As Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World

Second Saturday: Down the Coast to Auroville & Pondy from Business Trip to Chennai: They Called It "Knowledge Transfer" Trip Date: May 27 '06Location: Pondicherry, India Author: Dr Pop

After the second week of long days of meetings, I was ready for a trip out of town again to go see some more of the surrounding countryside -- and one truly weird sounding place. My driver took me down the East Coast Road to Pondicherry, but we stopped off along the way in a place that was literally a throwback to the 1960's -- Auroville. It was founded by some very idealistic hippie types as a place where people from all over the world could live in harmony, and at the center of it is something that at once is a monument to one of the founders, called "Mother", and a place for meditation with one big, perfect crystal.

Even incomplete, it is the main tourist attraction of their little town, and even from the distance that we were kept away from it due to the construction, it is quite an impressive sight. They call this thing the Matrimandir, and it looks to me like nothing so much as Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World. Of course, to them it's a lot more meaningful, so I didn't mention that to anyone there. There are a few thousand people living under fairly primitive conditions in Auroville, still extremely idealistic and still working to build the town and the Matrimandir.

After I had had my fill of walking around Auroville, my driver (who had wisely been snoozing back in the car) and I continued down the ECR to Pondicherry. Pondicherry was the place where the French had landed in India and had established their colony, so it has a number of charming-looking French streets that draw the tourists to town. They were indeed different from the rest of India, and you'll see a few pictures of that tourist area of town on this page. However, I also went through the shopping area in town, which is not French-looking at all, but entirely Indian, packed with little shops cheek-by-jowl all the way down the road, which is not entirely in good condition.

I had to watch my step going over the tilted slabs of concrete and avoid the holes in the sidewalk -- apparently, American-style injury law has not made its way to India, which is a good thing, but it does mean that one has to keep one's eyes open. I enjoyed browsing through this little area, getting accustomed by now to brushing off the ever-present salespeople in each little stall who, seeing the only non-Indian face on the entire street, would invariably try to sell me everything in their store at prices I'm sure were much higher than a native would pay. It was a chore to keep moving and looking. Still, though, the prices weren't entirely ridiculous when translated into dollars, and so I got a few shirts and a few souvenirs.

I also walked over to their "beach"; Pondicherry is a coastal town, after all, and they do claim to have a beach. However, theirs is a very rocky coast, as you'll see in the pictures I took. It was something of an adventure picking my way down the rocks to get to the water so that I could cool off my feet, and I did get a few looks from the locals, being the only foreign-looking person in sight. With the rocky shore and the warnings about the current I didn't think it wise to go in any further, but it was refreshing after walking around the crowded shopping streets, and the less crowded coastal tourist area.