Sunday Market Gandhi Statue Sunrise at Pondy

Pages From Pondy-Sunday

We planned to cover the Sunday Market, in the morning, return to our room, get our bags and visit Auroville, by boarding the local bus. We had our breakfast in the restaurant at Sabthaghiri, and took a bus to the Sunday Market.

The Sunday Market

The Sunday Market, is a unique attraction, in Pondy, every Sunday traders, occupy an entire street, almost a kilometre in length, and peedlle their wares. Items on sale range from, books, toys, cosmetics, dvds, electronis items like cameras and watches to cosmetics and clothes.

The street is packed with people trying to make a good deal. Both of us bought a pair of jeans and bermudas, Harish bought a bottle of English perfume, a belt and a couple of vests. I got three T-shirts, can you guess the price? Each shirt cost me just ten rupees, I bought the shirts and checked them, there were no defects, in them, good for wearing the house, or while playing cricket.

The AuroBoutique

This is a quaint little shop next to Adyar Ananda Bhavan, that sells incense sticks, diaries, calendars, gift items and souvenirs. We bought some packs of fragrant incense sticks and proceeded to Juice Wagon to have lunch.

The Juice Wagon

It will be unfair of me to overlook this restaurant, where we had two unforgettable meals. This is a great restaurant that primarily caters Continental food. The prices are decent, ambience good and the food is excellent, we were surprised to find the place empty on both of our visits. We had tomato soup, sandwiches, pasta and milk shakes. Do have a meal here if you go to Pondy.

We had our lunch and took a bus which dropped us 8 km from Auroville, autos charge Rs 100 to take you to Auroville. We learned that the Globe of Universal Peace, was closed on Sunday. We cursed the guy manning the Auro Travel infomation centre, wondering why he did not inform us that on Sundays Auroville, would be closed.

Disappointed we returned to the bus terminus and reserved tickets for the 4:25 PM bus. The return journey was uneventful, and the bus was packed with people.

We reached Kasi Theatre at around 8:30 PM. Harish was in a sorry state, as he was nauseated and was ready to puke all over the place at any time. We enterd Saravana Bhavan, and Harish rushed to the restroom.

He returned after fifteen minutes, as a much relieved man. We had dinner and returned to our room, at 9:20 PM. A nice trip, which would have to be made again, as we could not visit Auroville.

Probably the last weekend of May, will find us again in Pondy.

Pages From Pondy-Saturday

We had been planning for a trip to Pondicherry, for about a month, and finally all things fell into place, and on April 27, Saturday, Harish and myself, decided to make the trip.

On Saturday morning we reached CMBT-Koyambedu, at 8 AM, we had our breakfast at Nathan's Cafe, a restaurant adjacent to the bus-terminus.

We boarded an express-bus to Pondy, the bus started at 8:35 AM, soon, we were on the scenic ECR and the bus was moving pretty fast away from the traffic snarls of the city.

There were various villages on the way, the bus passed through Mahabalipuram, Kalpakkam, Marakkanam, and we finally reached the Pondy bus-terminus at around 12:20 PM.

We began hunting for rooms, our first stop was Hotel Mass, an imposing white building, on entering it, we realized that it was a Star-Hotel, the room tariff was Rs 1900, for a day, we left the hotel, and crossed the road to another hotel Sabthagiri, the receptionist said that no rooms were there.

Then an auto-driver suggested a guest-house, called Raj GuestHouse, on Palivasal Street, we were a bit apprehensive, but we went there, a double room with a TV for Rs 300 per day, sounded great and I paid the advance, Harish was a bit worried and said that the place was a bit shady, and suggested that I should have looked at some other hotel.

We were informed that we would get a room with the TV in a couple of hours, we left our bags at the reception, and visited the Aurobindo Ashram, then we had our lunch at Adyar Ananda Bhavan.

Then we visited the Auro travel centre to book tickets to Auroville, to our dismay we found that the bus had just left. We were disappointed, and left to our guesthouse. The room was big and clean. We switched on the TV, a local channel was playing the movie"Manamathan," and we saw it.

We left the room at about 5 PM, and walked from our guesthouse to the Manakkulam Vinayakar temple, we completed our darshan and walked to the beach and lazed around the beach till 7:30 PM, then we had our dinner at a restaurant called Juice Wagon and returned to our room.

We were just in time to view the delayed start of the World Cup final. I fell asleep immediately, while Harish saw the full Australian innings.