Crashing waves, French food and lanes that transport you to a bygone era – this town is perfect for a quick weekend getaway from Bangalore/Chennai
The blog contains these sections:
High level itinerary
Day 1: Auroville, Serenity Beach, White town
Day 2: Paradise Beach, shopping in Mission street, Sunday market
Day 3: Sunrise at Rock beach
Food
Auroville: Tanto’s Pizza, Auroville Bakery
White town: Coromandel Cafe, Le Dupleix, KBS Kofi Bar, Dilliwala 6
Others: Baker’s street, Surguru (South Indian), Crepe n Touch, Cafe Xtasi
Stay
Here are a couple of options for your stay that we have tried:
Detailed itinerary
Day 1: Depart from Bangalore, visit Auroville and head to Pondicherry
We started from Bangalore early morning (at around 5.30 am). The drive to Pondicherry takes about 5 hours 30 minutes and hence, it’s better to start early morning to beat the city traffic. There are plenty of stops for south Indian breakfast on the way.
Reached Auroville around 11.30 with a pit stop at Krishnagiri for breakfast and headed to get a glimpse of the Matri Mandir and explore the Ashram area. To get to the Matri Mandir from the parking area involves quite a bit of a walk, so be prepared with comfortable clothing and footwear, given the humid weather. While there are shuttle buses available, preference is given to the aged or to those with ailments.
Auroville was set up as an experimental town and is known for its pottery
Normally, visitors are only allowed till the garden area which provides a view of the Matri Mandir. The Mandir is essentially a large, dome-shaped meditation hall. However, if one wants to go inside and explore the meditation hall, they would need to book slots in advance. Since we did not have any advance bookings, we only ended up going till the photo point. There are a few cafes inside the ashram campus as well, so we grabbed a quick bite there and headed to Pondicherry to check into our Airbnb.
Checked in, freshened up, rested for a bit and then headed towards White Town to explore the colourful streets. The White Town, once inhabited by the French during the time Pondicherry was ruled by them, is very aesthetically designed with all houses painted with bright yet soothing colours with decorative doors adorned with floral gardens at the entrance or the arch of the door. Some parts of it truly feel like you’re walking in any other European city.
One advice though, try to cover the White Town early in the morning or towards late afternoon since it can get quite crowded with people doing professional photoshoots and can get quite annoying!
White Town has a lot of “instagrammable” cafes, if that’s your thing – and most of them also serve good food. The boulevard by the Rock Beach also has options for a quiet dinner date.
We then headed to the Sacred Heart Basillica – a Gothic style Catholic church built in 1907 and the highlight being the stained glass panels depicting scenes from the Holy Bible.
Towards late evening, we headed to the Rock Beach to catch some sea breeze and walked in the boulevard next to the sea.
Day 2: Head to Paradise Beach
We started at around 9 am and drove to Paradise Beach, located about 10 kms from White Town. There are 2 ways to get to Paradise beach – (i) to take a ferry from Chunnambar Boat House (ii) Drive directly to a resort which has private access to the beach for a fee (INR 70 per person). We, however, chose to drive till the resort.
The Paradise Beach is the cleanest beach in all of Pondicherry with white sand and turquoise blue waters. This is also ensured by not allowing any vendors on the shore and not allowing any eatables from outside. The beach is also constantly monitored by guards and is quite safe even if you want to swim in the waters.
After spending some time in the sea, we then headed back to Pondicherry for lunch.
In the evening, we visited the Notre Dame Agnes in White town, another Catholic church built in 1855, the highlight being the church painted in pink with stained glass panels.
Usually, on Sundays, a flea market is set up in 2 areas – near the Mission Street and on Mahatma Gandhi Road. The one near Mission street has some trendy clothes and accessories, while the one on Mahatma Gandhi road is more old school – with all household items, utensils, etc being put up for sale in the market. It’s a good way to spend the Sunday evening even if you’re a tourist.
For shopping, we would recommend checking out the Hidesign factory outlet (not the showroom) for some discounted Hidesign products. However, the finish quality is not as great as you’d get in the retail outlets – worth exploring though.
Hidesign – the leading leather goods brand’s roots trace back to Pondicherry
Day 3: Drive back to Bangalore
We ended our trip and started our return journey to Bangalore early in the morning.
Roamantic Affair 