Pondicherry Sunday

Among our most memorable moments during our 2008 visit to India were two rickshaw rides through Old Delhi and Varanasi. This time around, we'll definitely recall our careening tuk-tuk trips through the crowded streets of Pondicherry!

Numerous streets in the downtown area were blocked off to accommodate the flood of Sunday shoppers, many out buying new clothes for the upcoming Diwali celebrations. Motorbikes and tuk-tuks and bicycles continued to have access, however; and so, at the end of the afternoon we hopped aboard tuk-tuks to return to our hotel from the market area - and off we went! Our threesome was the first to leave but the fourth or fifth to arrive, laughing all the way, as we zoomed in and out of all that pedestrian traffic without seemingly disturbing anyone of those we passed by with only fractions of an inch to spare!

Later ten of us sped off to Rendezvous, a French restaurant on the other edge of town, and back after dinner, equally sure we were riding the best dodgem cars in the world. This is no place to even consider using a cellphone while behind the wheel - to say nothing of even trying to text!

We spent much of the day strolling around the city, visiting the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, ...

... wandering through a neighborhood of colorful merchant homes and the nearby French Quarter, ...

... walking along the shore of the Bay of Bengal with a stop for iced lemon soda at a beach side cafe, paying our respects to the founders of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, examining the iconography of the stunning bronze images of the Dancing Shiva at the local museum, watching a gathering in the park of a group of engineering students scheduling a farewell party for a particularly popular female professor seated among them, watching an elephant bless a petitioner with its trunk, making our way single file through the crowded streets to the even more crowded Grand Bazaar, and - perhaps best of all - stopping for coffee at the best little coffee stand in town (the drink labeled "meter coffee" because of the distance traveled by the milk added to the mixture).

Pondicherry is a very comfortable city to visit. We felt at ease everywhere and enjoyed the chance to observe and, more importantly, participate in all these aspects of typical everyday life.

Lee snapped some great photographs along the way as well: