Pondicherry: A holiday inside a Colour Palette!!

There is not one person in India who has not heard of Pondicherry, travelling or not. And what we know of Pondicherry is primarily because of the Aurobindo Ashram, the very spectacular Auroville, and the fact that it was a French colony in the past & still retains that flavour.

For many of us, Pooja Bhatt’s 2003 thriller Jism, opened newer vistas of Pondicherry. Lush with greenery, quaint hamlet & turquoise sea…Pondicherry tourism got a fresher lease of life post that film for many people (not that Pondicherry was any less popular before that, but Jism just cemented it further as a holiday destination). Post that we saw gorgeous snippets of the city in 2012 Academy Award runner, Life of Pi, which again reminded people that somewhere south of this country, is lying a beautiful little paradise that still needs to be explored J

We, Musafir & Hasina, had been contemplating upon hitting this gorgeous seaside city for quite some time & this March, around Holi, we got a good opportunity with an extended weekend. With 3 days under our belt (Saturday, Sunday & Monday), we just unanimously zeroed in on Pondicherry & within minutes booked our flight to Chennai. It was a simple plan, rather a gorgeous plan:

14^th March (Friday): Wrap up your office work & board flight at 8.30 pm. (Musafir Hasina’s party kind of started at the T1 Airport & both were so engrossed in drinking, eating & chatting that they practically sprinted to board their Chennai flight on the last & final call…hehehe)

14^th March (Friday): Arrival at 11.15pm at Chennai airport. Stay the night at a bed & breakfast option close to airport.

15^th March (Saturday): Called for a cab early morning at around 7am (arranged by our hotel in Pondicherry – loveliest hotel ever, more details will follow).

15^th March (Saturday): Drive down to Pondicherry via ECR route. Hands down one of the most gorgeous & lovely route ever, the East Coast Route is a drive alongside the lovely coastline. Imagine lush greenery all through the route and a sparkling turquoise sea playing hide & seek with you one side in your comfortable 3 hour drive to Pondicherry. Also, ECR boasts of some superb breakfast options. With our apetite peaked thanks to the lovely journey we were embarking upon, we stopped at Restaurant Mammallam, which seemed like one of the most popular breakfast joint on the way. Well it was neat, spacious, nice and gauging by the people seated inside, it seems like a very popular drive down & breakfast option for Chennai-ites on weekend mornings. We both promptly ordered a South Indian breakfast thaali. Hasina thrives on South Indian food & has practically lived on a lunch, breakfast & dinner of idli sambhar for days without getting bored even once…she is a  weird North Indian and definitely an aberration J So you can only imagine what delight it brought to her when her breakfast plate looked like this…(pic of breakfast thaali)

 

We will also take a moment here & tell you that while nowadays, the cabs & people prefer taking the newly made highway route to Pondicherry, which takes 2 hours from Chennai as opposed to the 3 hour drive of ECR that is single lane, we preferred ECR. For us, our holiday begins with the journey & not the destination. The spectacular charm of ECR is any day preferable and we do not mind spending 1 hour extra to enjoy the vistas we did en route Pondicherry. Drive through small little towns & villages, neat road, lush greenery, sea on one side, you can see cyclists & bikers in groups driving early in the morning on the route from Chennai & living it up!! This is your true “Thalaiva” moment…and the song playing in a loop on Musafir Hasina’s playlist J Well you don’t land in the land of the great Rajani & not listen to this track!! J J J

15^th March (Saturday): 10.30am. We arrived at Pondicherry & checked in our gorgeous stay – Hotel Gratitude.

We have travelled quite a bit (though will never claim a lot), and hands down Gratitude is the best hotel we have ever been to. Its hospitality, laidback charm, beautifully done interiors, the fact that it is an almost 150 year old house and hence a heritage property, its location (it is at Rue Romain Rolland and merely 4-5 minute comfortable walk to the Promenade) all is nothing short of magic!! We were welcomed very warmly by the property’s manager Anto, who is such a warm, hospitable and graceful person that we were instantly connected to Gratitude because of her. On our entrance we were first asked for our choice in black tea or green tea, while we complete the formality of check in. Hasina loved this aspect & has hardly seen it in any Hotel so far. They make you wait in their comfortable little parlour which Musafir especially loved as it was decorated beautifully with quirky curio objects (like a small xylophone version which played soulful music just on a touch) and some beautiful pictures hanging on the wall. The hotel just wafted of delicious aromas of peace & tranquillity and that along with a lovely cup of Green Tea made by Anto on arrival made our wait (which was not long) to check into the room so relaxing instead of stressful, which is normally the case.

Gratitude is like your home, so there are some small rules you follow. Like they have indoor slippers. You can roam the town in your own footwear, but the minute you enter Gratitude you take them off at the entrance & wear the ones provided by the home. We did not mind at all. You do not drink in the room, which you might want to rebel to at first, but then seeing the beautiful sit-outs that Gratitude has & the fact that you can lounge & have your wine easily over there, we saw no issue with that at all. Anto was all grace & warmth all through our stay & made it so memorable. In fact Hasina wanted to book dinner reservations that evening for Villa Shanti, one of the most popular fine dining restaurant & where taking a reservation is most recommended & Anto called in our booked a table for us promptly, which is something again, we have never seen.

Well, post checking in our gorgeous room (that had a floor to ceiling French window, which when opened overlooked the courtyard of our hotel and a tall Mango tree with squirrels playing on it…sigh!!).

We took a tour of the lovely property (pics above) and then promptly changed & headed out all laced with our camera, music, headphones to embrace the town.

Before, reading out our travel dairy to you, let us first tell you one small fact. Pondicherry is basically divided into 1/4^th & 3/4^th. The 1/4^th area before the “Canal” is French Pondicherry or White Town or French Quarters. The 3/4^th area after the “Canal” is Tamil Quarters. Both have its uniqueness, but for the sheer fact that White Town is more charming, laidback, quaint & frankly looks like a mini South of France town with its cobbled roads, beautiful homes and the super tranquil vibe, people generally prefer lounging in that part, and with just 2 days in our hand we did that too. So let us tell you first thing, we did not do Aurobindo Ashram (gasp…horror!!), we did not go to Auroville (we hearda  lot from our parents on that) & we did not visit the Hidesign Store (eeps!! Lazy us!!). To set it straight, we did have all these places in our agenda, but the minute we stepped out of our hotel to explore White Town…well, this happened to us:

    That is Musafir in the frame; On Musafir:

• Lime Green Shorts - Bangkok flea market
• Bag - Wilson
• Footwear - Crocs (Select Citywalk, Delhi store)
• Hand beads: Ladakh flea market

It was like we were in a dream land...homes splashed in most vibrant hues, art & grafitti on walls, cute little shops, gorgeous vistas!! We covered the first day mostly on foot and what a walk it was!! People say there is nothing much to do in Pondicherry, but for us it was like endlessly walking through an art exhibit of a dissident artist, who just decided to take his brush & paint the whole town in colours of eccentric imagination.

White Town’s character is not only its tranquillity, but also its quirkiness that is hidden & that needs to be explored. Hence walking or cycling is the best way to explore this quaint little hamlet. We saw many holidayers hiring two wheelers to explore the town, but in our opinion, though we were tempted seeing yellow vespas, that is not the best way. White Town is very small & a motorised two wheeler will end it before it even starts; and since Pondicherry is not as vast as Goa & has so much to explore & find out that you might drive by many cute little cafes, curio shops, hidden art & culture stores and completely miss them. So for us, it was cycling & walking all the way.

How we spent three hours just taking photographs we didn’t even realise. When it was time for lunch, we explored this cute & laidback café…Café La Maison Rose. La Maison Rose welcomes you in with a cute little emporium shop and opens to a gorgeous courtyard straight out of a Mediterranean café J The expansive courtyard is open air & had a huge Tree as a centrepiece (reminded Hasina of Olive at Qutb Institutional Area, Delhi). It has gorgeous little bright chairs in yellow, green & red hues and good food!! We were lucky to get chairs under “the tree” and sipped on cool beer & wine as the afternoon passed away to end it with a sumptuous lunch of French/Italian food J

           Hasina's "round" frame shades: Zara

That done…we walked back to our hotel all happy. It was time to sleep in & enjoy the languid pace of the place J J We never feel this relaxed in Delhi, as we did here.

Evening: We were recommended to buy further liquor from supermarkets & govt. run wine shops in the town (very walkable from Gratitude) as that is cheaper than ordering drinks at the restaurant, where rates were at par with Delhi rates (quite expensive!!) So buying a bottle & stocking is best here. Our hotel promptly asked us to store all our drinks in the fridge to chill them. So we would drink a bit in the evening & then head out.

Another popular perception we have often heard is that Pondicherry has practically zero nightlife…soooo wrong!! See, it is not Goa, so there are no hedonistic beach parties…it is a slice of French countryside, so the nightlife is exactly like how a French countryside would typically have. Grab some drinks at your hotel, then head out for 1 drink at least at a nice little restaurant (our choice was Neemrana’s Hotel D’Lorient, where Jism’s song was shot). Beautiful courtyard with twinkling fairy lights & laidback vibe. We had just one drink & a starter & soaked in the ambience of the place, till it was time to walk down to our dinner reservation at Villa Shanti which is very walkable.

What a gorgeous place Villa Shanti was!! Hasina was too impressed, well..Musafir was okay with it. He is not your typical fine dining guy, but can play along once in a while J. The restaurant is in a spacious courtyard & is lit with candles everywhere. It lacks music, as it encourages people to converse while dining, but some soft music could have been perfect. The staff was all smiles, extremely polite & too busy. The website suggestions were not wrong. Villa Shanti is quite a popular place & when people come here, they come to lounge, chat over drinks, take their time to order & eat & the staff encourages you to do so, irrespective of a throng of people waiting (which is why their last order time – that is time to come & be seated is 8pm, but you can sit there easily till late). One more round of drinks followed J & we took all the time in the World to chat (which you hardly do in busy city lives) while soaking in the peace. The staff is well informed on their menu & make helpful suggestions & we promptly ordered in advance as people here take time in preparing food…it’s the vibe of the city & should not be questioned much. Food was perfection!! We loved it. There were good options for vegetarians, but for a non-vegetarian lover, this is paradise, since being a coastal city fresh sea food is guaranteed & the menu was frankly quite a change from regular, like, I read about a dish of fish stuffed with prawns that seemed tantalising for a true connoisseur of coastal food. The dinner was a lovely affair with lot of flambés being ordered and being lit right on the table. There were collective oohs & aahs on the dancing blue flames, from all the tables when someone’s table had a flambe dessert, with the owner beaming at his choice!! It was truly a special evening J We wrapped our dinner by 10.45pm & headed straight to the Promenade, or the beach. The beach in Pondy is rocky, therefore you sit on the rocks (very comfortable) & just gaze at the moon till late. Pondicherry was super safe in our experience. It seems like the whole town comes to the beach post 7pm & the government does not allow any vehicles at the Promenade at this time. There were lot of couples & single girls sitting & lounging in the Promenade & it was very safe. The evening could not have been better with a low hanging moon, we sitting on the rocks facing the endless expanse of the sea and just listening to the waves roaring & splashing. We wound up the evening by 11.45 when we headed back to our Hotel.

A Perfect end to a Perfect first day!! (sigh!!)

More to follow in the next post from Ek Musafir & Ek Hasina J