Highlights of Pondy (Pondicherry, now Puducherry)

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

French street names

), 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.

Promenade at 'beach

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)

Flower market

– 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.

Highlights of Mamallapuram

About 60km south of Chennai, the World Heritage village of Mamallapuram (pop 12,000) was more laid back and more touristy but definitely worth a stop.
I ended up taking an auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) to here from Chennai, Rs680/$17 to avoid the (scary, unknown) hassle of taking a long distance bus (plus avoiding a ride out to the Chennai bus station in the first place, as it is inconveniently located 7km east of “downtown”).
The weather was good, mostly sunny with some clouds. It looked and felt like it would rain one late afternoon, but it didn’t come.

Highlights include (the first 3 are from the 6th & 7th Century) :
– fantastic rock carvings and mandapas (little temples) carved out of the rock, esp. Arjuna’s Pennance which is a 30x12m carving in a rock cliff face!

Arjuna's Pennance (30x12m)

– the interesting Five Rathas chariot-like rock temples
– the annual famous month-long Dance Festival (I caught 2 performances on this last weekend of the festival) see http://jantrabandt.blip.tvfor a video

Dance festival

– the nice Shore Temple in a scenic location by the shore (duh!)
– going for a “swim” at the beach (just once, not really a beach/swim town as there are dangerous rips and the locals that do go into the water a little are either the fishermen or are wearing full clothes.
– watching a wild baby monkey play in a tree-top 3m away from me as I stood on a rock cliff in a park; see http://jantrabandt.blip.tv for a video

I stayed in a small mosquito-“infested” hotel (to be fair, there was a good mosquito net over the bed, and a ceiling fan) in my Rs350/$9 room, in the tourist ghetto near the beach. The food was similar to Indian dishes served in restos in North America, i.e. different from (and more expensive than) what I ate in Chennai. Though the restos were generally on a rooftop with some breeze, or right on the beach – one of the food highlights here is fresh fish and prawns…

And since Republic Day happened on Jan 26 (India’s equivalent to Canada Day or Independance Day), I got to see how Indian tourists from other (and presumably wealthier) parts of the country behave.

Highlights of Chennai

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)

Jan Hindu-fied by temple guide

– 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)

Masala dosai breakfast
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!