Indian Republic Day in Pondicherry

Travel Day 907 – Pondicherry (Puducherry), Tamil Nadu, INDIA

Today was Republic Day in India and we had no idea what that would mean for us when our day began…

French Colonial Building in Pondicherry

As we soon found out, it mainly meant that the city was more busy and people were running around with India flags and stickers. But it also meant that there was a big music festival scheduled to happen on different stages along the already busy waterfront. But before the entire waterfront changed into a flood of people by the time the sun was setting, our day until then was rather quiet and slow…

Since all the restaurants in the colonial center of Pondicherry (Puducherry) were catering to old French tourists with money, we were not even able to find a decent place for breakfast. So we decided to look for a bakery, buy some croissants and simply eat them in the nice Bharathi Park in the center of town. But also finding a regular bakery turned out to be impossible and so a pack of biscuits and a chai in my travel mug had to do…

Hotel de Ville on Indian Republic Day

Besides our slight disappointment over the lack of breakfast choices, the fact that a park was available was actually pretty amazing. It seemed that we always take all the parks for granted back home, but here in India this was actually the first time ever that I was able to sit on a bench and in a nicely kept park with trees, flowers and even a play area for kids…

After some relaxing time in the park and some interactions with the local kids, we were off again to walk around and see some more of the great colonial architecture. But even if we enjoyed just strolling around, eventually we were off to a little mission impossible. We had the idea of going to Auroville tomorrow and it seemed to be the best option to do so my scooter and so we desperately tried to find a place that would rent one to us…

French Colonial Houses in Pondicherry, India

Unfortunately the fact that it was Indian Republic Day today and Sunday tomorrow left us frustrated when we retired into one of the expensive places for a nice make-up lunch. Luckily once we had rested a bit from the heat and savored on the good food, the world looked quite different again and a guy at our guesthouse saved the day for us. He not only knew probably the only place in town with scooters left for rent, but he also drove me over and made sure we paid the local price, yay… : )

After our luck had changed, we once more could enjoy the colonial architecture in the town and music concert by the beach. We first saw some traditional dance and then we listened to some classical Sitar and Tabla. But we ended the day with really something fun: Once everything was shut down and closed at 10pm, we jumped on the scooter and drove through the night. It was simply amazing to cruise around a completely deserted French colonial city, in the middle of the night, to the shine of the full moon and on Indian Republic Day…