The Nehas Do Pondicherry

A few weeks ago, my team hosted a conference in Hyderabad, and most of the folks flew down from Gurgaon to attend.  Austin and I had been talking about going to Pondicherry, since it's a farily short hop to the south and east.  Before we knew it, we had 10 traveling companions signed on for a road trip, including all three Nehas from my team - Neha A, Neha S, and Neha T.  

From Hyderabad, you have to travel to Chennai (Madras) and then continue on to Pondicherry via bus or car down the East Coast Road.  Our orignal plan was to take an overnight bus to Chennai, and 9 of the folks did that; from Chennai to Pondy, we planned to rent cars and drive.  However, we weren't able to get enough bus tickets for the whole team (darn it), so Austin and me, and the two drivers, Taru and Divya, flew at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to Chennai to pick up the cars and meet the bus.  We went through some shenanigans to find the rental car company, get gas, and find the bus station, only to find out that 'The Nehas' and their traveling companions were somewhere in downtown Chennai.  I need to stop here and pay homage to Google Maps and my Indian Blackberry.  The cell-tower triangulation on Google Maps was good enough (pinpointing our location within 3 meters for most of the trip) that I was able to navigate us through Chennai and on to Pondicherry, just by using Google Maps on my Blackberry.

Once we had the whole crew assembled and brunched, we were on the road again, headed for Pondicherry.  The East Coast Road is phenomenally good, by Indian standards, so the trip went fairly smoothly. We rolled into Pondy in the late afternoon, and after checking into our hotel, headed for the promenade along the beach.  Pondicherry is famous for two things - being the last French colony in India, and being home to the Utopian community of Auroville.  It also happens to be right on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, with beaches nearby.  In Pondy itself, the beach is rocky, so it's more for taking in the view than soaking up the sun.  After shopping around town and getting blessed by Lakshmi, the temple elephant, we headed to Rendezvous for some of the French cuisine that Pondy is famous for.  In the end, my traveling companions stuck with the Indian food, but I had a lovely Chicken Cordon Bleu and was pretty happy with life in general.

Our trip was short and sweet, so on Sunday at midday, we had to head back for Chennai.  After cafe au lait and croissants for breakfast at Le Cafe on the beach, we packed up our things and headed for Mahabalipurum, which is a beach town about 1 hour south of Chennai.  Mahabs, as it's known, has actual sand beaches and the most lookey-lous I have seen anywhere in India.  We went to the public beach to spend an hour or so enjoying the surf and sand.  The lighter skin of my traveling companions apparently was tremendously exotic to the Tamil locals, and it didn't help that all of the girls were frolicking in the waves.  I learned this trip that people on the beach in India swim in their clothes, not in swimsuits.  The only time that I'd been to the beach here, prior to Mahabs was in Goa where, apparently, the strong expat influence has changed the beach culture to be more Western in style.  

After everyone on the team went swimming in their clothes, we found a resort where folks could clean up and headed for a late lunch.  Unfortunately, we miscalculated time a bit and ended up having to take the food to go and leadfoot it out of town to get everyone back to Chennai in time for their flights.  We screeched to a halt in front of the Chennai airport and 10 girls and 2 guys poured out of the car, racing for check-in.  We were just in the nick of time.  The Nehas and posse made their flight by minutes, and Austin and I cruised into our flight just 30 minutes later.  Whew!  I would like to go back to Pondicherry sometime and do less of a speed round, but I'm really glad that I got to go, and it was fun to see the town with my team.  Vive la France!