Visit to South India - continued

Apologies the promised update about the Yercaud visit took a week rather than a day, but here I go.

Yercaud is about 230 kilometres from Pondicherry and there are two ways of getting there. The first is taking a State Transport Corporation bus to Salem and then another bus up the hill to Yercaud. The other is to do the entire journey in a taxi. You have probably guessed which option I chosen.

The taxi was supposed to pick us up at 0700 in the morning and we got up around 0615 or so, packed our bag and stepped out of our room in Residence Shalimar to have breakfast.

This morning, there was another guest waiting at the table. An Iranian-American, she has been coming to Pondicherry for many years to discover spirituality and yoga. The lady is obviously fascinated by such deep faith in India and got talking to us about spirituality.

I knew this was going to be a long discussion, so I slipped away to check up on the taxi. Sir, the driver who was supposed to take you to Yercaud returned late last night. He will be with you by 0800. So why wasn't I informed? I tried your number at 10.30 last night but it was switched off. There, another one chides me for switching my mobile phone off after 09.00 pm.

After my lame attempt with "people have so much faith in God because there is little to believe in - as Government, Police, Bureaucracy and Society have all failed them" my better half did a better job articulating the ancient culture and the belief of its people in that Lord Almighty. Maybe I was distracted by the Starbucks coffee bag that the Iranian-American was carrying. She loved the yoga and spirituality of India, but the coffee will have to be American.

The taxi arrived at 0800. It was nice and spacious Ambassador, which is still the best car to negotiate India's motorways with. It is tough and rarely breaks down. The driver apologised for the delay. He had been on a six-day visit to Goa and Karnataka and got back in late.

The journey to Salem takes one through the NH-45 (or National Highway 45), one of those toll roads built under the 'build-operate-transfer' scheme by private operators. Such roads are well-maintained and have cut the travel time to major cities by hours.

Unfortunately, Salem requires a detour through NH-68, a motorway still being developed. Some stretches are good, but others are pretty bad. Traffic from both sides flows on just one side of the road and the regulars - like our driver - drive cautiously.

Somewhere along the road, an elephant came along. In return for some coins, he put his trunk in through one of the windows to bless our little girl. She was too excited by this and wanted us to give some more coins. But we decided to push ahead with our journey.

It took over five hours to get to the top of the hill and to our hotel, Grand Palace. The hotel had lovely views of the valley, a nice play-area for younger kids, another play area for older children with table-tennis, chess and computer games. For adults, there was a spa advertised through a woman lying in a jacuzzi with loads of rose petals.

This was 30 December and many other guests - with similar plans of welcoming 2010 in Yercaud - had started coming in. The fliers around the hotel promised 'Fun-filled party with party-games, mind-blowing music and a buffet of 50 international and national dishes'. The Cloud 9 pub at the hotel went a step ahead, promise a third drink 'absaloutly free' if you bought two small drinks.

Our friends from London, we were supposed to meet, were headed to Yercaud from Bangalore. Even though the road is much better (NH-7), it took them much longer to get there. A famous Kannada actor died that morning and his fans were out on the streets to mourn the death and to break or set fire to a few vehicles. Then, their luxury Volvo bus broke down in the middle of the motorway and a replacement bus had to come from Bangalore to bring them to Salem. It was nearly 11 in the night when they got there.

On new year's eve, we hired a cab to take us to the local attractions. Like any hill station, Yercaud had many good viewing points, an old temple, an old business in natural essences, a lake with paddling boats and loads of monkeys - including some really fond of drinking Mirinda.

We spent a fair bit of time in the local botanical garden, which had many varieties of orchids and plants, including a fly-eater - kept away from people in a cage. As with other monuments or places of public interest, the botanical garden also had a mark of some visitors - scratched on a leaf.

By the time we returned to the hotel, there were cops all over. It seemed to be the usual security check, unless one of them mentioned that a threat had been received about blowing the hotel up. All rooms were being checked to ensure that such a nefarious plan didn't succeed.

A further dampener for us was the main function, which was some party-games followed by extremely loud - and very often, bad, music. Of the 50-dish buffet too, the only things edible were roomali roti, daal, chicken biryani and some desserts.

After trying to watch a film in our room for a little while, we came out. It seemed too boring a way to welcome the new year. Thankfully, the hotel had arranged a bonfire outside and we sat around it until the clock struck 12.

Then, it was time to sleep and prepare for the next day. Our friends were returning to Bangalore and we were going to Salem - to catch an overnight train to Trivandrum.

Back from the break

Apologies for the prolonged absence from this blog, but I was busy fulfilling a resolution from 2009.

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.