For my first official weekend here in India I decided to travel with the herd and the herd went to Pondicherry. The town used to be a french sea port before the British took over and still retains many influences from their rule. Most of the town is actually laid out in a grid pattern with street names and signs being relatively common (a welcome change)! Pondicherry is known mostly as a tourist attraction for it's western food and wine along the sea even though the beach is all boulders. It being only a week since I arrived I wasn't that desperate for comfort food, but I agreed to a compromise by stopping at Senji (Gingee) on the way back to see the old ruins there. I felt like I needed to at least partially do something Indian for my first weekend. So, as is common practice here we took off on Friday for a long weekend riding a bus for a little over 3 hours. We were lucky enough to finally get someone to tell us which bus to take to a town part way there and then even more lucky to get seats for the long ride. It seems that here in India the limits of how many people can actually fit onto a single bus is open to interpretation. The ride out wasn't too bad, we did have people standing next to us for most of the way, but it was still doable. At one point one of the girls offered her seat to an elderly woman... I feeling ashamed of myself tried unsuccessfully for the next half hour to switch with my classmate. Once I did convince her, more seats opened up literally within 5 minutes. I do feel that it was very much a fact that only we were uncomfortable with the old woman standing because no one else on the bus attempted to offer their seat. I don't understand which times Indians choose to respect their elders; I'm wondering if sometimes gender and marital status play a role. Upon our arrival we got a taste of what was to behold our trip back to Vellore, but unbeknownst to us at the time. As we pulled into the bus station in Pondicherry people began running along side the bus as it slowed down and started jumping on to the bus and forcefully pushing there way against the flow of people trying to get off the bus. We got almost all 7 of us off, but then the bus moved forward another couple meters to try and alleviate the cluster that had formed slowing the exit process. Eventually we got eveyone off the bus, a little flustard, but no blood no foul. If i've stated before that this aspect of Indian culture is something I just don't understand, agree with, or plan on getting used - i apologize for belaboring the point. It just is so foreign to every sense of organization that's been beaten into me since pre-school... you wait your turn in line and you don't cut ;-> And it seems so out of touch with the rest of the relaxed laidback lifestyle that karma dictates. Anyways, so we've made it to our 1st destination. We finally get to our hostel, which will infact not be our final hostel for the night because they didn't have room for our whole group. So with our luggage unloaded temporarily, we set out in search of food as most of us had not planned ahead far enough to bring lunch for the long bus ride, and now being the better part of 5 pm, were fairly hungry. With a knee jerk reflex we opened our Lonely Planet guide and found " Rendevouz", a restaraunt serving mostly foreigners... surprise, surprise. It was good food that soothed most of the longings for pasta, fresh salads and vegatables, pizza, and steak (which I still think was a chicken fried type steak). We ate quickly and laughed when we realized how fast we had consumed our meal. Appetites satisfied we set off to finalize our sleeping arrangements for the evening, which really was nothing more than a house that someone owns and rents out rooms to travelers when a friend of his at the hostel we originally booked didn't have enough room... a little sketchy yes, but it was clean and spacious and a good location, so we didn't complain. But as so many things can and often do go wrong when traveling with large groups, the number of rooms soon became an issue. We had reserved several rooms and then found out after the fact that some people weren't coming the first night, so we agreed to pay for a room we didn't need the first night in hopes of keeping it for our companions now arriving the following day. This proved to be a mistake later on. However, with our luggage stored in it's final location for the evening we set out for a couple of drinks and to catch up with a few stragglers from our group that trickled in later that day. We didn't last long though as it had been quite an exhausting experience to travel so few kilometers. But sleep was not in the cards for us just yet, as we were having drinks one of the girls realized that a pendent that belonged to her grandmother that passed away early in the year was missing. After scouring the floor of the restaraunt we went back to the hostel, no luck. Under the guise of having to got get water for the evening anyways we all set out on a hopeless walk back tracking our steps earlier in the evening. Unbelievably, one of the other girls spotted this small pendent that still laid in the street that we walked down hours previously... amazing luck!
The next morning we continued our binge on comfort western foods with a quite relaxing restaraunt that served whole wheat pancakes and black coffee with milk on the side (coffee here is made with boiled milk). After again satiating our western appetite we set off for a day of exploring markets, shops, and the stretch of rocky beachfront. My main goal for the day was to find a more reputable sandals shop and get a new pair of sandals because the ones I'd gotten in Vellore proved to be quite cheap and had begun to hurt my feet and had even rubbed an open sore on the top of my left foot. I ended up buying two pairs of sangals ;-> A pair of flip flops that wouldn't rub on the top of my foot and a better pair of leather sangals to break in at a later date. With my one goal accomplished for the day, I was contempt to be drug around to various markets and shops in search of different gifts, cloths, and tapestries. The hot day peaked when we argued with our "hostel" owner that the other people in our group had "not come" and that we couldn't afford to pay for the un-needed room again that nigh... I think he just saw an easy meal cause there is no formal reservation system in place and if we had not shown up in the first place, he wouldn't have had any compensation. Long story short we only paid for the rooms we needed and were frustrated with our friends who apparently had made their own bookings.
For the evening activities, we went to a wonderful little coffe house / restaraunt and stayed there from nearly 7:00 - 11:30 p.m. Drinks and good food all around with a cool breeze coming off the water - hard to beat.
The next day we set off for a local grociery store stocking up on food for the day, tea for gifts, and drinks for the ride to Senji. This time we weren't so lucky to get seats and stood for the 2 hour ride. Once there, it was worth the effort with the ruins giving me some of the most beautiful sights so far. With the ruins closing we headed for town and were confused as 3 consecutive buses headed for Vellore didn't show... then the next 3 buses that were headed in the right direction were literally packed to the gills with people again forcefully pushing and hanging off the handles by the doors. About an hour after dark and several full buses later, beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with our situation, we completed our weekend of western habits and hired two taxies back to Vellore... a price tag few locals could even dream of affording. Eye opening, would be an understatement.
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