Diaries Of a Traveler: Pondicherry: A little bit Of French In India

Day: Nov 14 2008, Time 1100am

I do not have to explain the Geography or the history behind the city of Pondicherry. Pondicherry is a union territory comprising of territories pondicherry, mahe, karaikal and yanam. pondicherry had been a french establishment until it was merged with the Indian union in 1956 after a special treaty with the French. Pondicherry still enjoys many special status, like it has its own legislative assembly, it has accorded french as an official language.

Pondicherry might look like an average Tamil city once you enter it, but in contrast there are lot of changes within the city. Roads look better, pavements are cleaner, the police over here sport a cap which dates to the french colonial era, everything almost looks something different.

Entrance to Pondicherry(or Puducherry as it is known)

We arrived in pondicherry around 11am, since we did not have any plans to stay back in Pondicherry(we had to make up to chidambaram the same day), there was no effort done on searching any rooms in this city, but i would almost suggest a day stay in pondicherry to catch the sunrise across the beach and also to laze around the city when everything around you moves at a snail's pace.

Pondicherry is divided into two divisions, mind its not the people who are divided,only the city. The north part of the city is the French quarter, with its wide pavements and cemented roads, neatly maintained plush bungalows or villas used by the erstwhile french commanders and officers during their establishments in the 19 century. The other, south part of Pondicherry consisting of the Tamil quarter, which is like any other city in Tamil Nadu or the rest of the country( but i guess much better than an average Indian city).

Most of the tourist concentration is across the Beach Road or the Goubert Avenue and the Aurobindo Ashram.

Pondy police lazing it out on the beach after a hard days work

We started to laze around the beach road for a few hours moving up and down over a km of the Beach road, this was enough for my parents and they stopped by Bharathis park. I left them there and started hanging over the pretty French quarters to check out the villas. Almost every street is named in french here. you can see tourists moving around the french quarters in their bicycles. I even had the chance to glimpse an electric bike. It took me almost around 2 hours to completely roam around the French quarters. I was almost tired by this time and the clock was almost ticking 3. I reached back to the park and we had our lunch at a chettinadu restaurant called "Appachhi", i do not know what the name meant, but the food was absolutely delicious, could savour some chettinadu cuisines like biriyani and karaikudi chilly chicken.