French Colony

Once again it’s nice to catch you all in another post of my tour guide. As already hinted this post is about a French colony which is not actually a part of Tamil Nadu but much allied to it. I hope most of them would have found the place with the hint which I left in my last post. I am writing about Puducherry (Pondicherry). This is a famous place that I could say close to my home town and my travel didn’t leave this place also.

The meaning behind this name Puducherry is new place and this place is not far from my place, it’s around 40KM. This place is close to the sea and it has many tourist spots to attract many tourists around the world. This is also a well planned city like Neyveli and Chandigarh, which is to say road meets each other at right angles. In the heart of the town lies the Samadhi, or the ashram of Shri Aurobindo Ghosh. At the Ashram's hand-made paper factory one can buy the most wonderful paper products. The Ashram also has departments selling hand-painted saris, ties, and dress material. The beach road is like the mall of a hill station, where everyone comes for a stroll. The footpath is interspersed with trees, flower beds and has lots of benches to sit on and enjoy the evening. Here one can even take a ride in a catamaran by requesting the fishermen, as is the practice. The buildings which are reminiscent of the French architectural style are the Samadhi, French Institute, Raj Niwas to name a few. Pondy’s most happening place is Nehru street and it can be called as paradise for shoppers where one can buy leather & pottery goods and other normal stuffs are also available there. Since taxes are comparatively low there, so people from my town would travel there to buy some costly stuffs like car, bike, electronic goods, etc... Pichavaram is another spot near pondy & its famous for backwaters.
I was thrilled when I travelled there first time with my friends and that was a unique experience which I never had in my life till now. I and my friends went to that place after finishing our tennis tournament at Pondicherry and roamed around pondy hiring a rickshaw. We also went to some tunnel which connects cuddalore and pondy. Its just 10 to 15 min walk inside the tunnel to reach cuddalore.
Auroville is another place close to Pondicherry; it wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity. It wants to be bridge between past and future. In the middle of the town is the Matrimandir, which has been acclaimed as an outstanding and original architectural achievement. Pondicherry has couple of famous temples like Manakula vinayagar temple and Varadharaja perumal temple. But this place is more famous for its education and it is the home for PEC (Pondicherry Engg. Coll) & JIPMER (Jawaharlal Institue of Post graduate Medical Research). PEC campus is around 200 acres; imagine the size of that university and this is one of the top universities in India.
If you go to Pondy don’t forget to take a ride in ECR(east coast road). This road connects Pondy and capital city (Chennai) and this is the shortest and easiest way to reach Chennai. Since this road is so smooth you can race on this road. For all bike riders and car racers, this is the spot that you should not miss. Along the coast road you can have a good site of Bay of Bengal and resorts by the side of the coast. Driving is easy in this road because of smooth and straight road; moreover you can enjoy your drive with pleasant sea breeze.

Shopper’s column

Most of the people tour not only to know and see the specialty of that particular place, but also they shop a lot in that place to have a feel how different they feel when they shop here. In that way, this place has a famous Sunday Market. Its open only on Sunday and it is in MG Road. We can buy anything we want, you name it, and they have it. It’s like an exhibition on street. Pondy people come to this place just to walk through the street, even though some won’t have any intension to buy anything. Here things are really cheap but we have to bargain, and the cost of the stuff is totally depends on our tongue. Once I went there to purchase a collage bag, I spotted one and asked for price, you won’t believe it that shopper told me 750Rs and I finally purchased it at Rs 125, which is not a bad price for that bag and I use it everyday till date from the day I purchased it.

Finally I am going to end this where we went to many locations in this Goa identical city. In the next post we will go to our capital city. If you don’t know much about this City, wait till next post to see what this city loaded up with. Thanks for visiting and keep visiting to share my experience.

Temple City to Chola City

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009.

My travel continues from Neyveli to small places around it like Chidambaram, Vaidheeswarn temple and vadalur and to some big cities and towns like Pondy, Cuddalore, Trichy, Tanjore.
All these are famous and illustrious to everyone.
Chidambaram is called as land of both the Shaivite and Vaishnavite, and it is approximately 40-50 KM from my town & 250KM from Chennai. This place is eminent for couple of reasons, one for temple and other for education as it is the home of Annamalai University. This is a very big university having medical collage and hospital, engineering collage with quarters for its staffs and many hostels for students inside its campus. I have been there couple of times to give my engineering entrance exam about half a dozen years back. Believe me they have made a separate town for this university called Annamalai Nagar which is very close to Chidambaram. Another eminent factor of Chidambaram is its temple. The Chidambaram Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva in His form of the Cosmic Dancer, Nataraja. It is an ancient and historic temple dedicated to Lord Shiva Nataraja and Lord Govindaraja Perumal, one of the few temples where both the Shaivite and Vaishnavite deities are enshrined in one place. Roof of the sanctum sanctorum is covered with gold plates.It is at the centre of Chidambaram.
Vaitheeswaran Koil is about 24 km from Chidambaram. The place is famous for a Shiva temple dedicated to Vaidyanatheswarar, the healer of all diseases, and his consort Thaiyalnayaki. It is believed that a bath in the holy waters of the Siddhamirtham tank within the temple complex will cure all diseases. In this Temple offering Salt and milagu (pepper) are part of their rituals. Even though the proximity to this place from my town is pretty close still i have yet to capitalize on that ... the visits to this place has been far and few between but its definitely worth a visit....

From this temple city I am moving on to chola city (Tanjore) which is about 130KM from my home town. Rice bowl of TamilNadu is the other name to define this city. My uncle used to stay in this place. Kavery River runs thru this city, which keeps the soil so fertile for farming. I am closely attached to this soil as this is my mom’s native. Here there are two famous collages they are Shanmugha (SASTRA) and Tanjore medical collage. Tanjore is well known for its Periya kovil (Sri Brihadeswara temple). I was staggered a bit to see such a big Nandi & Shiva Lingam..But even more surprising information is that Nandi is made of single granite rock. And moreover the dome of that such big temple is also made out of single granite rock. Believe it or not shadow of the top most point of the temple at any time won’t even touch the ground. There are many researches going on about the temple and scientists believe that there are much scientific information is being unrevealed. Having so many amazing factors, this Sri Brihadeswara temple is considered as tourist spot and not as a temple for worshipping. This temple was built by King Raja Raja Chola. The son of king Raja Raja Chola, “Rajendra Chola” had built the temple (Gangaikondacholapuram temple) on the lines of the Big Temple of Thanjavur. Till date even the ruins of the temple are visited for the splendid specimens of the Chola sculpture. The artistic appeal of the carvings is simply put amazing! My dad used to go to this Gangaikondacholapuram temple, every year to serve people who come there to visit. At a distance of 13 kilometers from Thanjavur is the Thiruvaiyaru associated with saint Thyagaraja. In fact Thiruvaiyaru also happens to be the host for the eight-daylong annual Thyagaraja Aradhana music Festival in the month of January as a tribute to saint Thyagaraja. This place has enough tourist spots for entertainment, which is worth to make a visit.

So by this we are coming to an end of this post but will continue with some other place in my next post. My Next post is about a place which is not part of Tamil Nadu but very close to Tamil Nadu and this is also called as French colony or The French Riviera of the East. I hope you got what’s next, if not please wait for my next post and thanks for visiting and keep visiting to share my travel information.