After a full day that began in Chennai and included a long drive to Kanchipuram, several hours visiting the sights there and then another long drive, we pulled into the French Quarter (aka White Town) of Pondicherry just before sundown. We were staying at the Coloniale Heritage Guest House. While technically considered a “Heritage House”, this was a completely different experience than our stay at the Shapura House in Jaipur.

We found the staff was friendly, the location was good and our spacious room was clean, but these were much more modest accommodations than we experienced at the Shapura House. We’ve traveled a lot in Asia and know the beds can sometimes be a bit on the hard side.  We try to tolerate that hardness but this bed was more than a little too hard for our taste, there was no elevator to our 3rd floor walkup; and in all honesty, we climbed the rail-less concrete stairway with a bit of trepidation. But it had been a long day and we were happy to be able to settle into our room.

Our time in Chennai and Pondicherry overlapped with the celebration of the Hindu Festival of Light known in Tamil Nadu as Karthihai Deepam. This festival is older than the more widely known Diwali.

The holiday is celebrated in part with the cleansing and decoration of the home and temples and the lighting of candles representing knowledge dispelling darkness and ignorance.

The photo to the right was taken on the sidewalk just outside the outer wall gate of the Coloniale Heritage Guest House as we made our way to dinner that night.  It was created by the hotel staff.

With the French influence in this community we were looking forward to having a meal with a lean towards Western cuisine and found Madame Shanthe’s Café Restaurant as a possible option. The restaurant was no more than a 2-block walk up Romain Rolland St. so we told driver Mohan to take the night off.

We were greeted at a street level reception desk and escorted up a flight of stairs to the (covered) open air terrace/dining room. The room was decorated in a sort of tropical colonial style full of plants and a large aquarium. The service was friendly but I’m afraid the food was just average in general with a much anticipated bowl French onion soup being a major disappointment.

The next morning we made the short drive to the experimental utopian community of Auroville. It was founded in 1968 by the spiritual leader Mirra Alfassa (aka The Mother) as a tribute to her mentor Sri Aurobindo. It is home to people from all over the world whose goal is to live in harmony with nature and their fellow man.

So what’s this got to do with a textile tour you may ask? Well our itinerary included a visit to hand painted silk and organic khadi design studio as well as lunch with Uma Prajapati of Upasana, a movement to “Conscious Living and Sustainable Textiles.” However I’m afraid this schedule wasn’t followed by our local guide.

He was a very nice young man who explained the movement philosophy and what an idyllic place it was to live in but our only exposure to anything related to textiles was a short visit to the dress section of the main gift shop.

But it was an interesting experience. We caught a ride in a shuttle part of the way from the central camp and then walked the rest of the way to the center piece of Auroville, the Matrimandir; a futuristic, spherical temple covered in gold colored discs surrounded by gardens. According to a quote from The Mother: “Matrimandir is a place…for trying to find one’s consciousness.”

Advanced tickets with a timed entry are required to go inside so we didn’t see the interior but we got an excellent view of the impressive setting from near a large Banyan tree that is itself a place for meditation.

We returned to the central camp and drove to the arts & crafts area of the campus and toured the facility where musical instruments are made. The workshop was closed so we didn’t see any actual production but we did get the chance to hit, pull and rub some unique instruments.

Many were basically different forms of chimes but perhaps the most interesting were the “sound stones”. Each stone offers a unique shape and sound and can weigh up to 450 pounds.

They are played by firmly rubbing the rock’s polished surface by hand and produce a sound in a way similar to the sound you can make by rubbing the rim of a crystal wine glass; but with significantly more depth of sound. While very interesting, we didn’t have room in our suitcases to bring one back home.

At this point it was time for lunch and while we didn’t dine with Uma Prajapati we had a very nice meal with our guide in Auroville at the Naturellement Garden Café. We shared a homemade soup, a refreshing green salad with goat cheese and a humus plate. We noticed that like in the dress shop, most if not all of the workers in the restaurant were residents of the nearby local villages and not Auroville proper.

Later that evening, we took advantage of a recommendation from our Auroville guide and had dinner at the Coromandel Café back in Pondicherry and it turned out to be the type place we had been looking for the previous evening.

We entered the property through a gated wall, walked across the lawn past outdoor seating and into an elegant French Colonial villa with a very “cool” atmosphere.

Rather than one large open room the integrity of the original design was maintained with a different theme in each room of the former residence. The room we sat in had outrageously high ceilings, an equally outrageous chandelier, beautiful tropical plant art painted on the wall and looked out through a wall of windows into a sunroom.

We had read some reviews of indifferent service but we found the service to be decent and had read other reviews complaining of high prices but we found the quality of what we were served to be a good value.

We shared a Pink Humus appetizer, a Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Pizza and an order of Ginger and Tamarind Chicken; just barely saving room to share a piece of Pistachio cake.

Everything was delicious and we would be happy to dine at Coromandel Café the next time we are back in Pondicherry.

We returned back to the Coloniale Heritage in anticipation of our journey into the heart of  Chettinad the next morning.