Pondicherry
A trip came from nowhere.
The story starts here. It was the day when year was moving to end. I was sitting with my girlfriend and was quiet and thinking what should I gift her this new year. Clothes, cosmetics, dinner, lunch, surprise party, etc.. were roaming around my mind to confuse me in endeavour to do something very special. The day past away and I was helpless, thinking still what to do.
Next day, A call came surprisingly from Ajit. He said “sun, Pondi chalega? tu aur Preeti”. What to say when all of a sudden someone asks you such a question. I enquired about itinerary, modes of travel and who all are travelling. On a brief note and some hurry he explained till Chennai train, after that cab, while returning to Bangalore by bus(remember this line). I said OK, but we will try to do train while returning as well. He said, we will see then and there itself. I replied OK, I am in. And while he was about to cut the phone, he told Choti “sharma chal raha hai…”, as if it was the hardest part of the trip to ask me ☺.
I asked my girlfriend, she asked almost same questions to me. I answered and after putting some thought on modes of travel and money, we were in. It was now the time to decide full schedule and get ready for the beaches.
We had chats over phone, lots of options, conditions. Finally we decided to go by train till Pondi(had to do tatkal tickets). Reach hotel in Morning do tatkal tickets, cancel bus tickets and start getting ready for first place to visit. Didn’t know which place to go when.
26th Dec: I had taken work from home and others went office except Anu. Ajit, Choti, Anu had decided to come by Ola cab to yeshwantpur station and Preeti and myself coming by another Ola cab. We were bringing dinner from Mast Kalandar. We were 5 but as per Choti we had to bring 4 thalis(his weird calculations). We looted Mast kalandar by applying coupon for each 250 benefitting us with 2 gulab jamuns. We got in all 10 gulab jamuns and 4 thalis. We settled in train. Ajit brought sanitizer(never used). Preeti had kept some newspapers. I brought cards. We all had dinner in train and despite of 2 gulab jamuns per person there was 1 guy who eventually had 3.5 ☺. Ya we had 2 girls with us, it was all possible there. We played cards till 1 A.M and slept. Pondi was last stop of train so we were not worried.
27th Dec: We are in Pondi 6:00 A.M, train was on time, we were feeling sleepy. We all controlled our nature’s call but one. We took auto to reach hotel Serenity. It was on Serenity beach. We had to book tatkal tickets and hotel manager didn’t have good net connection. Here comes our onsite agent(Ankur Acharya). We called him, he was asleep as usual. Asked him to book tickets, gave names and IDS. He booked a ticket having 4 guys Choti, Ajit, Anu, Preeti. We at our place somehow booked one ticket having Anu as passenger. So we had 5 tickets (1 repeated), our departure from Pondi was in some mess. We decided to ignore that and moved on, asked hotel guy for any rented bikes and places to visit. He arranged 2 Activas and 1 Deo for 2 days. Before coming to Pondi, we were told to see Auroville… something. We made a plan finally : Go to Auroville, book ticket for tomorrow(meditation center) → french colony → city beach → dinner → hotel → next day → auroville meditation → paradise beach → station → Bangalore → Office ☹
AuroVille: We reached Auroville. Huge crowd, people in queue to buy tickets. We were no different, standing in a queue. Soon, we realised the queue was for watching a presentation and after that we will be given tickets. After watching presentation, we got free ticket but date given was 3 days from now. Ya that’s how it is, bookings are done well in advance. Now we had no other option but to eat and have a walk of the place. Other than meditation place which was completely free, there were so many shops, 1–2 boutiques, restaurants which were actually generating revenue for the place. Clothes and other handmade items were much more expensive than expected or even thought. After doing some sort of window shopping, photo session(courtesy: Ajit Pathak) and lunch we moved towards an elliptical structure made in Gold called Matrimandir.
We walked about 2–3 km to reach this place from Auroville. Stayed for almost 15 mints and left. Picked up our scooties and headed towards French colony, equally famous. Very nice houses made in French style, hut shaped roofs, people riding cycle all over. Adjacent to French colony is City Beach, nice place to see the waves striking big stones. People relax there sitting on stones, eating corn or ice-creams. We sat there for about 30 minutes and went for dinner. Hooo.. Damn spicy food. After having dinner we again came back to beach. And started photo session. Ajit found a guy shooting fire images. Excitingly he was TOI cameraman.
After 1 hour or so, near about 11 we had milk with kesar and left from city beach.
28 Dec: Sunday and this day was much entertaining and risky. India v Australia 3rd Day. 5:00 AM. We were on a holiday and yes watching match. We had to quickly wake up and get ready for paradise beach, as there was no auroville possible. We got ready had breakfast and left for the beach. Again a big queue and this beach was pretty far, near about 10–13 km from our hotel. There were 2–3 boats which were taking people to beach. we parked our vehicles and got the ticket and after1 hour got into the boat. It was raining light from morning. After reaching beach through back water of ocean we landed on beach. It was very realistic beach. People playing volleyball, some floating in waves, some having food. We were late, yes. We were late, I can say this because when we reached, some guyies were already going back. I would never go back so early from such a nice beach. We were unfortunate to spend less time there. We decided to put our bags and shoes on the sand which should not be invisible from where ever we go in water. We enjoyed a lot, had tried going against waves, with waves, under water, throwing water over each other. Had a small break to eat some rice. Towards the end of day, waves come higher and it becomes more tough to come back. We came out by correct time and could manage to change dress and board to the last boat which takes us back through back waters.
Now that we realised that we have train at 8:30 PM, we had only 2 hours to get back to hotel, take luggage, have dinner(We were so hungry after fighting against waves), return vehicles and reach station before 8:30. We reached hotel in 25 minutes as the roads were slippery and it was raining. Took luggage from hotel, headed towards station with luggage. It was already 7:30 when we reached station. Ajit, Choti dropped Preeti, Anu to platform with luggage and came back and we 3 hurried to A2B to have dinner packed for us. I had opened Google maps and while riding my phone fell. Ajit went much ahead that we could not call him back. I quickly assembled my phone and we again started searching A2B. Fortunately we found it and by that time Ajit had called bike owner to reach A2B to take the bikes back. Choti and I went inside A2B, ordered 4 north Indian thalis ans asked them to quickly pack. It was 8 by this time. I was on counter, Choti was on gate of A2B looking for Ajit. And Ajit don’t know where he was. I guess he was still searching for A2B. Choti and Ajit had the task to handover bikes and I had to make sure that parcel is done in time. Returning bike happened to be quicker and they joined me on counter. Since there was some more time in parcel, Ajit and Choti booked auto till station and bought some namkin and sweets. Finally I got the parcel and at around 8:20 we departed from A2B. We reached station in some 7–8 minutes, ran through platform and reached to train, where 2 ladies were sitting and waiting for us ☺. Over? Not yet.
Remember, we had messed up with return tickets. We started dinner and waited for ticket checker. And he came, he called names one by one, we showed only 1 ticket and made him assume that we had all tickets. I kept my head down eating despite there was nothing much left to eat till he left, so by humanity he could not disturb me while eating. After all this drama, we completed our holiday, visit to Pondicherry successfully and slept in train. We got more time to sleep as train was late as usual…
