Pondicherry
Thursday, January 17th, 2008There is definitely more than one way to skin a cat in this country. Yesterday when I arrived in tanjore I made it my business to find out when the bus to pondicherry left, the guy told me 3.30 and 7. He had unfortunately left out the am and pm bits so when I turned up at 3.30 at the bus stop there was no bus in sight with pondicherry on the front, I asked the lad at the counter and he said that that bus was at 3.30am. So there I was stood at a blisteringly hot bus stop with 4 hours to kill – I needed something to eat so over I went to the local cafe for some thali.
Sitting there I got into various conversations with some of the locals, they were livid at the behaviour of the australian cricketers in the ongoing test match in australia, I am unfortunate enough to look like one of the aussie cricketers so they for some bizarre reason think that I am one of them. Needless to say knowing a wee bit of whats going on goes a long long way. It was while I was talking to these lads that I remembered the trip from ooty to cochin, should’ve been one bus but ended up as 3. I got up immediately and over to the bus station and just asked for the first bus north. There was a town 30 miles north of tanjore that had a bus every 10 minutes to pondicherry so I made for there. 30 minutes I waited for the bus to turn up before I turned and asked the station manager when the next one was due, ‘Every 5 minutes’ he said – sometimes you have to laugh. Eventually it did come and on the bus I was.
I made it at last to pondicherry at 9 at night, I was absolutely wrecked so decided it was about time that I treated myself to somewhere decent for one night before finding somewhere that was more phil so to speak. I booked into the first place listed in the midrange hotel list according to the lonely planet, they had a big TV, room service, the lot so I was happy out here for one night.
I swapped hotels the next day early enough and then went onto explore pondi. It really doesn’t fit in with the rest of the country. First of all it is planned out in a grid fashion which makes it impossible to get lost. Secondly all the street signs are in french, but make no mistake you know before long that you are in india. There are plenty of hawkers, quite a few beggars and the food though it says it is french – its a rather tenuous connection. I walked into one place and ordered something that sounded french but when it came out it wasn’t something to write home to mother about – by any stretch of the immagination….
I met up with the english girls that I had met at xmas in varkala on my third night in pondi. It was great to meet up with some familiar faces after a couple of weeks in tamil nadu temple hunting. We had some nice food before I took off back to the hotel. Before I left we made plans to travel together up the coast to a place called mamallapuram to spend a week or so – happy days. As I walked back to the hotel, which was less than 1km away I found myself walking along the road on a starry night just thinking whatever thoughts to myself, ducking out of the way of hawkers selling their wares and turning right occasionally so see what the guys on the street were cooking up. All the while on my left hand side there was this massive, and I mean bloody huge, the size of the big shed at home in lavagh was this elephant, just walking down the street. I seriously just thought to myself, ‘what the hell is going on? this is just something that you don’t see in ireland!!!’ it was completely crazy yet totally the coolest thing ever. How often do you walk out of whelans or the village or buddies at home and you share the walk home with a bloody elephant….
woke up the next morning feeling a bit crap. throat was sore, head hurt and my eyes were in bits. Managed to make it to the local doctor, it was a sunday so the only place that was open was a nursing home. I dunno what it is, what design there might be for me but who ever put it together obviously has a sense of humour as I keep on getting thrown into these bizaare situations. I walked into this place and the nurses there just looked at me as if to say, ‘you’re the youngest looking old person we have seen in a while’, of course not one of them had a word of english so after about 10 minutes to pointing at my throat, coughing and generally trying to act as if I am on the verge of a collapse they figured out that I needed to see the doctor. It was like a game of charades!!! I eventually got some anti-biotics so I could join the girls on the trip up north to the long awaited and yearned for beach!!!
Phil Gill