Pondicherry-Mahabalipuram Road Trip

The Planning ...
It had always in my dream to drive on the ECR upto Pondicherry since the day I bought my first car. I had been to pondicherry once some two years back. It is not only because of the place, it is the road which lured me again to visit that place again by my car.

I was in Taipei when I planned the trip with my mother over phone. She already knew about my intention of driving the car all the way. Subham, a friend of mine, also wanted to join us for the trip. He too was excited to take his new Alto on the NH4 and ECR.

We also added Mahabalipuram in our destination list and extended our vacation by one more day. We decided to start on saturday early morning from Bangalore and reach Pondy by noon. Everything went according to our plan and we managed to book the accomodations after little dilemma and troubles.

The plan was like this:
Day 1 (Saturday): We will leave from Bangalore on saturday early morning at around 6 Am. We will need 7 Hours to reach Pondy including breaks in between. 2 Night stay at Puducherry.
Day 2 (Sunday): Visit Auroville Matri Mandir early morning. Then the Boating @ Chunnambar and Beaches in the afternoon
Day 3 (Monday): Leave Pondicherry in the early morning to reach Mahabalipuram before lunch. Followed by Sight seeing @ Mamallapuram / Mahabalipuram. 1 Night stay at Mahabalipuram.
Day 4 (Tuesday): Leave Mahabalipuram in the early morning and reach Bangalore before Dinner time, via Kanchipuram and Krishnagiri following NH4.

We managed to book our guest rooms for 2 nights at Anandha Inn (URL:http://www.anandhainn.com/) in Pondicherry and 1 night at Hotel Tamilnadu Resorts on Beach Road of East Coast Road near Mahabalipuram.

The Road Trip ...
As per the plan we started on Saturday early morning by 6:30AM (late by 30 mins). By then city roads have already started getting busier. I filled up some gas in my vehicle and headed towards Hosur. It took almost an hour to reach Silk Board junction on Hosur Road because of increasing city traffics. The traffic became easy after Electronics City and in no time we crossed Attibele and Hosur.

It was around 8:15 when we decided to take a tea break at the A1 Plaza adjacent to Relience Oil Station on the NH4. We took some light food items with Tea/Coffee and continued our journey towards Krishnagiri.

The road NH4 (National Highway 4) is just like a dream. It is a part of Golden Quadrilateral project (4 Roads to connect Metro Cities and major towns). I could easily drive at 100Km/h speed without any hitches. We reached Krishnagiri and took a left turn towards Chennai. On the Krishnagiri - Chennai Road, after going about 3 Kms we had to take a right turn towards Pondicherry.

Till this part of our journey the road is very good. But the road from Chengam to Thiruvannamalai is like hell. I was struggling to maintain average speed of 20 in those roads. The roads are totally out of shape and have numerous pot holes. This contributed some 30 minutes delay in our journey to reach Pondicherry.

The road from Thiruvannamalai to Pondicherry is proper but doesn't have any road/lane dividers. So one has to be very cautious while driving through these roads. On our way, we met many unattended cattle herds that made us wait standstill on the road for sometime.

Finally, following the printouts from Google Map and asking localites, we reached Pondicherry by 2:30 PM. We were hungry and quickly checked in to Ananda inn. The hotel is centrally located and not very far away from the Beach road of Pondy. We managed to freshen up fast and our lunch in one of the hotel restaurants.

In the evening we visited Beach Road and the nearby temples. The walk along the less crowded streets near the Arabindo Ashram, with french style residential buildings all around, is really enjoyable. One will get a different feeling walking through those streets (Rue De).

Puducherry
This was my second visit to Pondicherry and I liked the fact that nothing had changed much from my last visit, except the marine drive has been extended towards the Sea. The weather was perfect - not to hot and not to sultry.

We thought of taking the Pondicherry Tourism Bus to visit Auroville Ashram and other places around the city. But later we decided to take our own car to have more command over the time that we spend in visiting those places.

After enjoying the complimentary breakfast in our hotel we hit the road towards Auroville. It is 11 Kms from the main city towards chennai. The road is narrow but enjoyable. You get to see so many mangroves and mango orchards on either side of the road. As we approached the Auroville the road condition became worser .. until we reached Auroville.

Auroville is really nice as it is. But this time also we missed to see the inner chamber of Matri Mandir (Meditation Dome) as it was under construction. After taking some snaps and buying few souvenirs we moved on our way to Chinnambar Resort.

After reaching there we came to know about a nice beach which can be approached only after a boat ride from the same resort. We decided to go for the beach tour. I had not been to this beach before. It worth all our money and effort. The beach is very nice and well maintained. Most importantly, the beach is a private beach restricting access to public. The clean beach was good enough to lure us to take a dip into the sea waters for sometime. We were almost lost in sea bathing until re realised that we are all very hungry and we have crossed past the lunch time. We hurriedly came back to the resort (taking the ferrying boats) and finally to the pondy city. We were lucky enough to find a restaurant (Vegetarian though) just next to our hotel.

After lunch we headed towards Sri Aurobindo's Ashram and Marine Drive. The leisure stroll by the sea shore was quite relishing. We witnessed the sun set and evening and returned to our hotel for resting. We also visited the Manakula Vinayagar Temple on our way back to the hotel.

More to come : Mahabalipuram, Shore Temples, Butter Ball, Kanchipuram (Silk Sarees), Wild Rain on Highway... keep watching this space.

Hiking on YangMingShan Mountain

YangMingShan (YMS) Mountain (Official YMS website: http://www.ymsnp.gov.tw/HTML/ENGNEW/index.htm


It was Adrain (a colleague in Taipei office) who planned for the hike on the YangMingShan Mountain in Taipei. I was trilled to hear about the plan.


As per the plan, we were four guys who showed up for the hike - Adrain, myself, Tim and Bruce. Jesper and Icaro had a night out in the city and couldn’t join us. We met at Jiantan MRT station and took the R5 Bus ride upto YMS Bus Station. In an hour we reached the YMS Bus Station. We took a quick breakfast and got some goodies from the 7-Eleven store next to the Bus Terminus.

After enriching ourselves we started walking from there up to Visitor Centre - a warm-up walk. We took a short break at Visitor Centre and decided to hit for the ChihSing Main Peak. ChihSing (which means 7 Stars in Chinese) is highest peak in YMS National Park and one could see Taipei City and Sea on the other side from the top in clear weather.

It takes almost 2-3 Hrs of continuous climb to reach the peak. It was just 1/4th of our way when I started feeling weary and out of breath. So we all took another small break in the side bench and continued our climbing. It was Bruce who extended his help and took my bag to relieve me out of those extra Kilograms. We saw some wild lives including the brown squirrels on our way.

The final 1/4th way of the climb was very steep and myself and Adrain (who had a sprained ankle) decided to go at slow pace agreeing to meet Tim and Bruce at the top. It was fun to see Tim and Bruce racing and climbing up the steep stairs so fast. And within few seconds those two runners went out of our sight.

It was me and Adrain who took our climb slowly, talking about various things on our way, and taking several short breaks. As we approached the summit the weather started to change and we faced strong wind and mist. Finally we reached the top. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t so clear and we missed the view of the YMS valley, Taipei City and the Sea from the mountain top. We joined Tim and Bruce savouring on breads, cookies, and water. As we regained our lost energies, we took the other path to descend the mountain all the way through the volcanic remains and sulphur springs.
It was amazing to see those active sulphur springs ejecting stinky fumes and hot steams which smell like raw egg. The smell reminds me of the Chemistry Labs in the school. We got some strong winds and rains on our way down. The stones near the sulphur springs were slippery and we cautiously took our steps down.

After crossing pasts some fantastic sulphur springs and scenic grasslands we reached the Hsiaoyukeng Visitor Centre withing few hours. We saw the Sulphur Valley next to the bus stop and took the shuttle bus (No 108) to YMS Bus Station. We were all hungry and took a dining break at the Starbucks café and then headed back to our homes/hotels.


To sum up, overall trip was splendid and something that I would never forget in my life !!

Durga Puja 2007 in Bangalore

Following are the places, that I came to know through various sources, where Durga Puja Celebration is happening all around Bangalore from 17Oct2007 to 21Oct2007. Wish you a very happy Durga Puja festival.

1. Ulsoor Bangali Association (RBANMS Ground near commercial road,Shivajinagar)

2. Indiranagar Cambridge Layout (Near Ulsoor Flower Market)

3. Koramangala, Sarathi Cultural Trust (Mangala Kalyana Mantapa, 8thblock, '80' ft Road, Koramangala. Near Ganesha Temple - Raheja ArcadeRd)

4. JP Nagar (N.R.Kalyana Mantapa, adjacent to Mandavi Motors,Bannerghatta Road, J P Nagar, 2nd phase)

5. Jayamahal Sarbajanin Durga Puja (Jaymahal Ladies Club Ground, OffNandi-Durga Rd)

6. R.T.Nagar Bihari Association

7. Airforce Command Hospital (Indiranagar)

8. Jalahalli Airforce Base (East/West)

9. K.R.Puram Durga Puja (Near K.R.Puram Market after I.T.I - Off oldmadras road)

10. Whitefield Durga Puja

11. Brookfield Durga Puja (near ITPL)

12. Hebbagodi Durga Puja (near Hebbagodi bus stand, beside BIOCON factory on HOSUR ROAD)

13. Attibele Durga puja (near Attibele bus terminal circle, HosurRoad,commencing from last year )

14. Durga puja near Bangalore Corporation Circle (beside GEO HOTEL )

15. Rajaji Nagar Durga puja (near Navarang theatre)

16. ARMY DURGA PUJA (MURGESHPALYA ARMY BASE, Wind Tunnel Road, NearManipal hospital)

17. AIR FORCE CAMP DURGA PUJA (NEAR PALACE GROUND)

18. Durga puja in Taluk office ,HOSUR (NEAR Balaji Theatre)

19. Durga Puja near Marathahalli (Near Munnekalola, near to Marathahalli Railway Bridge on Varthur Main Rd)

20. Kaggadaspura Durga Puja (Started this year - Dont have the location details)

Links for Puja Schedule and Timings :http://jayamahaldurgapuja.blogspot.com/