Pondy is quite lovely. The place we are staying, Le Chateau, is a very nice hotel. The room is a bit small, but works just fine. The brekkies buffet is not as extensive as either IBIS (not by a long shot) or Mamalla Hotel Inn in Mahabs. They do have various forms of eggs, some Indian/Western hot foods, and lovely French pastries; croissants, muffins, panne Au chocolat, along with some veggie sandwiches and cold cereal. They have an espresso machine that turns out a pretty good cappuccino.
We went for a wander, with a purpose, I had signed us up to take a cooking course on Tuesday morning and the location was at the Sita Cultural Center and on our maps.me app, only a place called Sita showed up. Our job was to locate this place and check if it was indeed the place we were looking for.
We didn’t do the direct route, we started out walking to the park in the middle of the French Quarter and as we were walking along the road that traverses the park, I slipped and fell down. Got a scrap on my knee and a very bruised ego. As mentioned below, there is quite a difference between the road bed and the edge of the curb. This edge is steeply graded and covered in a sandy mix of dirt and grit. I just slid down that slope and lost my footing. We continued to wander and got a look at Nehru Street and its environs.
After a few wrong turns and some back tracking we found Sita. Yeah! It was indeed the correct place, Bad News, the place was closed on Monday. I hadn’t heard from Viator as to whether we had our confirmation in the class. We couldn’t confirm in person today as they were closed, so we would show up on Tuesday morning and see what happens.
Earlier we were wandering around Nehru Street, called JN Street, and I was transported back to the heavily trafficked street of Chennai again. Instead of bicycle rickshaws and bullock carts there were double the number of motorbikes. While most streets have 2 way traffic, which lane goes which direction is open to debate. It really looks like a free for all with motorbikes whizzing by in any direction they please. Cars claim the middle of every road, and auto rickshaws claim whatever the cars don’t. Imagine large cars, (smaller minivans) driving down the middle of the 2 lane road, cars and motor bikes parked on both sides, but NOT close to the curb, because there are so many layers of macadam that there is a 6 - 7 inch distance between road bed and curb edge. So cars and motor bikes park on the roadway, and leave a gap to the curb. This makes the road even narrower and more congested. Throw in traffic flooding in both directions without regard for people walking at the edges of the parked cars. Why, you ask do people not walk on the wide sidewalks? There are several reasons: 1). they are not very level and 2) it seems that the sidewalks allow easy access to vertical walks, which are prime urinals. Consequently sidewalks stink! So everyone walks on the roadway.
Try to imagine the scene: 2 groups of people walking single file on opposite sides of parked cars, cars going in both directions, motorbikes swerving around cars in both directions, auto rickshaws tooting high pitched horns demanding to be respected. Crossing the street takes nerves of steel, check both directions and if no cars, then start across the street keeping a steady pace and the motor bikes will zip around you. At this point, this is second nature.
I saw an interesting place to eat on de Bussy street and made a note to head back there after we found Sita. The place was called de Bussy Cafe. On the 3rd floor was a rooftop bar/cafe and we headed up there. Fortunately and unfortunately, it was closed. The fortunate part was that as the elevator doors opened up, a group of 3 Indian men informed us that it was closed and we just stayed in the elevator and returned to the 1st floor to find the cafe. We walked through a dining room that was unac’d and pointed through a door that led to a little balcony and another door. This door led to an AC’d salon with lots of people eating, mostly locals.
On the tv was Bollywood videos and most tables were engaged in quiet conversation. We looked over the menu and I decided on Chettinad veggies and Bill got the prawn sagwala. Another time where Bill’s dish was spicier than mine, and mine was pretty darn spicy. It had the two of us gasping for air and quenching the fire with beer and water. Neither of us could stop eating our dishes. They were really good and compelling. While spicy, they had multiple layers of flavor so it wasn’t just a single “burny” flavor. We were both sweating up a storm half way through the meal. That hasn’t happened in many, many years!
Blazing a path to our abode to Le Chateau, we snoozed for a bit and then planned our trip going forward. We needed to lock down some tickets and doing things on line with India Rail is very difficult. So we found a travel agency, MakeMyTrip, on Canal St.. We laid out some general plans and everything hinged on being able to travel between point A and point B, which was Pondicherry and Madurai. Trains and buses ply the route and to make reservations on either mode of transport you had to get tickets. As populated as India is, getting rail tickets can be a matter of luck. There are only so many trains and so many train cars and not everyone can get a seat or get that scarce seat in the class of car on that train.
There are many levels of train travel in India, 1st Class AC, 2nd class AC, 3rd Class AC, 2nd class no AC, and steerage. Add to this many levels of sleeper classes on the overnight trains and you start to see the difficulty of trying to sort out what is available and at what price.
Once we had our rough plan figured out, we headed to the travel agency. A young woman took care of us and she was very patient. There were no seats on a daytime train from Pondy to Madurai on either 1/31 or 1/2. There was an overnight train, however it would dump us in Madurai at 2 am. That was a no go! Plan B. There were no daytime buses to Madurai, only an overnight one that got into Madurai around 6 am. That was not optimal, so we looked at trains to Thanjur or Trichy instead. Nope, nada there. No planes fly between Pondy and Madurai, only by way of Hyderabad. No go there as it would be an entire day of futzing around trying to get from A to B. Ultimately, we opted for the overnight bus with reclining seats, with AC, and booked an overnight train 1st class sleeper from Madurai to Chennai that too gets into Egmore Station in Chennai at again 6 am!
It took us over an hour to get all of are choices settled and we finally got our tickets to Madurai and from Madurai back to Chennai. We had one last thing to take care of, that was our hotel in Kodaikanal. We did that back in the room and booked a very nice hotel us there. We do have one last arrangement to make and that is transport to Kodaikanal. There is a bus on 1/4, or we can book a private care for the journey. I imagine it will cost around $50 or so to do that. Not the end of the world!
We returned from our adventure in travel arrangements and had dinner up in the dining room at the hotel. It was pretty good. I had basil, walnut and blue cheese ravioli, which were very good, no complaints at all. I wanted something milder to counteract the spiciness of lunch!
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