Tag: food

Pondy has a split personality: the one side (closest to the ocean) has a French heritage, with wide tree-lined streets (nice shade!), with little traffic, French street names (even using “rue” instead of road

), a central park with big trees for shade, and quite clean; the other side of the canal (away from the ocean) is typical Indian.
There is no beach in Pondy itself; however, there is a nice promenade which is lit up at night thanks to the double-street-lights on top of each lamp post along that one road next to the promenade. Moving inland from the water’s edge, you have a big rock wall, then a flat sandy area (about 5m above sea level), then the cement promenade, then the road. And a nice breeze on the promenade (though still brutally hot in the sun).
I did hear quite a bit of French spoken here, including an Indian waiter at a French tourist resto.

Highlights include:
– meandering through the main market (fish, fruit & veg, flowers) – which my middle-class barista said she didn’t go to as it was too dirty and time-consumng, and she would rather pay a few more rupees at the supermarket (I was asking about prices to see how I had been doing on my fruit haggling)

– watching the locals on the promenade and the food vendors on the beach near the huge Gandhi statue
– watching an Indian music video being filmed in the park (though it wasn’t one of the outrageous big dance numbers, just one guy who I actually think I recognized from the videos I had seen in my room in Chennai)
– the elephant outside a temple dedicated to Ganesh
– the beautiful flower-festooned samadhi (tomb venerated as shrine)at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
– eating breakfast “beachside” on a shaded marbled patio at the government tourist development corp’s Le Cafe (and seeing dolphins one morning) along with a good cappuccino as a treat
– good cheap local food (actually, it was North Indian food) at a resto facing the “beach” and sea
– the quasi-French restos were “overpriced” and not really that interesting (and full of tourists of course)
– actually, most of the sites in my guidebook were disappointing, including the Heritage Walk (I couldn’t find a guide for it as it was being reprinted, so I was left to walk the streets and see some buildings)

All in all, a peaceful stop on my way down south. But not a must-see town, except for the French nature of it making it different.
The only reason I had heard of it was that it is the starting point in the book “The Life of Pi” about a boy and a tiger escaping on a lifeboat.

As expected, it’s not much of a traditional tourist town. I stayed mostly to get acclimatized to India (and of course, my flight landed here, as I wanted to start in south India). Two full days (and a half morning) was more than enough, and the pollution was getting to me (sore throat); of course, walking 10km in one day didn’t help.
Chennai (pronounced “chen-neye”) is the 4th largest city in India at 6.4 million people, but doesn’t really have a “downtown” per se – lots of sprawl.
My hotel was in the Triplicane backpackers area, a 15 minute walk from the beach.
The weather was good – sunny every day, only cloudy one morning, with temps of 22-32°C

Highlights include:
– the MRTS commuter train is quite handy for popping around town, as it avoids traffic and is cheap (Rs3-6 ~ $0.12 for short trips); the doors (and windows) are always open, which made for a breeze when moving
– one interesting temple, at which a guide Hindu-fied me (the white and red marks represent something, I couldn’t understand him well)

– one of the 3 Catholic churches built on a tomb of an original apostle (the others are in the Vatican and in Spain)
– the very wide beach (nice breeze) which is floodlit at night; forget about western beach attire or swimming though
– meandering the bazaar
– I did enjoy the food, which apparently was North Indian food for the most part (huh?)
here is a photo of a masala dosai (a crispy lentil flour “pancake”) filled with some aloo/potato, which comes with 4 standard sauces (red is spicy, green is something, brown is dal/lentils, and white is coconut)

this breakfast item cost Rs18/$0.45, plus that tea is Rs7/$0.18

See what I mean – not a big tourist hotspot!
Virtually all the travellers I met in and near this town were heading to Chennai for an international flight out of India – I think I was the only one who started there!