26th January 2007 being Friday, it was long weekend for my entire friend circle. During those days only two of us (Brassi & me) were free souls, means bachelors, and rest of the friends had settled down. We were having this discussion of looming long holiday, as if the world will end if we don’t go out on long weekend, and were kind of clueless till Golu came up with the idea of visiting Pondicherry & Mahabalipuram. Myself & Brassi were quite happy because Golu had car and he was natural driver since he was married (to Aditi). This means we singles would be travelling by car and did not need to drive it.
We started early on 26th Jan for our journey from Bangalore to Pondicherry by car via Hosur Road and reached pondicherry by noon. Our immediate priority was to find accommodation as we had left for Pondy without booking one. After searching for couple of hours, we could find a decent accommodation for 1.5K per room. Although it was expensive compared to what it offered but we did not want to spend entire day searching for a place. By the time we had our lunch and was ready to go out it was late afternoon. We started our exploration by visiting the sea beach. The Pondicherry beach, which is inside town, is nothing much to say about. It’s rocky and waves are quite strong most of the times.
But shore is always bustling with activities
Not far away from the market, there is a sand beach in Pondicherry. The way to the beach is quite bad but it was worth reaching there.
One of the thing I noticed in Pondicherry was the place was mostly clean with small houses still reminding old culture of the place. People fluently speak french here and you see plenty of foreigners roaming around. Pondicherry has three kinds of beaches: Rocky, Golden/Brown sand and White Sand. We had already visited first two, so next day our target was to visit white sand beach. And it’s rightly named Paradise Beach. It’s on small island and we had to travel by ferry to reach there. There is nothing on the island except the beach & few small stalls.
After spending some time at the paradise beach, we headed to one of the major landmark of Pondicherry named ‘AuroVille’. It is Aurobindo ashram and mostly organized as a township. The place is not fully developed yet but looks remarkable. The most imposing architecture is the dome where prayer is done.
I will put up a post on Auroville itself but skipping now. After Auroville, we headed straight towards Mahabalipuram via East Coast Road. The drive is mostly good to excellent. One of the consistent complaint I have with highways in South India is lack of dhabas serving lip smacking parathas and other foods. Whatever dhabas are there, they are just for the sake of being there and generally don’t serve even good south indian foods.
We reached Mahabalipuram by evening and this time we had booked hotel room in advance from Pondicherry itself. We dumped our luggage in hotel and zoomed out to roam around the town. Mahabalipuam is UNESCO world heritage site and is full of structures and sculptures dating back to Pallava dynasty. We roamed around on sea beach also but noticed it would be more appropriate to see sunrise on sea beach. We went back to hotel and after gulping down few pegs of energizer, we slept off. I had put an alarm for 4 am and was back on my feet once it went off. Surprisingly Brassi was also up on his feet without any tantrums after one call. We headed to sea beach almost in pitch dark and sat there waiting for sun rise. It was only us on the beach and nobody else. And what a sunrise it was. The drama started unfolding long after we arrived and continued for good 30-45 minutes.
The famous shore temple, built by Pallavas, in early morning
We left sea beach after completely witnessing the nature’s drama and headed to hotel for breakfast. After breakfast we packed our bags and started tour of town in the car visiting various sculptures. The best part of Mahabalipuram’s architecure it mostly it’s built by cutting rocks and not by joining them together.
By afternoon of day 3 we had mostly covered what we had set out to see and it was time to start our journey back to Bangalore.
Experience summary: Pondicherry and Mahabalipuram should be visited once if you are a casual holiday seeker. If you like hustle bustle of small town then Pondicherry is good to visit. Walking on the road alongside the beach is also good fun. Auroville is altogether different experience and liking this place depends on one’s purpose of visit. For a casual holiday seekers its okay kind of place but for interested people this could be life changing experience. For people interested in ancient architecture Mahabalipuram is a must see. Overall combining both places provides a good long weekend gateway.
