The first long weekend of 2016, people were busy in traveling to their homes on the eve of Pongal, one of the most important festivals of the southern states of India. Just went to home last month so no plan of going to home again. All the works in office were over and sitting in my cubicle thinking of what to do in this long weekend of three days. Being passionate about travelling and wasting a long weekend is like a crime for me. So decided to go to some places outside Bengaluru and started googling. After an hour or two I decided to visit Pondicherry. I did not find any bus or train to pondicherry directly from Bengaluru so booked ticket in Lalbagh Express to Chennai for the next morning for me and my friends.
It was a chilled winter morning we started from Bangalore to Chennai. It was around 1pm we reached Chennai. Once we get down from the train at Chennai Central railway station, Chennai welcomed us with its hot and humid weather. we headed towards the bus stand and took the bus to Mahabalipuram. The bus started from Chennai and was heading towards Mahabalipuram through the famous East Coast Road (Popularly known as ECR). Though the road was little narrow being a highway but it was one of the best scenic roads I have ever seen in my life. On this road I got the glimpse of the beautiful Bay of Bengal. We reached at Mahabalipuram around 3pm after a one and half hour jouney from Chennai. The weather there was better than Chennai because of the pleasant breeze coming from the sea. This ancient town of Tamilnadu had a lot of things to offer to travellers like me. The beautiful and clean beach, light house, shore temple (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site), pancharatha, Krishna's Butter Ball, shops selling beautiful stone monuments on the roadsides and many more things were just more than amazing. We spent a quality evening in Mahabalipuram till the sun set down for the day.
After spending that some quality time there, started towards Pondycherry late in the evening and reached there by 9pm. Had some food from an eatery and went to the Gandhi beach to sit for sometime. The Gandhi rock beach was full of tourists from around the world. Sitting silently near the seashore was a wonderful experience. The crowd was becoming thin with time and we went to our hotel to have a sleep after a day full of travelling.
Woke up early in the morning and started from the same place we left the previous day. Witnessed the beautiful sunrise at the rock beach. After a very long time I was seeing the beautiful sunrise on a seashore. The experience was truly indescribable.
Went to a local food stall and had some delicious breakfast and stored some energy in the body to explore pondychery. Heard of availability of self driving bikes from some folks but nable to find one due to more people in the town. So booked a cab for the day. First went to the less crowded serenity beach, the beach was not so good but found some people there doing surfing in the water. Then we started towards Auroville, the must visit place of Pondicherry. Auroville was calm, quite and a beautiful place for the seekers of divinity. Though unable to get into the Matrimandir due to unavailability of space, we spent some quality time in Auroville.
Left Auroville around 2pm and started towards the Paradise beach after having some lunch. Due to long weekend the paradise beach was overcrowded. We waited for at least 2 hours standing in the queue to get tickets for the ferry and the beach was completely worth our waiting. We took a ferry ride to the paradise beach and it was wonderful. It was also suitable to take a bath in this beach. I simply fall in love with this beach because of its spectacular beauty. The beach was completey clean though over crowded.
Our trip to Pondicherry came to an end when we boarded the Chalukya express from Pondicherry to Bengaluru in the same evening. This unplanned weekend trip added a delightful chapter in my travel diary. It was really wonderful and amazing to visit pondicherry from Bangalore.