Solo trip to Pondicherry

I recently went to Chennai to attend my cousin sister's marriage. The marriage was a big two day affair where I met lot of interesting people. I had good fun interacting with them. My sister got married on the Wednesday night. I woke up the next morning, around 9 AM, tired and drowsy, thinking of attempting an ambitious plan. I had the whole of Thursday and half of Friday free, nothing to do. My flight was on Friday afternoon and I didn’t know what to do till then. Hence an idea struck my mind - Solo trip to Pondicherry. I was hesitant, scared a bit as I knew in case by any chance if I missed my flight to Delhi, there wasn’t any way for me to go to Delhi, no bus, train and I wasn’t mentally ready to pay exorbitant flight ticket prices. My friend, she, calmed me down on phone and advised me to take the chance, to go for the adventure of a lifetime. Upon her insistent enthusiasm, I stopped thinking and made up mind to go for it.

I had slept at 5 in the morning. I had no idea on how to go to Pondicherry, no idea at all. I was in the heartland of Chennai, Tamil Nadu where no word of Hindi is spoken, English is spoken but broken. I didn't know a word of Tamil. But I had made up my mind. I needed to go to Pondicherry, no matter what, thinking of ways to bypass the obstacles which lay ahead. I quickly got ready, had a hearty breakfast, said my byes to my relatives and was at the hotel gate, asking for ways to go Pondicherry. "It is a 3 hour bus journey, buses leave in every 30 min," said a gentle soul. Another gentle soul dropped me to CMBT (just like ISBT, Delhi) bus station, Chennai.

CMBT is a massive, clean and free wi-fi zone with buses leaving in every other minute. Someone directed me to a green bus, informing that it will leave for Pondicherry in 15 min. Happily, I boarded the bus, kept my bag on the space provided above head, sat on a seat next to the window and mentally started counting the various things I need to take care of to make my journey a success. Incidentally, while making a list, my eyes wandered off to ceiling of the bus and then it wavered to the sideways. I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting inside a railway compartment, recycled as bus body part. The cushion I was sitting upon was same as that of Indian Railways train compartment, so was the curved ceiling and so was the windows. I even noticed the seat numbers in black painted near the windows, 37L, 38M, 39U. Quickly I touched the walls of the bus and other bus parts, noticing that except for the grills on the windows, each and every part of the bus was not hot, a refreshing thought since I was to spend four hours cooped inside. Soon the driver took his place and started the bus.

The road to Pondicherry was via ECR (East Coast Road), a four hour journey through beautiful landmass. The roads were in perfect conditions. Incidentally, now I come to think of it, I can’t recall a single pothole anywhere, on any road I travelled upon in Tamil Nadu. Sitting in the midst of all the South Indians, I was the odd one out. All around people were speaking in foreign language, giving a quick glance at me, an odd dressed individual with a laptop in hand. I didn’t care. I was looking outside the window, lost in the greenery on both sides of the road. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I went on staring, marveling and was noticing the differences between the North and South Indian villages. Few of the differences I noticed for example were that the most of all the walls of the South Indian villages were whitewashed, devoid of any advertisements, especially advertisements advertising varied solutions to manly non-performance problems which ever so popular in North Indian villages.  To escape the heat and sun rays, the houses on the either side of the road were constructed in the midst of many planted tall palm trees, whose shade must be keeping the houses cool during summers. Most importantly almost all of the buildings in South India were pucca houses, which told me a lot about prosperity of the region. I saw lot of schools, colleges, parks, nurseries, resorts, holiday gateways, restaurants and scientific research buildings on my side of the road. Sitting inside the bus, I had constantly kept my face glued to the window, feeling the cold breeze on my face which was completely betraying the 37 degrees Celsius temperature. It was truly a journey through heaven.

Soon by 6, I reached "The Retreat" a guest house maintained by Aurobindo Ashram. The man at the reception gave me a pass to the ashram, informing me about the timings to visit it. But I wasn’t interested in that. The sound of the crashing waves had captured my heart. I didn’t want to miss for anything in the world. Quickly I went to my room, changed and came back to the reception. I opened the front door of the reception and out I came to the main road, in front of which lied the majestic Bay of Bengal. The water was blue, dark blue, clear and eyes-popping-out beautiful. I was on the Rue de Marine, and I started walking towards my left direction, went on and on, till the end and came back to explore the other end.

Walking slowly and slowly, I was marveling the French construction, the colour coding, the pattern of the construction and buildings’ architecture. On my walk, there was only odd building, on the whole stretch, sore to my eyes. The building was very ugly, bad and completely ruining the pattern. The building was Pondicherry Secretariat, the front of which was under repair of some sort. Ufff. Ignoring it, I went on walking, seeing BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Jwahar Lal Nehru and other notable French intellects' statues and Pondicherry war memorial. I started exploring the cafes and other eating joints, noticing that the small, small roads looked similar to Paris roads which were shown in countless of movies.

I finally spotted a happening restaurant where I had my dinner and met three college drop outs who were busy and working on their startup, as I got to know later, http://onrusticroutes.com/. Those three were fun, warm and good natured people, very enthusiastic about their work. They recounted their own car trip to Pondicherry, which included getting lost in villages, thanks to Google Maps and others.

As time passed, I got back to my room, to rest, awaiting next day adventure. My flight was at 2 PM. I was at Pondicherry and a four hour bus drive and an hour auto ride awaited me. Thankfully I woke up early in the morning, by 7 AM, boarded the bus and reached Chennai CMBT by 11 in the morning. Quickly I de-boarded the bus to take an auto to Chennai Airport.

Imagine a situation, where when you try to bargain, sounds such as, Sirrrrrrr, yaaaada, verrrry faaaaar, yummmmmaaaa and other weird sound come out from the other side. I was feeling like a foreigner, stuck in babel land. The autowallahs were refusing to go by meter, charging an exorbitant amount, and if asked why charging so much, answering that sir, return empty, no savari, an hour journey. I smiled inwardly and shook my head. Whether South India or North India, the autowallahs will remain the same. As few more autowallahs joined the game to con the foreigner, finally one person budged, lowered the fare and took me to the airport. He was a very friendly chap, trying his best to communicate with me in broken English and few words of Hindi. He showed me the house of a big Tamil actor Vijay, told me about RSS slogans and few others Chennai notable areas. We were having a good time. I told him I was from Delhi and was returning from Pondicherry. He was perturbed after hearing that, shaking his head. I could only guess that the reason for his confusion might be related to me being a totally opposite to the image of the Delhi people, he was carrying, I assume.

Soon we reached the airport, shook hands and he left me at the airport, bringing down curtains to my first solo trip, that too to the magical land of Pondicherry.