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Other entries in Pondicherry

"Home sweet home"

Having spent several days/nights in Mahabalipuram, it was time to move on down the coast to Pondicherry - a former French colony, with quaint little French-esque streets, and police wearing gendarmes-esque caps. It's right on the coast in the same way that Mahapalipuram is, but it's a lot bigger (although not even remotely close to Chennai/Bangalore in size). Unfortunately, Mahabalipuram is such a small place it doesn't even have a train station. And so, Agents Johnsow and Dolac set out one fine morning in search of their first bus ride in India...

We got to the bus 'station', by which i mean the side of the road where buses pull up one after the other. We went to the ticket 'office', by which i mean a tiny shack with a hole in the bottom, meaning you have to crouch down to see the person in there, let alone talk to them. The man told us the bus would be there at 1.20pm - only twenty minutes away, nice. We put our bags on the floor and sat down in the sun.

Out of nowhere, this French Guy (we never found out his name, so we're calling him French Guy - he'll go down in folklore i tell thee!) came and sat with us, asked if we were also going to Pondicherry, and told us that he had just missed the previous bus because they aren't obviously-signed. I'm not sure how to describe this guy, but...imagine...he had a moustache, except it was totally shaved off on the right side of his mouth. So not really a moustache, but half a moustache. He had a long goatee (tied with string/bead things), except it was totally shaved off on the left side of his chin. So not really a goatee, but half a goatee. Here's the funny thing: i didn't even notice this until we'd been speaking to him for ten minutes or so. Eccentric, and extremely talkative, but a friendly guy at the end of the day. Anyway. 1.20pm came and went, no sign of our bus. At least, not that we we aware of - all the buses have signs in the window with the name of the destination, but it's in Hindi and/or Tamil, so it could've been staring us in the face and we still wouldn't have known. We kept asking the ticket 'office' guy whether it was the right one. No sir, not this one, next one, he said, as bus after bus after bus came and went. At 1.45pm another bus turned up, did a u-turn in the road, and started driving off, without actually stopping. French Guy hopped on, telling us it was the right one, and, basically taking his word for it, we hopped on after him as it picked up speed.

Fortunately, it was the right bus. Unfortunately, it was rammed. Seats? Yeah right. Baggage space? You wish. But who cares about all that, when the bus is kitted out with a DVD player and TV screens, with a Bollywood movie blasting out of the loud speaker for the entire journey? Standing in the middle of the bus with our bags totally blocking the aisle, with the ticket conductor blokey scrambling over us to get to the front of the bus again...all whilst we hurtled along the road, seemingly out of control, yet strangely in control. Crazy. Buses here think nothing about overtaking other vehicles. Including other buses. And trucks. On single-lane roads. Whilst going around a corner. At full speed. With oncoming vehicles in plain sight. And this was a state bus rather than a private one - believe it or not, state buses have a better safety record than the private ones. I dread to think what the private ones are like!

As the bus made stops along the way, people gradually got off. Eventually we had somewhere to sit, although by this time we were nearly in Pondicherry. As the bus pulled into the station, French Guy dreamily uttered  (in a French accent, of course) "Ahh, home sweet home". He'd never been there before. The three of us were immediately approached by a Boss looking to score a big fare from taking us to a guesthouse of our choice. We plumped for one called Swastika, partly because the name was...intriguing...and partly because it was recommended by The Books. We got there to find they only had single rooms, and they only had two left. Ultra-cheap though...French Guy was hooked. But we couldn't (realistically) share a single room, so we parted company with him and looked for somewhere else. We found one round the corner called Golden Showers (seriously, what is it with the guesthouse names in this place!?) but they were charging 450 rupees for a double room, whereas Swastika was only charging 180. We figured we could find somewhere else for cheaper. Two rickshaw trips and seven guesthouses-with-no-vacancies later, we found ourselves back at Golden Showers, with our tails between our legs. Typically, it turned out to be a really decent room, worth the cost.

After getting the room, we dumped our bags and went for a walk down the 'beach', by which i mean the waterfront, which doesn't seem to actually have any sand, just rocks. Nice though. By this time it was late in the evening - nice and cool, perfect walking-around weather. There is a large (about 4 metres tall) statue of Gandhi right on the waterfront, with kids clambering all over it and people sat around chilling out and/or selling things. We carried on walking down the waterfront to a restaurant that we'd read about in The Books. Whilst we were walking we saw lots of tourist-esque people walking around too, and quickly concluded that most of them were French. Former French colony, lots of French tourists - stands to reason, i guess. So much so that the Indian people here actually assumed we were French when they were speaking to us. Everywhere else they assume white people are English and/or American. Here we just had to be French, didn't we? In the restaurant, the waiter said bon appetite, bon soir etc... The table next to us had a couple of Americans on it...it's weird how you almost feel a connection with total strangers in these situations, as if you should say hi, just because you can understand each other. I had steak and chips. For the record, whether in France or India, French steaks do not compare to American ones!

We left the restaurant and hired a Boss to take us to Golden Showers. Sadly, it soon became clear he didn't actually know where it was. To be fair, he did stop at a shop and ask the guys for directions. One guy came out to speak to us thinking that he would be able to translate...he comes up to me and says "parlez-vous francais?", to which i replied "err, je suis anglais!". He laughed. I managed to ask him which direction the beach was from there in French, and told him Golden Showers was to the left of it. Fortunately my French is not as rusty as i thought, and he immediately knew where i was talking about. We got there in the end, still laughing at the fact that we're in India, conversing with the locals in French. Back in the room, we turned the TV on and Manchester United vs Charlton was on - yus!

In the morning we had a good walk around the town, going up the coastal walkway again to see the Gandhi statue in the daylight. We had already agreed to spend just one night here, and after our walk round it was clear that, whilst it's a nice, clean place, there's not that much to see or do. It would have been nice to make a quick trip out to Auroville, a sort-of hippy commune just outside the town that's 'owned by nobody but belongs to everybody', but we didn't really have time. We took a few minutes to relax in the public park, and stopped off at a rather impressive church on the way back to the room. Who should we bump into here, but French Guy. He said he was going to hang around for another day or two and then move South. We bid each other bon voyage and went back to get our bags, and started looking for same-day transport to our next destination, Madurai...

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