Pondicherry – Things to know for your travel

Pondicherry in my words is the GOA of the south east coast of India. Goa was a Portuguese colony and here pondicherry was french colony at one point of time.

The french flavour can be seen evidently in most of things be it food, architecture and culture specially round the white town.

How to reach ?

By Air

Pondicherry has a airport but only smaller planes operate, that too from few airlines only, There are direct flight options from Bangalore & Hyderabad to Pondicherry. If travelling from Delhi or Mumbai , one has to take a flight first to Bangalore/Hyderabad and then a smaller flight to PNY(puducherry airport). Mind you the smaller plane shakes a lot 🙂 and it slow as well compared to normal/bigger planes.

One does not get any OLA/Uber at the airport, there is pre-paid taxi run by the air port authorities but because of the monopoly they charge a bomb(500 RS for approx 6-8KM). I would rather advice travelleres to come out of airport (hardly 100 meters walk),at the exit one can see the autorickshaws, its better and more reasonable options compared to the airport taxis.

By Road

The nearest big airport is that of chennai , and chennai is about 150 KM from puducherry. It takes 3 hours by road to commute from chennai to puducherry.

If you are in a group, the most convenient option is to book an outstation ola – rough charge would be 2500 INR including toll and permit charges.

I did not try the train option so cant comment on that.

Where to stay ?

I would recommend staying in the white town area, popular for French colonial-era villas. the villas may not have the best of modern hotel facilities like a room tea maker/mini bar or television set but it gives unparalleled villa feel which can make you skip to think whats not in the room 🙂

I stayed in Villa Helena(see pictures below) which was just about 250 mtrs from the sea. One can try the air bnb options if good deals available there. One highly rated villa/hotel is Le Dupliex, if book in advanced one can get a better tariff for the night

Video on Le-Dupleix

Things to see & how many days one requires?

Most convenient way to cover the place is to rent a two wheeler, one can get the same for around 300 INR for a day, lot of options available in the market road – mission street – its about 1 KM from white town. 2 nights & 3 days are sufficient enough to cover Pondicherry.

  • Pondicherry Museum – it would take max 30 mins to cover it, not like a big museum but still can be covered. Would keep it in my todo list.
  • Auroville -its about 15 KM from white town, and would take your minimum 4-5 hours including the commute. Note: Please dont go there on sunday as on sunday only matrimandir is open, rest other(SWARAM (must see)) are closed, watch the video below to know about it.
  • Beaches– have covered in a separate section below.
  • Aurobindo paper factory– surely recommend it as one can see the process of how paper is made, truly a knowledge enhancing experience.
  • Sacred Heart Church– It a beautiful church and would be worth a visit.
  • Botanical garden – If you have interest in plants and trees then may be you can try it, this is some thing that is not must see in my list.
  • Market– Mission Street and Nehru Street are local markets in puducherry with lot of restaurants and shops available, worth a stroll in the night here.
  • Sri Manakula Vinayagar temple– it a famous ganesha temple could be covered in the end if you have some free time.
  • paper factory
  • paper factory
  • Ganesha Temple
  • Matrimandir – Auroville
  • Auroville Garden
  • mission street market
  • sacred heart church
  • Museum
  • botanical garden

Beaches

There are 3 main beaches in puducherry.

  • Serenity
  • Paradise/Eden
  • Promenade
  • Paradise Beach
  • Paradise Beach
  • Serenity Beach
  • Serenity Beach
  • Promenade beach
  • Sunrise at Promenade beach

The best and most cleanest beach is Paradise, its about 10 KM south from white town. Promenade beach is just walking distance from white town and serenity beach is 6 KM north of promenade.

Promenade is more commercial – with a road/restaurant next to it, its also famous for the sunrise and post sunset walk . It gives you a marine drive/nariman point Mumbai kind of feel in the evening.

Serenity is actually very busy beach , one can see lot of local fisher boats there, it has rocky elevated platform just to sit and watch a sunset/sunrise.

the map shows the 3 beaches how its location from north to south- Serenity is at the north and paradise in the south whereas the promenade is between both of them.

Being a Union territory there is no state tax due to which the items are cheaper like petrol & liquor.

Other things that surely must be tried, are the wonderful cafes in Puducherry

  • Villa Helena
  • Margaritas
  • Cafe Des Arts
  • Cafe Des Arts

A good place to go for weekend gateway 🙂

Langkawi – Travel Guide

Langkawi gives the same coastal/island kind of feel like that of Goa. So we also decided to go on boys(ok.. men’s) trip to this place and had a great time.

Where to Stay

South-west part of the island is the buzzing and happening place.I would recommend to take the hotels near the Pantai Cenang beach. It is the longest beach of Langkawi. The beach is lively till the wee hours with people performing song and dance all night.

North Part of the island has some virgin beaches, if you have a vehicle with you then you can cover them else NOT a must item in the TODOs.

The south east part of the island is where local people stay, you will get to better infrastructure and high end and more comfortable hotels there.

EagleSquare is another tourist place in this part of the island but its again NOT a must in TODO list.

Transportation

Cabs- GRAB(Uber of Malaysia)

Download GRAB on your mobile phone and you are all set to just book a cab like Uber. Cabs are also cheaper than India because of the low fuel cost.

Bike/Car Rentals

Car and Bike rentals shops are available everywhere.

You get a scooty for about ~30 MYR and swift like car for ~80 MYR for a day. The petrol is very cheap around ~2 MYR which is ~ 35 INR.

Personal recommendation is to go for a scooty if you want to feel the cool breeze on your face and pretty open view in front of your eye 🙂 . I loved it

Things To Do

In terms of the itinerary – 3 days and 2 nights should be sufficient to cover the places without making it much hectic. Langkawi is like a weekend getaway for the people living in areas in Kuala Lumpur.

SkyBridge

This is one of best places to see in langkawi, it is on west part of the island.View from the top will just give a divine feeling.

Some important information for the Bollywood movie buffs, this is the same place where the climax sequence of the movie DON (shahrukh khan) was shot.

It will take your entire day almost. Many ticket combos are available.If you haven’t been to a 3D museum before you will have lot of fun there as well.Recommendation is to cover the 3D museum as well, So include that in the combo as well.

skybride

Mangroove Forest Day tour

You can book another day tour for the mangroove forest. It includes the hotel pick up and drop inclusive of lunch costing you about 80-90MYR. Best part of this tour is the bat caves in the begining and power boat ride in the end.Lunch is okayish (not very good).

They first pick you up from the hotel, and will take you to the Kilim geo forest, where you will be taken in a power boat. They cover bat caves, fish feeding(different kind of fish held and fed at the same floating restaurant where they will serve you lunch), Eagle feeding(basically there is an area they take you in boat where they are eagles that they feed meat with) and monkeys (they offer peanuts to whole bunch of them while you are still in boat) and lastly they take you for power ride along the coast where they even drop you for 20-25 mins swimming in really awesome crystal clear waters.

BAT CAVES

What to buy

The island is a duty free place and there are many duty free shops. Below ones are really cheap. They are almost half the price compared to Kuala lumpur and delhi duty free

  • Chocolate -International chocolate brands like Toblerone and Ferrero Rochers. There is a local chocolate brand called DIAM which is also worth a try.
  • Liquor – Try Skol beer from the duty free it cost ~3.5 MYR for 500ml can
  • Perfumes

It is certainly a nice place to have good happy short trip with friends and family.

Running-not just a cardio exercise

I picked up running 3 years back, that time the idea was to keep the fat belly in check and tone the body.When I started I could barely run for 10 mins but now can easily run few miles.Running is one most addictive thing, after a run when you hear pounding of your own heart after sweating it out, that feeling is truly full-filling to say the least.

What it does to you?

  1. Enhances your mood, accordingly to science it releases harmones which makes you feel better and makes you stress free, fights depression.It applies to any form of exercise.
  2. Gives you a sense of doneness, trust me when are you lazing in your bed whole day watching netflix or playing video games 🙂 just one run out in the evening could do wonders to your confidence by giving this sense of doneness.
  3. Makes you competitive and constantly improve yourself – are you like really .how ?, well after you pick up running you always want to perform better and stronger than your previous run.and This pattern sets as a behaviour in mind.
  4. Clarity in thoughts and more focus- when you want to just have a clear mind, i would say just go for a run and then you will understand what i mean here:)
  5. Sleep better – as it the case with all the exercises, it makes you sleep better.

Fasting – not religious but scientific

Irrespective of the religious set you belong to, fasting is one thing that you will come across each and every religion, whether being a Hindu one observes fasting in the 9days of navratris or as a Muslim one abstains from eating/drinking during day time in month of Ramadan.

There is set of people who believe that in order to please God, one should fast, basically more the pain/sacrifice you take, the more the god would be pleased and hence one should fast :). This article is not to take this thought forward or debate it but rather to elucidate the health benefits fasting could bring to the body.

Logically one thing that comes to mind that fasting periods in India are most around the times when the weather changes, so fasting could help your body to adapt to the changing weather by making your immune system stronger.

Could cure chronic diseases?

Came across this video which explains how fasting is being used a method of treatment for many chronic ailments, even surprisingly it can bring a change to the genetic code you carry in your body. Interesting isn’t it :). Several patients in this video have cured medical conditions like asthma.

Take Ways from Fasting

It detoxifies your body.No Carbs into the body would obviously make your body low in energy but surprisingly in this state your mind becomes more alert, more aligned and active inshort improves brain function. After few days one would realise that body actually requires only little food for its functioning.

The problem with people of my generation is that ONLY when science justifies, then only it becomes more relevant to us.But I do feel what has been passed on to us as a practice either through family/religion does have a science and benefit around it. It just that it has been passed on to us without proper information 🙂

Everyone loves good food but take a break one day and observe the changes in your mind and in your body through fasting.

“you are what you eat”