trip to pondicherry
18 March 2025
auroville beach sunset with the other bunch of people we met in our hostel
holi came on friday
You know it's one of those weekends where a festival lines up adjacent to a weekend, we had three days off and really wanted to leave bangalore for a getaway because we didn't wanted to spend three days eating meghna's biryani, drinking beer and playing catan and dozing the fuck off for three consecutive days.
Pondy is just 6 hours away from bangalore and our bus driver took the challenge to drop us within 4.5 hours so barely had a good sleep on our way to pondy. We picked our dropping point near auroville because our hostel was in auroville and mind you there are barely any autos/cabs/ola/uber there – you'll need to have contacts of drivers to travel within the city.
got us some fancy vespas for 500₹/day
day 1
Dozed off the moment we checked-in our hostel around 7 AM and woke up at 1 PM (this nap felt like an eternal one which was much needed) then had a very bland and boring breakfast at our hotel (would'nt recommend having food at gostops hostel) then went to the white town which is also where the french colonies are. Super cool vibrant coloured buildings with average cafes which we didn't personally liked because of the bland food, but the vibes were immaculate.
some pictures of the white town
took a walk on the rock beach from one end to the other, would definitely recommend it because it was so lively and when you see humans doing their own things in a third space which is missing in bangalore you'll love it – dogs playing around, families bonding, couples walking, solo men staring at the sea i wish i could capture all of these in a picture, but anyways you get the vibe.
people doing their own thing at the beach
day 2
now that we were pretty disappointed with all the cafes there, we had to hit the og mcdonalds mcspicy chicken burger to fill our appetite sorry but we had no other good options around we were so disappointed with the food we've been having since past one day – the deed had to be done.
Bread and Chocolate, Auroville
after having our brunch at 3, we decided to explore random trails in the forest region of auroville so without a single thought of getting robbed/kidnapped we went ahead and saw really huge shady bungalows and villas with obnoxious dogs guarding the gates and one or two people here and there.
entering the forest
being spent almost 3 years in manipal, udupi region for my college i had a hunch of discovering peaceful beaches with literally no one around – we followed the coast line and went to a random beach which was pretty was alot cleaner than other beaches in pondy.
spent the day at the beach playing frisbee and sitting on the rocks watching the fishermen do their thing and introspecting.
day 3
the scorching heat didn't spare us on the sunday so we mostly spent the day in the hostel playing table tennis and overdosing diet-cokes.
we met a group of friends who came to pondy and living in our same hostel, socialising is fun if you can execute it properly
hostel where we stayed: gostops auroville
day 3 sunset
had kotthu parotta on a roadside shop while waiting for our bus and it was pretty interesting, kottu parotta is basically paratha smashed into pieces with tomato/onion/chicken/egg mixture and all of that prepared like a bhurji/bharta – pretty fun interactions with the shopkeeper as they couldn't understand hindi/english i had to pull out the sign language.
left pondy on a good note – beautiful vibes and kind people.
post trip sadness and back to work life
peace,
aditya kolte.