Coromandel!

The esplanade at Pondicherry. The beach sand was put there after the tsunami, but is already completely covered with litter. The only few inches not covered with litter was literally inside the empty litter bin.


Neither Cathy nor I have yet been to Coromandel in New Zealand, but we are here at the coast from which it has been named. We effortlessly caught the bus from Tiruvannamalai; a 3 hour journey for 1nz dollar. The breeze was quite pleasant and cool at first, but by the time we arrived at Pondicherry (now called Puducherry) the familiar feeling of sweat trickling down the hollow of the back had resumed. For some reason Indian politicians love renaming places, presumably to attract the locally nationalistic vote, so they can then spend even more money on the ubiquitous billboards proclaiming their own greatness while potholes grow in the roads and garbage continues to accumulate everywhere. So with Puducherry there is Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, and we just yesterday bought our train tickets to Kolkata. The streets in this town have uncharacteristic (for India) kerb and channel gutters and some degree of tidiness, such as 2 squillion parked motorcycles will allow. Just around the corner from our guest house (overlooking the Bay of Bengal) we noticed that tonight at the Alliance Francais in Rue Dumas there is a reggae concert - guess who is a happy girl! Although it is only 34 or so degrees, it feels much hotter here by the coast as the humidity is very high. It probably won't be much different until we are up in the hills at Darjeeling.