Category Archives: Pondicherry

Pondicherry

A food vendor

A food vendor

Pondicherry was lame. I don’t know, maybe if you were going to an ashram or had more money to spend on accommodation you would like it, but for us budget travelers it is definitely lame.
There was a decent waterfront walkway filled with locals and a nice park close by, but walking by an open sewer and

The waterfront

The waterfront

trash dump to get to our hotel was kind of a downer. There were not many budget hotel options in general and they were all clustered together in the same run-down area without really any good restaurants nearby.
Pondicherry supposedly is filled with great french architecture, but when we did the ‘heritage walk’ our guide book recommends we came across one and one half streets that had a french feel, but it seemed very artificial. The buildings looked like they had been bought by rich ex-pats and turned into bistros and expensive craft stores. It looked sort of like the Fifth Street Market at home in Eugene, Oregon.
The best thing that happened in Pondicherry was that Andy finally bought a new shirt and pair of shorts on the streets there. He was really starting to need them.