My better half and I had planned to see more of India while we are here, but hadn't done much about it until the last week of December. As you are aware, getting the house furnished, fixing the leaking taps, waiting for our stuff to arrive from London and sorting out a playschool for the little one had taken most of our time.
A nudge from one of our friends from London resulted in a plan to meet up and welcome 2010 in Yercaud, a hill station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. After spending some time on Google Maps, we decided to visit Mamallapuram and Pondicherry on the way to Yercaud.
If we are travelling all the way to Tamil Nadu, why not go to Kerala as well? reasoned my better half. It sounded like a good idea and we did a bit more research. A friend helpfully planned a rough itinerary from Kochi (Cochin) to Trivandrum and passed it on to a travel agent to provide a quote.
The question was how to get from Yercaud to Kochi? Both taxis and air journeys were too costly, and no trains ply between Salem (the station closest to Yercaud) and Kochi. Salem does have a good rail connection with Trivandrum, but the trains were all booked out because of the tourist season. After much dilly-dallying, we picked up a confirmed return air-ticket from Kochi to Delhi and a waiting list train ticket from Salem to Trivandrum.
When we boarded the aircraft from Delhi to Chennai (Madras) on 24 December, the only confirmed things we had was the hotel in Yercaud and the return flight from Kochi.
Mamallapuram is about an hour's drive from Chennai, on the East Coast Road. Like most well-maintained motorways, this one is a tolled road. It runs along the Tamil Nadu coast goes all the way to Pondicherry and beyond.
I had been to the city nearly 12 years ago, while visiting Chennai for the wedding of a close friend's brother. Back then, Mamallapuram was a dusty little town with a lovely beach.
All that has changed now. The East Coast Road is now dotted with resorts. My friend suggested checking into one of these resorts, but we booked ourselves in this quaint little place called Hotel Mahabs. It turned out to be a nice clean hotel, with a swimming pool, rooms with balcony and its own collection of exotic birds. The beach and the historic temples were all within walking distance.
As luck would have it, Mamallapuram's month-long Indian Dance Festival also opened the same day we reached there. With Arjuna's Penance, a 7th century temple, as the background and under the neon-lit gaze of the Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister and his deputy and son, dancers from different parts of the country displayed their skills.
With the temperature in the 30s, we chose to spend the afternoons by the swimming pool and mornings and evenings visiting the beach the temples.
During a day-time visit to Arjuna's Penance, I had an interesting experience. A woman came by with a thin stick in her hand. She offered some fortune-telling, which I refused. Have some mercy in the house of God, she said, showing her eczema-affected feet. Within minutes the pleading had turned into a threat to see me destroyed. And she had been talking for barely five minutes.
Another interesting change in Mamallapuram was the availability of good south India food. A lot more restaurants now sell tandoori and Chinese food than those selling dosas (rice pancakes) and idlis (rice cakes). This Indian & Chinese food is cooked the south Indian way - involving curry leaves, other local condiments and coconut. However, the cooks only occasionally get the preparation right.
While in Mamallapuram, we were told that Pondicherry is well-connected by bus. So, on 27 December, we checked out of the hotel and walked to the East Coast Road. We boarded the first bus that came along, and it turned out to be a State Transport Corporation bus. There was no room to sit and the little one was suddenly feeling sleepy. Thankfully, some people got off soon and we had seats.
As the bus meandered through the really green countryside, the success of Indian telecom sector was obvious. Apart from the ATMs of India's biggest public-sector bank, the only other common signs along the route were billboards of mobile phone companies Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, Tata Docomo and MTS.
It took about two hours and a total of 83 Indian Rupees (about £1) to reach Pondicherry - a former French colony.
Our accommodation in Pondicherry (booked from Mamallapuram) was a guest-house run by a French woman and a Kashmiri man. The website promised an interesting confluence of French cuisine and Kashmiri Wazwan, but on reaching there we found out that the only thing on offer there was toast and tea/coffee in the morning.
The French woman had been in India for nearly 15 years. She had travelled to different parts before making Pondicherry her home. Most of the time, she would stay behind thick iron grills accompanied by her three dogs. The only time the grills opened was for the advance to be paid for the room.
The Kashmiri husband was charged with serving breakfast, cleaning the rooms and making conversations with the guests.
For lunch or dinner, one had to go to the restaurants along the Auroville road. Pondicherry town itself had many more restaurant options, but was almost six kilometres away from the guest-house.
Don't know whether it was this or something else, but I wasn't too excited about Pondicherry. It seemed like a good place to spend a day or two, but we probably spent a day more.
Tomorrow, the journey to Yercaud.
No comments:
Post a Comment