Pondicherry Trip ..

It all started with Pankaj getting his new car and Ajay's party at the Ebony .. Pankaj was raring to go to some places in his car and ultimately the discussion ends up in deciding to go for a trip somewhere .. I had the idea of Pondicherry and Coorg at my mind.. But Rajeeb thought we should go to some sea-side place and not some places higher up as we normally do ;-) .. Initially Deep and Kongkon also thought of joining but they had to drop due to work pressure (;-);-) ) ..And as usual after saying no Honsha also joined with lot of enthu.. So that left with me,Honsha,Pankaj,Rajeeb,Indrani and Anamika.. Six people won't fit inside a Palio so we decided to go for a Qualis instead of taking 2 cars .. So we were all set to hit the road on 4th night .. Journey begins and we started from Blr to Pondicherry .. The onward journey was mostly uneventful except once our driver was feeling sleepy and the car was swerving towards the right .. Ohhh God,it was a terrible feeling and luckily nothing happened and the driver regained his composure..It happened
something around 3 am in the night and everybody else was sleeping happily except me .. And thanks to that event everyone woke up and I had chance to take a nap at the back seat . ;-);-)
We reached pondicherry at 5 am in the morning ..Now it's time to search for a hotel for our stay .. I got some print-outs from the net and to utter disappointment when I tried any of those numbers I was not able to get through any of them.. Seems the numbers got changed .. And at this point the Outlook Traveler guide comes to our rescue as it had all the updated numbers .. after much searching/roaming and endless phone calls we decided to check-in into Hotel De Pondicherry .. This hotel is on the French quarter of Pondicherry and we were readily falls into love of the place.. It was on rue dumas street just next to the Promenade , just a minutes walk from the hotel to the sea.. We love the ambiance of the hotel ,it was actually a French house renovated to convert into a hotel.. anyway, I was feeling very sleepy as I have slept probably an hour or two on the whole journey .. But fighting the sleep I walked up to the sea to see the morning light hitting the sea.. It was about 7 in the morning and it's already bit hot up there .. But the feeling of seeing the morning sea swept away all the other thoughts..After sometime I decided to return to hotel..
Woke up by 10am and after a refreshing shower we are ready to roll..First we went to Aurbindo Ashram near the Promenade but it was closed at that time so we've visited the temple nearby .. Then we have decided to go to Auroville.. Auroville is everything it is called - "The International Township of Harmony", and more. Based on the concept of the Mother, it is an entirely independent multi-racial community, which works and lives in self-fashioned, wildly original homes. It consists of 50 settlements spread across 20-sq-kms. The whole place carries a sense of peace(though there were lot other people there was not much noise or chaos .. It was so hot in Pondicherry and the cool climate(thanks to the trees n greeneries all around) in Auroville. We've stayed there for almost 3-4 hours just relaxing .. Then by 4.30 we decided to hit the beach near Aurovile .. The beach was not that good or clean as it happens to being other places but still we enjoyed a lot with sand and water ..May be the beach was lil' bit dirty after the Tsunami striked few days back,just my thought.. We returned back to Pondichery after it was getting dark..We had a lil' bit of problem as the promenade and the Roads nearby was closed for the convenience of the people who were walking on the sea-side .. We also came to the promenade to have a stroll along the sea-side with the cool breeze hitting our face.. The walk along the sea-side was probably one of the best things to do in Pondicherry.. BTW, I bought an YO-yo which lights up when u spin it .. Anamika broken the first one while trying her hand on that .. Luckily the seller was a kind one and gave us another one without any extra cost .. Pankaj also bought one more yo yo .. Sometimes kids inside u comes out,isn't it ..
By 10pm we were back to our hotel and had dinner there . I had lotsa expectations
regarding sea-food and French cuisine there was utterly disappointed.. I think Koshy's and Ebony in Bangalore serves far better food ..

Road Condition: The entire stretch was nice .. The road upto Krishnagiri from Bangalore is part of the PM highway and a cool road to drive.. The diversion towards P'cherry was also a nice road with Tamarinds trees lined up by the side of the road..