Destination:
India – Pondicherry – Hello baguette!
We get up at
5am and take the train, cattle class again to Pondicherry, 3 hours, and then
change trains for another hour. Pondy is still part of Tamil Nadu, however it’s
a territory and it used to be a French colony for hundreds of years. We are here for
the end of the Pongal (harvest) festival. We’ve been so blessed, being in the right
places for all the holidays (Ramadan and Eid in the Middle East, Diwali and
Christmas in Goa, even St Nicodemus on Naxos, and now Pongal in Tamil Nadu),
pretty cool stuff.
Anyway, besides
some Indian people speaking French and a lot of French tourists, on top of a
huge yoga crowd, there’s nothing much to see here. There’s a (pretty ugly)
beach but you can’t swim, a statue of Gandhi but you can’t take photos coz
there’s always tons of people climbing on it, a war memorial and a few
interesting old colonial buildings. We decide to stay for 3 days as we need a
bit of a break and also we got wi-fi in the room, ah, the little luxuries in
life! Anyway, Pondy is nice but really unremarkable besides having one of the
best French bakeries in India (the best one since Greece) and the fact that you
can get pretty good steaks at most restaurants. Au revoir Pondy!
and back to ... Goa – Calangute and Palolem – Will we ever leave?
We leave Pondy
in the afternoon train, 2AC, after wonderful Paul, miraculously, got us a cabin
to Mangalore, and there are 6 places and only us in it. It’s real heaven, the universe is cutting us
a break from the crowds, thank you universe, we really utterly appreciate it. We
get to Mangalore in the morning and have a 5 hour wait for the next train to,
yeah, you guessed, Goa!!!!! We wait in the VIP room at the train station,
another pretty good find, an AC room, with large comfy armchairs, where you
can chill for a bit for 15 rupees per hour, per person. A real bargain! Look
for them at your nearest train station, totally worth it! Another train ride
and we are in Goa, man, we really love this place. After a night in Madgao, we take
a taxi to Calangute, where we left our backpacks. We both need a few days to
relax and recover from a nasty flu and, even if we love Palolem, the
accommodation here is way more comfortable.
As expected, we
stay way longer than a couple of days. We even book our tickets to Rajasthan,
just to cancel them 24 hours before the train leaves, cos, guess what?
We decided to stay in Goa for another month as it'll be too cold up in the North. if we go now. Did I mention the weather’s been
absolutely perfect? Warm days, cool eves… We discover yet other great places to
eat and drink, make new friends, meet up with old friends and plan to go back
to Palolem in the next few days.
And back we go!
Same flat, scooter, gorgeous weather, yeah the north can wait, it’ll be warmer
later on. The flu is over, let’s get that suntan back. We stay in Palolem and it feels like we never
left. People all around ask us where we have been, it feels like home. We are
brown, relaxed, if a bit bored, and spending a lot of time trying to plan our
trip up north, then Nepal and then, what? What after Nepal? Tibet (other
travelers we meet say it’s very “Chinese” now and so not worth it). How to get
around the monsoons in South East Asia?
Shall we try to reach more familiar countries (Thailand and Malaysia)
and wait for the rainy season to end? Shall we try to see other new places
(Burma, Laos, Cambodia) as they will be less touristy during the wet season?
It’s a bloody endless discussion and we still don’t know the answers, so, let’s
keep talking exhaustively, we got plenty of time… what about another long walk
on the beach and let’s talk about that for a bit…
Anyway after all the discussion we finalize a tentative itinerary including our return trip as far as Europe. Next stop, Rajasthan and the north. Watch this space ....
