How not to do Pondicherry Part One

The Unfinished French Project

Unlike Ponmudi, this trip was actually planned, somewhat. I've wanted to visit Pondicherry ever since I chose it for my tenth grade project on French speaking territories. I did a pretty decent presentation and my French teacher was tres impressed especially since she didn't know there were French speaking territories in India. Still, in the back of my mind, I knew I could've had a cooler presentation if I had actually been there, experienced it and all. So you could say this was a trip ten years in the making. I was just looking for the right people to experience it with.

Travel Safety and the Rani Padminis of Tomorrow

And when the time came, what a cool distinguished lot I got. There were four of us- two of whom are college lecturers in the subjects of literature and photography and the other, an editor in a prominent newspaper (er, I think that’s her designation), all respectable jobs of course. Then, there’s me, the wannabe vagabond. We were Rani Padmini before Rani Padmini became a thing if that makes sense? Or maybe I’m making a huge deal of nothing.

But it was a huge deal though. Many of you who live in the West or metropolitan cities may not understand the significance of a short weekend getaway like this one. Many of you who travel frequently and alone might not understand it either. Many of you who are male will definitely not understand it. Although if you could go back a little in time to the point before you started travelling, when you were wary about things like money, job security, safety etc… you could probably empathize a little.

See, some of us come from orthodox families where the concept of women travelling alone is unfathomable. Some of us probably hadn’t travelled without a chaperone ever. Some of us had parents who were afraid for our safety and perhaps of what society would say. And some of us were probably more scared than our parents. I mean, you could hardly blame them or us especially with all the violent rapes happening around the country. In fact, said parents were more comfortable with us going to Europe than traipsing around India. Clearly, they haven’t seen Taken.      

It’s all about confidence or false confidence as I relayed to one of my tumblr sisters. I mean, if foreigners can navigate the maze that is the Indian Railways, just how hard could it be, right? 

Are we there yet? 

Sweltering heat, warm winds and an unforgiving sun are what greeted us at Karaikal (pronounced car-reck-l) station in the morning. It was a sharp contrast from the cool, air-conditioned bogey we had travelled in from Ernakulam. We weren’t deterred though. Although this little district falls under the Union Territory, we were still around 130 kms away from proper Pondicherry. Meaning there were still three more hours to go. We had to get ourselves to the bus station quickly and hope there were buses every fifteen minutes to our destination like the internet claimed.

As we walked out of the railway station, we were swarmed with super persuasive auto drivers who would love to take us to the bus station for Rs. 100. No thanks, bro. Rs. 90. Really, not interested. Rs. 80. We’ll walk, thanks. Rs. 60, last price. And we walked, following the locals out to the road. We asked our friendly local vegetable vendor about how far the bus station was. She promptly said it was nearby. She then proceeded to tell us that if we walked a little bit more we could get a tempo and it would only cost us five rupees. Nice. And this is why you should always talk to the locals. We offered our gratitude and headed forward in search of this tempo.          

The tempo turned out to be a bus and not the lorry I had imagined in my mind. (Of course, those things only happen in movies.) The bus station was really close like she said and there were actually buses to Puducherry like the internet said. Everything seemed to be working out.

Forty minutes into the journey, we were dying. It was so hot. That’s what happens when you decide to travel during one of the hottest months of the year. Sure, there are a lot of advantages to travelling off season, but then there are the disadvantages like this. I’m pretty sure I was delirious because of the heat and because we hadn’t stopped for lunch. We had immediately boarded, not wanting to waste time waiting for another bus and besides, the bus driver said they’d stop along the way.     

He did, two hours in. We halted near this humble roadside eatery, the dust clearly settling on the food. Maybe that’s secret ingredient? Only two of us braved the food. Those daredevils. The other two settled for fruits. 

Another half an hour in and nous sommes arrives at our hotel... after haggling with the auto drivers at the bus station that is. It's like they can tell you're an outsider.