Pondicherry - India's French Capital!

We left Bangalore on 4th night and reached Pondicherry early morning. Since we wanted to attend the meditation session in Matrimandir in Auroville, we asked our bus to stop midway from where Auroville was only 4 km away. We had booked our accommodation in the Auroville campus itself. It's a small society with a population of 2500+ folks from 50+ countries. Passes are issued to the visitors in-person and the office opens up by 9 am. Since we had just two days and the number of passes is limited for each day, we reached earlier to increase our chances of getting them! Fortunately, we got the pass for the same day. Camera is not allowed to be carried inside the premises.

After spending the afternoon here, we rushed for the nearby Rock beach and Auro beach on our Scooty that costs us ₹400/day.

Auro beach is quite near and it's very secluded. Very few visitors turn up here.

Today, we spent some time exploring Auroville. It has many NGOs working on a wide gamut of issues like education, sanitation and hygiene, rural employment etc. One can also do volunteering or internships here. After getting inspired, left for Shri Aurobindo Ashram. It's a quaint Memorial and houses a small Library as well. Mobiles were not allowed here as well.

After paying our homage, we left for the French town and Promenade beach from where we had to catch our bus for Bangalore. This marked the end of a short and sweet trip to India's French capital and undoubtedly it's a perfect place to chill out!