Nadu including our visit to Mamallapuram.
More can be read about Pondicherry here. The defining aspect of the place is that it was controlled by the French from 1674 until 1962, so I was expecting to really feel the influence. But I didn't.
Yes there are lots of French influenced buildings but many of these are government or other official buildings with little or no access.
To me the town lacked soul. It was too 'official'.
There seemed to me to be a more than average amount of people who were disadvantaged, handicapped and impoverished on the streets who may have been drawn here because of this. There are a lot of hospitals and medical centres for all types of physical, mental and social problems. And you don't want to be too tall and have an accident here either!!
I believe that many people are drawn to Pondicherry for quite a different reason: Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, and Auroville. I put in a lot of links to various sites from these pages that I suspect aren't always that interesting but the lives of these two people and what they accomplished is quite remarkable and if you have any interest in yoga or spiritual enlightenment or 'new world' living I urge you to investigate further. Sri Aurobindo's biggest achievement is his work Savitri. This is an epic poem of 24,000 lines spread across 12 volumes and this is just a small part of his output! The Mother's work includes the setting up of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the founding of Auroville. (While here we found out that Ulli's birthday is the same as The Mother's and also the same as Anais Nin whose book she had just read).
Auroville is out of bounds for casual visitors but there is a visitors centre that we visited. From there you can take a walk of about a kilometre to The Matrimandir.
The location of the Matrimandir was chosen by The Mother because of it's closeness to this enormous Banyan tree.
Whilst in Pondicherry we stayed at the Park guest house which is part of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram network that can be seen throughout the town.
This was a bit of a find for us as the town is very busy at this time of year and there's not much choice past the expensive boutique hotels that can be found in the French quarter. The room would be considered very basic in Europe or America I suspect but for us it was quite luxurious. There was a desk and chair, a sofa and table and a balcony but the highlight was that it was clean and had some hooks and a mirror!!
The balcony overlooked the garden and the sea.....
As ever though.....The Mother is watching you!!
The seafront is the cleanest part of the town and come sundown the police wheel out large barriers and it becomes pedestrianized.
The statue of Gandhi on the seafront.
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