Unwinding in Peaceful Pondicherry
Written on Monday, December 18, 2006 by Unknown
You have your own advantages and disadvantages of being in a country of more than a billion people. Frustration of finding hordes of people at tourist places (and not so tourist places) is certainly one of the latter. Considering this my weekend trip to Pondicherry came as a pleasant surprise for me. After all at how many beaches can you drive your bikes to the shores and in fact even to almost middle of the sea, of course i mean driving on jetty . (In case you do not what a jetty means (i didn't know before i went to pondicherry) here is the dictionary definition. Jetty - A structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide or to protect a harbor or shoreline from storms or erosion. )
Pondicherry is certainly peaceful (Oh yes, you certainly have read this on incredible !ndia advertisements.) Be it the paradise beach or the Auro beach you'll always find only a couple of groups (and of course some couples ;)) apart from you. You do not have never ending queues, neither do you have to shell out a fortune to visit those sought after destinations. Yeah Pondicherry is a tax free UT (union territory, i like this acronym ;) ). The best way to enjoy Pondicherry (as we did) is rent a bike (for a meager 150 bucks a day) and roam around at your convenience. Parking is not a problem (It's a big concern for poor souls like me in bangalore) and neither the petrol prices. A full 10 Rs less than that in bangalore, i wonder if we have more effective Mamta Banerejee, here in pondicherry ;)
Apart from being peaceful and cheap the one thing which sets it apart from other tourist places in India is the surrrounding French aura. The street names (most of them) are all French, and are incredulously clean !!! You have the doodhwala speaking French without attending Alliance Francis classes (no kidding, though am not sure if they also manage the accent). The restaurants serve French and Italian foods (read bland). You see people from more than 30 countries here zipping around in bicycles around the streets of pondy. (no i didn't count them, read it somewhere and moreover they all looked like some Foreigner :P).
Wanna experience Mauritius, France and India (just a touch little far fetched) all in one place Pondicherry is the place to be. Go and pamper yourself.
Photos here http://picasaweb.google.com/vishal.jalan/PeacefulPondicherry
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Very Nice.......
sounds very good...
but just fyi, bike rent rate in our good old gandhinagar is 100 per day..
never u mind :)
but then again i am shocked @ 99.96 and not-knowing-meaning-of-jetty!
not meaning to touch any raw nerves...
all the best~
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