Weekend Getaway...

I had written in one of my earlier posts about the thrill that one gets in being the creature of the moment..not being shackled by routines and flying on the wings of your fancy...well...after a long time...I did something like that...

It was just another Friday evening with another potentially boring weekend in sight. We were munching down on our so called "Special" Friday snacks. Conversation was going on about something or the other till someone mentioned the word Pondycherry. I don't know whether it was sheer abandon or the craving to leave everything behind that prompted me to ask whether we were up for a weekend visit to Pondy. A phone call was made and the decision was taken...we were going to Pondycherry for the weekend.Planning to decision in under 2 minutes. Now that's what I call dynamic decision making. We didn't know anything about Pondy. Where to stay, what all to see...everything were just question marks. But there were no second thoughts...

Nearly by Friday midnight, we caught a bus to Pondy from Koyambedu Bus stand. After trying in vain to sleep on the bus, three sleepy headed young men disembarked at the Pondycherry bus stand at around 3.30 in the morning. The plan to go see the sunrise was pushed back to the next day in favour of grabbing some shut eye. We found a hotel room which was just big enough to hold a double bed and was charged at 300 bucks per night. The operative words for us being "double bed". We were asleep within no time and got up at around 9.30.

Plans were discussed over breakfast. Where to go? First idea was to visit Auroville- The universal village. But as Her excellency The President of India chose the same day to visit Auroville, we had to postpone our plans to the next day. Then from among the other places to see, a place called Raj Niwas looked good. It was where the French Governer used to stay. We caught an auto and he took us promptly to Yatri Niwas, which is a government guest house. On further discussion with the auto driver, we came to know that noone recognizes the name Raj Niwas. That building is called Governer House. (Lesson Learnt: Don't trust the info on the net to be be all and end all).

We asked some of the locals as to what all we could see around that area. The prominent sights were the Aurobindo Ashram, Vinayakar temple, park etc. The catch was that entry to most of the places like the Park, beach etc would be open only from 2 PM. We visited the Aurobindo Ashram and the Vinayakar Temple.

It was still 11.30 only when we finished these places and we were at a loss as to what to do next. We wandered around, trying to get more information about any other places worth seeing. Finally we decided to rent some bicycles and continue our expedition on wheels. So after lunch, put this plan into action. First pit stop was the botanical garden. Next was the war memorial on the beach and after a 15 min nap on the beach, it was time to check out the rest of the sights. 2 churches (Sacred Hearts Cathedral and church of our lady of immaculate conception) were visited and we had to search a bit for the Joan of Arc square (Those who don't know who this lady is, check her story out on wikipedia. It's worth knowing) which finally turned out to be just in front of one of the churches. After paying our respects to St.Joan, it was time to call it a day and chart out the course for the next day.

First action item of the day. Watch Sunrise at the beach. Result: Failure. Reason: Heavy Mist.

We just walked along the beach for some time and returned to the hotel. We checked out from the hotel and started to our next destination- Auroville. Auroville is a universal village where people of any nationality can come and stay. It's a nice concept. First shock of the day- Autofare to Auroville Rs. 150. Second shock of the day: There is no transportation to return from Auroville which is 8km from the main road. We had to ask the Auto driver to wait for us and he charged us Rs. 100 extra for the return trip to Auro beach.

Auroville is pretty good place. Very calm and quiet and a really nice place if you want to retreat from the helter skelter of the daily life. The whole Auroville township is in the shape of a spiral galaxy. At the centre, we have a structure called the Matrumandir.

It's a quite awe inspiring structure. We spent about 1.5 hrs in Auroville and had our lunch and proceeded to Auro Beach. There I found a starfish.

We had a fun time cavorting in the sea and soon it was time to head home. It was a really fun 2 days. We had been planning to visit pondycherry for the past 6-8 months. I would have never thought that it would come to fruition in such a way.