What an ecclectic place! Can't even say I liked it...first of all,when I arrived it was Saturday night and "impossible to find a decent hotel" - visited four and they were all super dirty and expensive -finally opted for a kind of boxy indian business man type hotel with boxy room and boxy toilet - style Lakshmi Hilton - and an AC veg.restaurant in it, so cold that I could not even eat there - orderedfood to my room :-). Anyway was so tired after the journey that I didn't mind, woke up by the terrible noise at 6.30 and decided to go out for a walk along the beach. That is the main, and I would say almost the only, for me, attractive part of Pondi. The rest is just too weird, the French croissant shop around the corner from the slum, the kitsch warehouse selling l'Oreal because I'm worth it next to the temple flower woman...hmmm, anyway - along the beach promenade I found a beautiful, clean guest house where a single room was available for one night only so I decided that this was a sign to stay another night and send my parcel to Europe from here. By now, I was more starting to look like a donkey than a backpacker :-). The guesthouse was part of the Sri Aurobindo Org and linked to ashram rules - no booze, no smoke and gates closed after 11.15 pm - suited me fine....Had a great view from there over the promenade and early in the morning I was enjoying the sunrise from my balcony...the locals were out power walking!!! Then I spent 3 hours having my parcel made and had to carry it two blocks to the ashram post office - where I had to fill out a form with 4 oldfashined carbon paper copies and the ladies were sealing letters with black tar! It stank! So, 2 days in Pondi and I left at 5 pm for Thanjavur (Tanjore) - famous for a splendid World Heritage listed temple and a Maharadja Palace right in town. Got to Thanjavur at midnight - fortunately I had booked a hotel - unfortunately not a very decent one - decided on the spot that this was to be a one nighter soI started looking at trains to Thiruchirappalli (!)....one step closer to land's end now.....Sorry friends, but most of the internet cafs in the country don't have USB ports - the PCs look like my old school computers and it's already a miracle to be able to write a post! Hope to be able to upload pics on y next stop....am leaving with the 4pm train...Om Shanti Om
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment