Exciting trip!!!

Pondicherry (Pondi) is a quaint little city on the eastern coast of India, around 160 kms from the capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. It was a French colony till 1962 and the cultural influences can still be found around the French part of the city. Small, clean houses painted in English colors and clean surroundings draw your attention.

We had been there on the weekend after Diwali for a getaway and we had an unbelievable time (the reason will follow below!). So, we had our friends coming down from Bangalore who joined us for the trip. We left early morning on Saturday and it took us around 3 hours to cover the distance. The road to Pondi is a beautiful one and has water on both the sides (most of the part). It’s a picture perfect drive with hardly any traffic which helps you to maintain your car’s speed.



Matrimandir - Auroville, Pondicherry



We checked in our hotel rooms and set out to visit the world-famous Auroville. After a tiring walk of more than 2 kms we were back to our car, thoroughly exhausted and crazily hungry. Now, I am not sure if this is a new thing there, but you have a lot of places which give you Pizzas in stone grill oven. And for some reason they call it the “perfect French-style” (Wasn’t pizza supposed to be Italian???). However, so we entered one of these places and had our fill which everyone enjoyed…Someone has rightly said, “Hunger is the best sauce”….OK…The pizza was tasty as well….:-)

However, things started going wrong in the evening when we got calls from my in-laws telling us about the cyclone, “Jal”, which was supposed to hit Pondi the next day. We frantically checked the news channels to confirm that we were in a mess!!! Rains started at night and it was pouring by morning. Heavy rains, stormy winds and water logging everywhere were the only things visible from our hotel rooms. We decided to leave early but only after checking the Auro Ashram which is located in the heart of the city (A friend of ours wanted to see it at ANY COST!!). Anyways, luckily we had missed the visitor’s timings and we had to turn back. Almost all shops and all restaurants were closed and we came to know that people were evacuated from the coast-line. Only then did we realize the gravity of the situation and we started off for Chennai.

Poor tree!

The drive back was no where similar to the one we had yesterday (though it was thrilling). Heavy winds and rains were our other companions than the cars which were rushing their heels off to some place safer. We came across a couple of trees which had blocked the entire highway as they had just experienced the wrath of nature. The waters which ran parallel to the road, now, were trying hard to meet the road. Everything around was flooded and the once calm backwaters were now raging and galloping everything that came their way. However, we reached Chennai safely even before the cyclone could catch us….:-)

All in all it was an exciting, thrilling, adventurous and fun-filled trip where I guess for the first time we could hardly be “tourists”.

This was not surrounded by water definitely, on our way to Pondi!!!