Auroville trip

Running a half marathon was only an excuse to visit Pondicherry and Auroville. In the broad class of excuses, it has a very high degree of efficacy as well. 

Our trip begins with a road trip from Bangalore. Trip members were Deeksha, Viji, Suchi and me in one car. Nikesh and his wife Sujata in a second car. The road from Bangalore to Auroville is great. We went via Vellore sticking to national and state highways. We took a detour to visit Sripuram Golden Temple at Sripuram. Next to Sripuram entrance is a cafe called Divine cafe and indeed its food was divine.  The dish names were quite tricky to be remembered but their taste will last for quite some time. Unfortunately, I could not enter the temple as I was wearing shorts. A man tried to sell a Lungi but i preferred to sit outside and enjoy the activities outside. The temple seemed calm, lacking any chauvinism and a place where one can get serenity. 

 Outside, as I was waiting for my friends, an old man started chatting with me about life at Sripuram. In between his anecdotes, he would drop in comments about his poor financial status. Outside the temple gate, i saw a bunch of children in their school uniform playing and having a great time. The old man told me that this was a routine picnic as there was nothing else for the children to do. After about 30 mins of chit chat, the old man asked me explicitly about the money. My happiness to chit chat with a random stranger went south. Is there a price to be paid for having a nice conversation in India? I moved on.



We stayed at Purple Resorts at Auroville. Purple resorts may be the tallest building in Auroville with its four floors. Purple resorts, shall i add once again, highlights the problem with India where the service is outsourced as a commodity bearing in no relation to what it stands for. Even though the amenities here was good, the service was bad and the staff had no intention of taking care of its customers. The breakfast was late, bad and forgettable.

Before the breakfast, I went for a leisurely stroll and within 10 minutes, I knew i would love this place. There was a cafe shop right outside called Marc's cafe. Within a min of walking there was a Greek cafe and Book fair next to it. After another min, I found a shopp called "Happy Foods" which was a local farmer's market. It was all jungle around me. There were more bicycles than cars, more local shops and cafes. Auroville is a town that will see tremendous growth, mostly at an expense of its jungles but as a tourist place in India, it is going to be a good one.


After the breakfast, we went to Pondicherry where we had planned for a heritage walk with Mr. Ashok from INTACH. In an hr or so, he showed several buildings made in French architecture, how they were involved in restoring them, making sure they were built keeping the aesthetics of the town intact. With some history, some rant against government, governance and some bias towards French people, we strolled on the streets visiting one building to another. Walking is the only way to know a city and walking with someone who can share history is even better. It was a pleasant morning and our walk ended by a tour of the French church where mass still happens in French.

It was quite sunny when we finished our walk. We decided to follow it up with food at Le Cafe at the Promenade. Some dishes were delicious while others were over rated. Stuffed, we decided to head over to the Aurobindo Ashram and see the paper factory. It should be mentioned here that we had made no Things to do list for Pondichery. The heritage walk was decided when we were driving up from Bangalore and it happened by chance. The no expectations and no planning trip always offer more joys and we were following exactly that. Paper factory tour was a brilliant one. In a 15 min tour of how paper is made, it was informative and an introduction to a process that is so creative and genuine. I was totally fascinated. In the process of marbling, out of chaos came patterns; a design that was always there in the making but it comes off at the last moment. Brilliant stuff. 

After a quick stop at the Aurobindo's samadhi, we went back to Auroville for our bib collection and then to Marc's cafe for a nice cup of coffee. An early dinner at Madame Shanthe's  consited of carbo-load for the run tomorrow. We were quite tired with all the walking in the morning and the weather was  on the hotter side for us who are spoiled by Bangalore. Yet our day had not ended as we had bought tickets for Leela Samson's Bharatnaytam performance. It had been quite some time since i had seen a dance performance and that too of this quality. It was a brilliant performance and thankfully everyone in our group liked it. There is always an element of doubt in group dynamics when it is not clear whether the act is going to be liked by everyone. The INTACH walk in the morning was considered so-so by others in the group but thankfully this dance performance, which was indeed top notch, was enjoyed by everyone. Being a french town, the intro talk was given in French and the audience was also mostly locales who had some French connection. It was hard to believe that this is a part of India. 

Next morning, we ran the Auroville Half marathon. With no timing chips and a motto - Run for the joy of running, Auroville HM is truly a pure joy event. Post the run, we went back to our food agenda with having first course at the Greek cafe and second course at Tanto.  The return was quite as we came back with great memories and promises to visit Auroville next year. 

All the trip photos from my camera are uploaded here - https://plus.google.com/photos/104532372595633553382/albums/5979336917508946417