From Pondicherry I stage my exit from India
Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, India
Villa LaBourdonnais, Room 1
From Pondicherry I stage my exit from India
Pondicherry is sort of French, sort of English, and all Indian. It is an anomaly in India, a former French colony until fifty years ago, with French-named streets, French-speaking Indians, and French residents. But I'm starting to think of India as a collection of anomalies. There are no hard-and-fast rules here, no consistencies in religion, landscape, and certainly not with language. Entering each state in India is like entering another country, which is why people take so long to explore it.
In Madurai I realized it was suddenly imperative to buy a plane ticket if I wanted to be in Thailand for Christmas and New Year's. That has shaped my planning for the final week in India. My ten-month wanderings in India are suddenly coming to an end. It would be nice to explore Tamil Nadu some more, especially to wander around the countryside and see what it is like. But that will have to wait for another trip. Even though I've been here for ten months, I haven't seen the eastern side of the country. Can you believe it? Another trip could be wandering up the coast of the Bay of Bengal, from Tamil Nadu to Andhra Pradesh to Orissa to Calcutta, and then to Varanasi, Sikkim and Darjeeling, the Northeastern States, and Nepal. And maybe I would figure out a way to do it in two months or so. (Well, I could not include Nepal with all those other places in two months, but you get the idea.)
Now that I have a deadline to leave India from Chennai on Sunday night, I am really looking forward to going to a new country for what I presume will be something completely different, in the words of Monty Python. Thailand is supposed to be completely touristy, very friendly people but oriented to tourists, with high-quality service. After such a long time in India I am looking forward to that sort of thing. I have heard that people who like India - and I do, or I wouldn't have stayed here so long - miss it when they're gone. I think something like that may happen to me. There is something about the chaos, the directness of the people, and the beauty of the landscape, which tells me I will.
I actually spent all day Tuesday making a run from Pondicherry to Chennai and back in order to submit my passport to the Thai visa application office. I have a one-way ticket to Thailand and I read on the internet - that some airlines won't take people to Thailand who don't have an onward ticket, even though there usually is no problem with the actual Thai immigration office when they get there. So I made the run to Chennai. I should be able to get a sixty-day tourist visa as opposed to some sort of thirty-day visitation visa that is received upon landing in Bangkok. So that is a bonus.
I thought the trip was two hours by bus. It turned out to be three-and-a-half hours. I got to the visa office at five minutes to three, just before they stopped accepting applications. Even though it wasn't yet three, the officer said, "You'll have to come back tomorrow." "But I just came all the way from Pondicherry, and I have to return today," I said. "And besides, it's not yet three o'clock." "But after you finish filling out this application, it will be three o'clock," he answered. Without even thinking about it, I immediately resorted to outright begging. He cast a benevolent and patronizing eye on me and let me submit the application. I pick it up tomorrow. "I can't give it to you after five o'clock," he said on my way out. "Don't worry, I'll be here early," I said.
I stayed at Villa LaBourdonnais on Rue LaBourdonnais. A nice family runs the place and the room was fine; the only thing is that the coconut husk beds were harder than any cotton futon I've slept on. The owner Gerard thinks his customers prefer it but it was too much for me.
From Pondicherry I stage my exit from India
