Day 09: Pondicherry

Day 09

Villupuram looked better by daylight. But just barely. The night before turned out to be a shopping holiday because of the New Year and explained the thousands upon thousands of people milling about everywhere.

Just infront of our hotel, actually in the entrance, was a Hindu shrine of some sort. The kind you see everywhere in Hindu country. The flowers decorating it and the freshly put out trash were too much of an attractant to the local monkey population. Monkeys were fighting over and picking through the trash right infront of our rickshaws. Bizarre.

We thought we might be able to try some early morning photography just down the block. Michael and I had scouted out a location looking for some coffee.

We envisioned him reading a newspaper, out in the street just in front of a corner shop. Seemed simple enough.

We hauled one rickshaw over, loaded with all the gear and set up.

Lights and cameras in India are like throwing chum to the sharks. We were mobbed. It was impossible to try and direct hundreds of guys all wanted to have there photo taken. Harder still to explain what we were even doing there. About 2% if the locals speak 20 words of English. This doesn't give you much of basis for communicating.

We'd been going with the story that we were from Canada which was working for us for a bit. Today the story back-fired a bit when it turned out the people we were talking to were from the local paper and news service. Seems like we will be in the news all over Tamil Nadu.

When the crowd reached near riot the stage, the cops showed up. They are used to dealing with the surly locals so commenced to yelling at us. We had created, unwittingly, a traffic jam. We were informed that in the future the help of the police would be required for such activities and for a nominal charge they could beat the locals heads and achieve some sense of order.

We broke set quick and set our sights towards Pondicherry. It was only about 35KM away and we knew we could make it easily and put this unpleasantness behind us.

There was some hope that is would be a good place to rest for a couple days in European style. Most of our collection of guide books describe Pondicherry as having a quaint French colonial feel.

I guess we could see a little of that. Almost none though. Yes, the coast had a couple of old buildings that could be Frenchish, but it was hard to see. They were trying hard and replacing some Indian styled fencing at the local park with some fence that in a way look Euroish.

We decided to stay at the Promenade right on the beach, which is one of the hottest spots in Pondicherry. Like much of upscale India it was right out of the pages of Wallpaper magazine until you went to the bathrooms or started to look closely at the details. People seem to mop in the nice hotels but miss the corners where grim just builds and builds.

It dangerous to get lulled into a feeling of safety around Westernized hotel surroundings. The sumptuous buffet tempted us for all our meals but turned out to be the only time any of us felt ill. Micheal and I both didn't feel quite right after both dinner and breakfast the next day.

We've decided that upscale India is all smoke and mirrors. The fanciest store or hotel still requires hopping over an open sewer to get to. Fact.