Auroville

Auroville

The Indians in the room next to us like the TV loud. Stupidly loud. They also like to leave their door open, smoke in their room, come home drunk at all hours of the night and talk loudly, again with their door wide open.

While Chris asked them nicely to be quiet, the noise persisted on and off throughout the night. We had a crappy sleep and Chris woke up feeling a bit sicker than yesterday (man cold). Regardless, we were off to Auroville.

Light house Pondicherry

Auroville is an international community located about 12km from Pondicherry founded by 'The Mother' who also founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram we visited last night. While you don't get get to see much of the community itself, there was a viewing area from which you could take in Matrimandir. Matrimandir, in a nutshell, looks like a giant gold golfball. The video we were forced to watch before checking out Matrimandir told us that its inner sanctum is made of white marble and contains a giant spherical crystal but unfortunately only the truly dedicated are allowed inside to check it out. And you're not actually allowed to go in and just 'check it out,' you are meant to go in and 'concentrate.' It all sounds very new age and we struggled to get our head around what the 2000ish residents actually do with their time, apart from concentrating and finding themselves.

On the road back from Auroville to the coast we found a guesthouse which we figured, being a bit out of Pondicherry, might be quiet (well, at least relatively to the rest of India.) I couldn't help but be pleased when the kind man walked me through the deserted corridors to show me the room and informed me that he charges white people 500 INR and charges locals 700 INR. Maybe tonight we wouldn't be kept awake by partying locals.

After having a quick look for panniers, to no avail, we went back to Le Ocean guesthouse after grabbing some super cheap samosas for lunch (2 INR each), packed our things and got the hell out of there.

Thankfully, RM Guesthouse was still as quiet as when we had checked the room out previously. We checked in then took Big Red back into Pondy for one last hoorah before we set off in the morning. We wandered through the French Quarter, revelling in the quiet streets which are arranged in an efficient grid-like pattern. It's funny how efficiency is so rare over here how much you appreciate it when you encounter it.

Boop

We enjoyed two ridiculously over priced banana lassis at a place recommended by Lonely Planet and then went shopping! I got myself some Ali Baba pants and Chris got himself a delightfully patterned party shirt which will hopefully keep his arms safe from the UV in the coming months. We took a walk and some photos along the promenade and generally just enjoyed the French side of Pondicherry. On the East side of the city's dividing canal, it really is very pleasant. We went back to Sri Aurobindo Ashram to see if it looked any different by daylight. There were still people meditating everywhere, it was still silent, everyone was still barefoot but we did get to see the the samadhi and all of the beautiful flowers that covered it. There was a constant flow of devotees circling the samadhi and praying. Quite a sight. Afterwards, we saw the same temple as we had last night only today there was an elephant out the front. I was pleased to see it wasn't chained up but rather just stood there being fed, taking money from people and passing it to his keeper, then touching people on the head with his trunk. With the drumming and chanting coming from the temple and a close-up view of this magnificent giant, I was put into almost a trance like state and some time passed before we moved on. It's hard seeing elephants over here. It's sad because they're not free but at the same time they are just so fascinating! It's in a city! And very well trained! Where does it sleep? In its temple? On a side note, unlike Sri Lanka where monkeys were absolutely everywhere, we have only seen one monkey in India so far. And unlike the wild, cheeky ones we saw on Sri Lanka, this one was on a leash.

Boat repair

Pondicherry streets by night

After checking out the dinner menus at a few places we thought we'd found a good one. We sat down and everything but decided it was just too darn hot in there to enjoy any spicy food. So, back to yesterday's trusty restaurant it was. We even felt trusting enough to order some meat...a delicious butter chicken masala. Combine that with yet another veg biriyani (we will never want regular steamed rice again), chapati, onion raita and tea and we were two very happy campers. After a stroll back to where Big Red was parked we had worked off enough food to fit in two very French petit chocolates. One white chocolate and nut cluster and one chocolate cup filled with hazelnut mousse. Yum!

We tackled the Indian night traffic head on and made it home deciding to do as little night driving in the future as possible.