An overnight bus put us in Pondicherry before the rooster awoke the place. The initial plan was to meet up with someone who I got in contact with over Couchsurfing.org and drop our stuff off there, then continue on with our day. Yet, I could not get a hold of him, so we grabbed an auto and said "to the beach"...
When we arrived, there were a surprising amount of people outside for so early in the morning. Lucky enough, we soon found a 24 hour place which was conveniently serving breakfast. With no hesitation we both ordered large meals and found ourselves happily satiated. The owners were kind enough to allow us to store our bags there for a couple of hours as we began to explore.
The beach beckoned as it was directly out the front door of the restaurant. We meandered along the coast for quite some time...
Walked past the famous Gandhi statue
And then dove city ward, but not before we were attacked by two pups!
And we can't forget Santa Claus...
omnomnom...
Ghosts!
An elephant!
He's trying to eat me!
The beach outside of where we stayed, filled with fishing boats.
...omnomnom
Further walking placed us right back where we started, on the coast. We went into a little café with the creative name of Le Café (Pondicherry use to be a French colony, there is a ton of French influence here and a good population that speaks it!). I tried something called Kombucha juice, this was a bad choice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha ... It's essentially fremented tea, and it did not agree with me! The next few hours it felt as though I was smack dab in the middle of Alien vs. Predator with mutants growing out of my stomach.
View from the café...
From here we headed down another street, which took us into a cool antique shop. They had a great selection of old wooden goods, bronze statues, and the like.
Random house on the street...
Babies in a bag!
His hat reads "Sun Light Security" ... keep up the good work! ;)
An oldie!
I think seeing that old bike inspired me to do a little biking of my own. We saw a sign that rented out scooters, after a little inquiring, we had ourselves a jet.
Ah, the freedom that comes with a two-wheeler! I loved it! Every second of it. I must admit, it is very crazy driving in India, even in a smaller Pondicherry city. There are just some completely uncharacteristic and seemingly unorthodox things people do. For instance, driving on the left side of the road, who does that?! Kidding, but people do take right turns, and drive down the wrong side of the road, so you have people on both the left and right of you driving in the opposite direction! Ha! I did learn quickly that the horn is a great communication tool. Unfortunately, some people still use it at an abhorrent and unnecessary frequency. All in all, renting a scooter was the best idea ever.
We then spotted a Vietnamese restaurant that immediately jumped out and grabbed Thi's attention. We chatted with the owner and then came back an hour or so later when they opened. Thi ordered some amazing food, it was a nice change-up from Indian food.
In the midst of all of this, I was still trying to get a hold of our couchsurfing host. He ended up never getting back to me, and forced us to try other methods. I was able to get a hold of a lady who spoke English, but being an Italian living in India, it was a bit hard for me to understand. Minus all the details, we ended up getting good directions about 10km North of where we were to reach her residence, which translated means 'Surrender'.
This is Donata (the owner) and Amul, who does handy work around the place and also lives there. They were some of the greatest people I have come across in my journeys, we all felt at home with each other and instantly connected. Donata moved here about 3 years back with her husband, who was ironically in Bangalore at the time, and has 2 large living areas and 2 small coconut thatched huts.
We, of course, chose to stay on the beach-side hut...
Thi walking to our hut... followed by Lela (one of the four dogs!... she's a pup!)
The inside. I thank everything and everyone for that net.
The view.
We lounged around the beach house for quite some time before we headed out to meet up with some of Bogi's (another Fulbrighter) friends who were here from the US. Bogi wasn't able to come that night, but made it the following morning.
While waiting we enjoyed an Indian band play and roamed the boardwalk.
...and Thi grew angel wings.
We ended up eating at a local place in town, there were 6 of us in total. I ordered baked eggplant, or something ridiculous like that. It took so long, that everyone except Thi (who was purposely letting her food get cold) was finished eating well before my food came out. The wait only allowed me to get properly hungry, though, so it all worked out :).
We drove back in the night, and then headed to our hut to await the next morning.
The day brought many shells as we prepared to head up to the main house for breakfast.
Can you spot the crow?
Majestic crow. Donata said that this crow was a baby crow that kept trying to fly out of the coconut tree, but didn't know how so kept hitting the ground! It was hurt, so she took care of it and fed it. Now it joins the breakfast party every morning!
LEEEEELAAAA!!!! What a pooch!
(lee-lah)
We decided today would be a good day to head into the heart of Auroville, which is a nearby settlement which proudly displays alternative views of living. It was a cool experience, and everyone was certainly nice enough! We were taken by Donata's friend to see the center, in which a huge symmetrical globe temple resides. There is a pure crystal ball in the 'meditation room' in which there are refractors which direct light into it, and a bunch of mirrors at the bottom of the temple to do the same. Pretty intense stuff. This is a view from the outside, taken by ninja Thi (cameras were a no-no).
Smile on my face!
Thi roaming in one of the gardens...
The group.
We met up with Bogi and walked around for quite a while, one of our stops was into a chocolate shop for some ice cream. There we found a huge chocolate statue of the Statue of Liberty!
This tree was huge! I wonder how it fell...
Just another example of some awesome electrical wiring.
We had lunch on the 2nd floor of a building, which gave us a great birds-eye view of the small town below us. It was fun.
From here we took to the open road and logged about 50km! We stopped a few times along the way when something interesting caught our eye.
opened up into this...
another stop...
and another one...
We got back in the afternoon and hung around for a while at the house talking with Donata and Amul before we went back into Pondicherry to have dinner with Bogi and his friends once again.
We ate at a place called 'Seagulls' which Donata recommended to us. WOW, the food was incredible. Thi and I shared a large crab, some aloo gobi curry (potato/cauliflower) and parathas (bread) while also snacking on some spicy prawns that proved to be too much heat for our dinner companions. I commented how jealous my seafood connoisseur Dad would be that here I was eating fresh seafood probably caught down the street!
We all had a lot of fun at dinner, especially because the others had a few drinks under their belts to loosen up and let the laughs flow (I was driving a scooter, at night, in India... hence, sobriety). We must have attracted some attention as a small group came over and invited us out to celebrate one of their birthdays.
Being in the flow of things, we gladly accepted and set off that way after dinner. The birthday belonged to a guy named Jarl, who is in the center of the only photo I took there. He is from Norway, and had a few of his best friends with him as well. They come to Pondi almost every year, and had built up a good group of friends here. It turned out to be quite a great night, it was on the rooftop of an apartment complex and totaled around 20 people by the peak of it. Lots of international people from across the globe, Norway, USA, France, Netherlands, China, India, Germany... it was a lot of fun. I exchanged contact info with a few of the people I met there and have kept in touch.
The birthday party led to a late night, but luckily we were greeted with some Santa elves to help us start the morning who brought another great breakfast: toast, eggs, fruit and lots of tea.
Not to mention the grooviness going on from the ceiling decorations.
As we headed back to the beach, a man selling drums approached us. We chatted for quite a bit and then headed to a local place for a quick lunch. It was interesting hearing about his life, 'living as a gypsy' as he put it. He was originally from Rajasthan, which is far north, and he simply came to the south and is working his way back to the north selling drums along the way. An interesting fellow, but, he did not compare to our other drum friend, who we really hit it off with. Thi bought a drum from him for her little cousin, and we all went out to dinner our last night in Pondicherry.
Fish!
We headed back to the house to pack up for our night bus, and got a few last hours of serenity.
At dinner!
Off to the Western Ghats... Kodaikanal...
Bye!
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