Pondicherry, Riviera of the East

The French Quarter of Pondicherry, aka White Town, is charming and picturesque. Colonial style buildings with balconies and trailing bougainvillea could make you feel like you are in France, aside from the motorcycles parked cheek by jowl along every millimetre of curb. Traffic isn’t nearly as bad here as other Indian cities and is mostly motorcycles, scooters and rickshaws with some government cars in the mix. People don’t seem to be driving to kill, which is a pleasant change.

There isn’t a lot to see or do here for excitement. There is a lot of high-end shops for home wares and clothing  and there is a long beach promenade alongside the Bay of Bengal. Pondi was once known as the “Riviera of the East” although you can’t swim here and probably shouldn’t even be seen in a bathing suit. It feels like a modern city, but not that modern.

Despite this being the “French” part of India and all our servers having names like Benoit and the Eiffel Tower featuring in tchotchke shops, no one here seems to be able to speak French. The traffic police even wear the little hats like French gendarmes and there are pastry shops all around. They are just missing the capacity to actually speak the language.

The big things here are government (it’s a city and a state, woohoo!), and the two main ashrams: Sri Aurobjndo and Auroville. They are related but not the same. The pale blue buildings of Sri Aurobjndo seem to make up a fifth of all the buildings in White Town. They have their own presses, massive guest houses, cafeteria and related offices everywhere. Aside from the boutique and cafeteria, there doesn’t appear to be anyway for tourists to interact with the ashram. 

Auroville is just outside Pondicherry and, while it doesn’t want to draw casual tourists, they have curated a particular experience for us. You can go to the visitor centre, watch an information video and get a ticket to walk 1km to the viewing platform to see the Matrimandir, a large golden orb that is meant to act as a concentrator for the people who live there or come with the intention to be part of the philosophy of unity of mankind. Auroville is meant to be a place with a new vision of how humans can be one with their bodies and with one another. It was started by the Mother, based on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, and initially 5000 people lived there, adding soil from 124 nations to the urn at the centre of the amphitheatre, right next to Matrimandir. If you are better organized than we are, you can book in advance to enter Matrimandir on certain days at certain times. They are still building the site 50 years later and approximately 3,300 people live there now. They also create a lot of books, paper-based souvenirs, textiles, pottery and oils & incense for sale to support the enterprise.

Pondicherry is officially Puducherry but no one calls it that, nor is it called that on any written thing we saw in the city. It’s Puducherry for highway signs and guidebooks only. It’s a lovely and liveable seaside town with good food, nice people, fancy churches and lots of gorgeous shit to buy. Except breakfast. It’s hard to find breakfast.