My colleagues and I decided to use the long weekend last week to make a quick trip to Pondi and Chennai. The final destination was decided after heated debate on where to go… important criteria being that it must be not raining as staying indoors was hardly the idea. After going thru Goa, Hyderabad, Ooty and a bunch of places the arrow finally landed on the capital of TN and we were raring to go.
We started on 11th(Friday) night from here and that itself was crazy. Theju had got the tickets and informed us to be there by 8:30 as that was when the bus left. I reached at 8:25pm (pretty standard if you know me well) and Asha, Vidya, Jyothi(Asha’s sis) and Thej were there already. We rushed to find our platform, knowing that Sidharth, Preethi, Musavir and Varma were still on the way. We were heading towards our platform when we saw the bus coming towards us. The bus was leaving!!!
It turned out the bus driver’s watch was like 5 min fast(or ours 5 min slow whatever). We walked in to realize that they had given a couple of our seats away. Just then Sid calls and he and Varma were in the bus stand but did not hv any idea where to go. Thej and Vidya frantically tried to get them and finally Sid heard me mention to come in the direction of “Hotel Mahaveer” sign board. Sid will tell this better (with all the… it was like angle in the darksky ect.) Bottom line they made it and just as he entered we got a call from Musavir, he was almost there too. Sid had bumped into Preethi and she too made the bus. The bus driver and conductor were using tamil swear words for sure by now(I did not hv any idea what they were saying :P )
10 min later and we are all off. We had the last two rows of the bus to ourselves and made total merry. At one time someone in the bus came to us and requested us to maintain some silence. Mak was the bigger culprit in the noise making… for some reason he did not get any sleep and was talking very loudly :P (He would deny it of course)
We made it to Pondicherry about 5 in the morning… I was partially asleep and just followed ppl where ever they went :P. We had to meet Vidya’s friend and went in search of the place we were staying. We ended up in the outskirts of the city(about 6km from the city) and thats when we realized that there was another place with the same name in the city. Thej called up Rajesh(Vidya’s friend) and realized that Rajesh was actually at the bus stand itself. This thing of reaching a place then retuning became a pattern in the trip.
Pondicherry is a very beautiful place… Its history and culture are incredibly rich and you are just exposed to the culture it adapted thanks to its previous residents. The area we stayed in was beautiful, just 5 min from the beach(by walk), nice roads and very clean. 15th Aug, India’s Independence day also happens to be Shri Aurobindo’s birthday. All hotels in Pondicherry were booked and we ended up staying in a dormitory which was nice in its own way.
Sid was not feeling great at the start of the trip and it got worse in Pondi. He was fully bedridden and saw nothing other than the inside of the room. He had viral fever and cost him almost the entire trip.
Our stay in Pondicherry constituted almost of 70% of visiting different Ashrams in the city. We had our breakfast and lunch in the Ashram and leaving Thug nobody actually enjoyed the porridge and brown bread. Lunch was much better for us as we hardly took time with the rice and sambar. We visited the cloth mills and paper factories. We bought a little merchandise in the stores filled with scented candles and incense sticks. It was lunch time when we finally ended our tour.
We visited Auroville during the afternoon. The concept of Auroville sounds great and its wonderful that a place like it exists on this planet. Auroville also boasts of its amazing beauty… let it be the well constructed buildings or the thick lush trees that surronds the place.
In the evening we walked to the beach and played a little in the water. I hv always thought beaches are the most calming places and always felt that ppl who live near the sea are truly blessed. Having lived all my life in landlocked Bangalore it was a pleasure to spend sometime in the ocean water. We played in the water until sunset and walked back to our room.
I had convinced Thej and Mak that we should come and watch the sun rise over the waters the next day. Early next day morning Preethi joined us and we sat on the rocks by the ocean and watched as the sky went from Violet to crimson to yellow. Thej got a lot of beautiful pics of the sun rising…
The plan on day 2 was to head to Chennai via Mahabalipuram. We got to the bus station and were soon on the way to Mahabalipuram. The ride was scenic with the road close to the beach.
We reached Mahabalipuram around lunch time and had a good plan chalked out… we would do lunch and then visit the ruins around the place. We were considering renting a room for Sid who was feeling better but still not normal and dropping off our luggage there too. We were approached by this auto driver who told us he would help us to get lunch, room ect and would take us to the tourist spots as well at a nominal price. We thought it was a good idea and agreed but the guy took us to the ruins first… this did not please anyone as we were totally hungry. There seemed to be confusion between us and we decided to walk back and do as we planned earlier. The whole incident cost us about an hour and half which would become priceless later.
We got a room and then ate our lunch before heading back to the ruins. The statues along the way were incredibly beautiful. Its amazing that this art has gotten lost but not forgotten. As we walked past the shops we were amazed by the beauty of the statues that stood outside each shop.
The ruins were really beautiful(kindof an oxymoron) and spent some time appreciting the pieces of stone that has stood for hundreds of years. There were light moments where one monkey charged at Asha but it was only to scare her off :)) Thej got a lot of brilliant pics of the carved pieces of stone.(Link to his gallery at the end of the post)
We spent most of the time on the beach and this time it was serious craziness. We were drenched head to toe within sec of reaching the water… Mak and Thej were taking turns dropping ppl onto oncoming waves. And then we decided to play rugby… Man was that fun. We used a half filled bottle of water as the ball(satisfied our criteria that it must float in water.) The rules were different than the regular rugby for sure(reason being none of us knew the rules :P ) All we had to do was to get the ball to the goal by passing it and stay on the water at all times. Each play was very tiring but we kept getting better the more we played. At the end when we had to go back so that we could reach Chennai in time we were all disappointed to leave the beach.
The bus ride from Mahabalipuram to Chennai was one of the toughest. We had to stand most of the way and that in a crowded bus full of ppl who wanted thier own space, even the ones who were sitting down… To top things off as we touched into Chennai a drizzle started… We took a train ride to T-Na gar and the train was totally filled with ppl. No space to move an inch once you got it, I guess we should hv been happy we got in. Reaching T-Nagar was not a relief either, it started poring cats and dogs moments after we reached the station.
We walked in the rain trying to find a auto who would take us to our hotel which was only 5 min walk away… But the one way was in the other direction and in the rain most autos just refused. We walked to the hotel and reached the comfort of our rooms only by 10:30 pm. That 1 1/2 hour lost in Mahabalipuram would hv helped us skip the rain and get to the hotel without much effort!
The next day we planned to visit a couple of parks, go to the Planetarium and spend some time at the beach. We reached near the snake park, our main motive was not to go and see the reptiles but to visit the animal park in the same enclosure. The animal park was closed and since most of us were not crazy of snakes we went to the children’s park next door and rest. The park was huge and had a lot of animals in it. The birds enclosure had some beautiful and exotic birds, but the thing we enjoyed the most was the slide in the park. We spent almost an hour around it taking lots of pics and getting in touch with the child inside :)
The next stop was the Planetarium. We went in looking at the science exhibits and then enjoyed a 3D movie. The last 3D movie I saw was “Chota Chethan” which was like 7 yrs ago i think :P. The movie was fun with all sorts of things thown at you and animals trying to get a bite on you. The movie at the Planetarium was great too, I always loved the night sky projected on the screen :P
The next stop was the beach and this time we were not very interested in entering the water. I decided to walk along the beach just near the edge of the water. Mak, Thej and Asha were busy making sandcastles. Sid and I joined in and decided to make our own sand Turtle. In the end the castles were looking very pretty :)
After the beach we headed back and our target was shopping. We entered one of the “Sharavana stores”(trust me there are plenty of these) and it just blew me away… It was like a Mall (6 floors) and it was all one store. Its so easy to get lost and we ended up staying in contact by calling eachother :D.
After all the shopping it was time to leave and we took a bus to the railway station. The train ride was overnight and by morning we were back in Bangalore :)
Links to Photo Galleries:
Theju: Gallery and Flickr
Mine: Gallery and Flickr
PS: Special thanks to Rajesh, Mahesh and Padmanabhan for thier valuable time and for helping us make this trip truly memorable :)
Rajesh btw is a brilliant photographer you can check out his gallery here