Bengaluru to Mahabalipuram-Puducherry, A perfect Weekend destination.

It was a chilled winter morning we started from Bangalore to Chennai. It was around 1pm we reached Chennai. Once we get down from the train at Chennai Central railway station, Chennai welcomed us with its hot and humid weather. we headed towards the bus stand and took the bus to Mahabalipuram. The bus started from Chennai and was heading towards Mahabalipuram through the famous East Coast Road (Popularly known as ECR). Though the road was little narrow being a highway but it was one of the best scenic roads I have ever seen in my life. On this road I got the glimpse of the beautiful Bay of Bengal. We reached at Mahabalipuram around 3pm after a one and half hour jouney from Chennai. The weather there was better than Chennai because of the pleasant breeze coming from the sea. This ancient town of Tamilnadu had a lot of things to offer to travellers like me. The beautiful and clean beach, light house, shore temple (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site), pancharatha, Krishna's Butter Ball, shops selling beautiful stone monuments on the roadsides and many more things were just more than amazing. We spent a quality evening in Mahabalipuram till the sun set down for the day.

After spending that some quality time there, started towards Pondycherry late in the evening and reached there by 9pm. Had some food from an eatery and went to the Gandhi beach to sit for sometime. The Gandhi rock beach was full of tourists from around the world. Sitting silently near the seashore was a wonderful experience. The crowd was becoming thin with time and we went to our hotel to have a sleep after a day full of travelling.

Went to a local food stall and had some delicious breakfast and stored some energy in the body to explore pondychery. Heard of availability of self driving bikes from some folks but nable to find one due to more people in the town. So booked a cab for the day. First went to the less crowded serenity beach, the beach was not so good but found some people there doing surfing in the water. Then we started towards Auroville, the must visit place of Pondicherry. Auroville was calm, quite and a beautiful place for the seekers of divinity. Though unable to get into the Matrimandir due to unavailability of space, we spent some quality time in Auroville.

Left Auroville around 2pm and started towards the Paradise beach after having some lunch. Due to long weekend the paradise beach was overcrowded. We waited for at least 2 hours standing in the queue to get tickets for the ferry and the beach was completely worth our waiting. We took a ferry ride to the paradise beach and it was wonderful. It was also suitable to take a bath in this beach. I simply fall in love with this beach because of its spectacular beauty. The beach was completey clean though over crowded.