Pondicherry

Our next stop after the Andaman Islands was Pondicherry (formerly Puducherry meaning; New Village).  The town has a strong French colonial influence having been owned by the French since 1673. The roads have French names, and on them you are likely to find French restaurants, boutiques and delicatessens.  Pondicherry was handed back to India in 1954.

The streets were noticeably quieter and cleaner, and most people including the Indians spoke French.  

 

Probably the cleanest bike in India!

I'm suprised he's not got his daughter in a bucket!

Whilst in Pondicherry we visited a small art paper making factory (unfortunately photography was not permitted), we saw churches and temples - Dimple got blessed by an elephant named Lakshmi.

 

 

 

Lakshmi the elephant

Lakshmi blessing Dimple

Street life in Pondicherry

An everyday sight in India

The is a 300 year botanical garden close to the hotel we stayed at, unfortunately a recent storm had reduced it to ruins.

One of the most interesting and unique places we visited was Auroville (City of Dawn).  It is an experimental township founded in 1968, just outside of Pondicherry.  Most noticeably is the Matramandir, which is a golden globe.  It is a place of tranquility, within which is polished white marble and in the centre is a crystal ball (one of the worlds largest) measuring 70cm on a gold mount.  A single ray of sunlight shines directly onto the crystal and lights the structure within.  

What's that I can see through the trees?

Matramandir!!

Andaman & Nicobar Islands

Our flight from Mumbai was via Chennai to Port Blair (which is the capital of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands). The Andamans territory is north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated from Thailand and Burma by the Andaman Sea. There are some Islands that are only for Indian citizens and also a couple of smaller islands that are strictly out of bounds for visitors and inhibited by small tribes.You may remember some of these being hit by a storm a couple of Christmases ago.

Whilst in Port Blair we stayed at a hotel called Raja Monsoon a cute little place with a large balcony and great view of the street below and also of over the surrounding buildings including a mosque and a small fish market.  The area itself (Port Blair) is small, and typically most tourists quickly leave for the smaller islands once they have collected their ferry tickets from the office.  So with this in mind we headed off to get our tickets sorted for Havelock Island.  

It turned out to be a 4 hour crossing on a busy boat, and unfortunately it was the only time we didn't feel too well, so there's not much to report from the views on the top deck. When we arrived to Havelock we decided the 4 hour ferry was worth it - the views of the beach and sea looked exactly like what you see on postcards….soft white sand and warm turquoise clear waters…….paradise!

So basically our 4 days there were just spent lying in the sunshine, eating lots and erm…. hiring mopeds!!

Mumbai

This was our first stop for the tour of the South of India.
We were both excited to be out on our first trip, and Mumbai was the perfect way to start.  The first thing you notice is the amount of people around, all going about their daily routines.  Food stalls, tea stalls and old fashioned taxi's littered the streets, we were enveloped in a whirlwind of noise and colour.

 As our last seven weeks of Indian life had depicted we stay sober and meat free, our first plan of action was to remedy this, with caution and moderation of course.  So we headed to the centre of town for a drink at Leopolds Cafe (as mentioned in the book Shantaram) followed by kebabs on the street (literally), just outside a church.



The next day we went to the 'Gateway of India'  and booked a boat ride to the Elephanta Island, which took 1 hour. 
When we got there it was very hot so we stocked up on water and crisps before heading up the steps to see the caves.  The caves were fantastic to see, and all within them were carvings of the gods, depicting stories and myths.  There were also more rooms carved into the rocks making spaces for prayer and worship.  All the caves were set within a hillside covered in thick forest inhabited by cute little monkeys.

Once we finished here we took a walk back down to the jetty to return to the Gateway of India, on the way we decided it was time for a snack, so Dimple opened our crisps.  Before we knew it this little monkey ran behind her and jumped up grabbing the packet of crisps and running to join his friend in a tree who was happily drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola.  Our opinion of these monkeys is no longer cute, they are quite vicious!

The following day we went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Mumbai Museum (formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India).  There was a wartime exhibition outside, with real-life rockets and torpedos, inside were fascinating exhibitions of Indian Miniature Modern Art and Westwood China.

In the afternoon we took a 2.3 kilometre walk along Marine drive up to Chowpatti Beach, where we enjoyed some local food on the beach and a unique sunset with the Mumbai skyline on the horizon.

We had a flight to catch at 3am so we went back to the hotel and waited for our transfer to the airport.

The route of our trip around South India and the Andamans

Having left our Indian home of Surat on Friday 20th January we drove to Mumbai.  The journey took us 6 hours.
The next leg of the journey was a flight to Port Blair (via Chennai) and then a four hour ferry ride to a little island called Havelock.
After being there for 4 days we flew back to the main land and went to Pondicherry (French town) then onto Madurai, Munnar (wow), Thekkaddy, Alleppey and finally Cochin (Kochi).  This was meant to be our last stop before catching a 29 hour train back to Surat, but as we find with most Indian travel, we had an extra unwanted guest in our cabin and both decided to get off at South Goa (15 hours into the journey), and have a week break at Patnem beach.
So with our journey extended by 8 days we arrived back in Surat, tired, hungry and tanned (well there's only so much one can actually tan) on Wednesday 22nd February.

The places where we stopped are represented by the pink dots, joined together by the dotted lines.  The arrows depict our direction of travel.

We will write individual entries for each of the places in our journey, there is a lot to do, so patience please!!

Pure Silk and Art Silk Cloth Factory

Another factory visit saw me going to Divya Fabrics, a family owned business close to the house where silk fabric is produced.

This operation runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year, with a six hour break on Sundays between 12noon and 6pm.  In a given day the company produces around 3000 metres of silk, and upto 100,000 metres a month.  A little fact about Surat for you is that it is the largest textile producer in India, producing daily 30million metres of fabric (officially), 20% of this goes to export.

As the owner of this business is a family friend (Rushi), I was given the fortunate opportunity of being shown around the factory, and, it was explained step-by-step what happens right from the imported cocoons from China to the bundled, weighed and measured fabric going out of the door to the customer.

The processes involved are intricate and the skill that goes into the production of one run of silk is amazing.  Did you know that the crepe effect you get with silk is achieved by twisting alternate threads clockwise and anti-clockwise?  The workers are very talented and hard working, i found the production of silk to be a much more 'arty' type of work.

Another interesting point was made to me, that is referred to as the 'burn test'.  It's pretty self explanatory really, and involves a sample of the fabric and well, a flame.  The point to this exercise is to determine what the fabric composes of.

Silk;  when burned smells almost identical to if you burned one of your own hairs.
Cotton; this fabric if burned smells like burning paper.
Polyester; this synthetic material will shrivel and burn back into a black globule.
Nylon; when this man-made fibre is burned it will shrivel up and walk off like an Egyptian, (no turns white).

So when faced with an unknown fabric you can use this little test to determine what it comprises of.