Pondicherry Road Trip

A week or so ago, we got back from our first road trip in India. It was only a week long, but we managed to cover some 2500km and see quite a bit of south India:

We started just before lunch on a Saturday and reached Bangalore that evening. We spent a lovely two nights with Gopal's old school friend and his family in Bangalore. On Monday morning we set off for Mysore. We'd passed through there on our trip in March 2012, but it was already dark and we only stopped for food. This time, we stopped first at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary just outside town. We spend more than an hour walking up and down the riverbank, but we could really only see the birds in the distance:

We did get a slightly closer view of a crocodile lying in a tiny grassy island in the river though:

After a walk around, we headed into Mysore, checked into our hotel and then proceeded to look around a bit. Everywhere we went were signs to the same set of tourist attractions: the zoo, the palace and Chamundi Hill. Chamundi Hill overlooks the city and is where this photo was taken:

Mysore is a lovely city, less than a million people and not nearly as crowded and dirty as many other Indian towns and cities. There are also quite a few lovely old buildings still standing around the city, as well as an incredible gothic cathedral. (No photos, we just happened to see it in passing as we were driving elsewhere). If you do go to Mysore, I can highly recommend the Quorum hotel. It's a 5 star hotel that rivals all the fancy Hiltons and Hyatts I've stayed at in the US, but here cost us just over $50 for the two of us, including a wonderful buffet breakfast.

The next day, we headed off to Hogenakkal Falls, on the border between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. To get up close to the falls, you have to take a boat, similar to a little dinghy but round (it's called a coracle):

We combined a bit of floating on the river in the coracle with walking over an island and up the far riverbank, and all up it was about an hour and a half. Just as we were heading back though, the thunder and lightning started up and it started to rain quite heavily. We were lucky to make it back to the car before we got too wet. We drove through heavy rain and storms for most of the evening to reach Pondicherry at nearly 11pm. Fortunately, the next day dawned bright and beautiful:

We walked down the promenade, had a coffee, wandered through a park and through the town before returning to our lodgings for a late breakfast. We looked up 'things to do in Pondicherry' and discovered that once you've seen the promenade and some of the old French Colonial buildings, you've pretty much seen it all. Others come there because you can get non-Indian meals and cheaper alcohol but those weren't really drawcards for us, so we left in the afternoon, driving up the coast to Chennai.

Before the trip, I'd mentioned to several people that we were planning to visit Chennai and they all looked at me as if I was a bit strange and asked why I would do that? It does seem that Chennai is just a big city with no real redeeming features. It is very dirty, crowded, noisy, hot (being on the thermal equator) and humid (being on the coast). So we didn't really plan to do any sightseeing. After staying one night at Gopal's friend's place, we headed off again in the evening for a night-time drive to Horsley Hills, a hill station in southern Andhra Pradesh which used to be the Governer's summer retreat. It was pretty quiet and peaceful, but really, it's just a hill (and that day was shrouded in cloud), so we didn't stay more than a few hours.

Our next stop was Srisailam, a temple down in the hills just south of Andhra Pradesh. The town itself is filled with hotels and restaurants all catering to the tourists there to see the temples. And the temples themselves aren't anything particularly special from an architectural or historical perspective (their so-called spiritual significance is meaningless to us), so we didn't stay. We did stop for a look at the dam on our way through the gorge, and even though it was after dark, it was still spectacular:

Srisailam Dam

Only half the gates were open but there was a massive plume of water rising up from the base of the dam. Once we crossed the bridge to the other side, we actually thought it was raining, but it was just the spray from the dam carried high up the hill by the wind. Before and after Srisailam we were driving through a beautiful forest which is an animal sanctuary (particularly tigers). I kept my eyes peeled for tigers, but the only ones I saw were flat, on signboards beside the road. We did pass a few monkeys on the side of the road though, including some tiny adorable babies.

We made it back home at midnight on Friday, lacking a bit of sleep. We compressed the end of the trip slightly because we had to get home in order to receive Gopal's passport which had been sent back from the NZ Embassy, so we are now all set for our trip to NZ in November!