"Listen to the silence inside your head. Smile at the sun" said our Yoga teacher in a serene and calm voice to his class. "You're not smiling" he quickly snapped at someone. There weren't too many smiles in the room as we all tried bending our foot behind our heads. The teacher had gone for the full Jesus look, a proper Indian hippy, long beard and flowing dark hair, dressed in a white flowing gown, he showed the class the moves step by step. "Become aware of the surface of your skin, keep smiling." Sitting on the floor we had to move our legs apart. Some people were doing the splits while Kat and I struggled to reach more than a 90 degree separation. The teacher looked up smiling and then saw Kat, "Is that all?" he snapped again looking surprised at her un-suppleness. Haha!
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Sebastian and Sandra, our couchsurfing hosts for the next four days, are from France but have been living in India for a while. Sebastian meets us outside the landmark supermarket Nilgiri, and walks with us back to his apartment. The pavements in Pondicherry have been reclaimed by the local business's as areas for expansion so pedestrians share the gutter with the bikes, rickshaws and taxis all weaving in and out. Its frantic, smelly, dangerous and polluted walking along the streets but after a while you learn to ignore all the noise, even though it felt like I was wearing a sign on my back - 'horn testing area'



Sebastian tells us he has been working in India for about four years and loves it more than France, he calls India his home. When we get to his apartment we are introduced to Sandra his girlfriend and they settle us into our own room. We decide to head out for some dinner and walk back into town. "First we must go for juice" Sebastian tells us and he directs us over to the best fruit juice shop in Pondicherry. Sebastian is the juice master in Pondy and has tried and tested them all. He knows this shop only squeezes out 100% pure fruit with no water, ice or sugar added and the price is around 15 Rupees, about 20p for a cup. We all devour a couple of cups and make a point of returning about three times a day during our stay.



In the street we find some other couchsurfing hosts, Cris and Matt, Cris recognised me because we had asked to stay at his place but he was leaving Pondy in a couple of days. It was turning into a little couchsurfing party so we all headed into a hotel to eat, in Pondy hotel means restaurant, and got stuck into some travel stories and a good curry.

The next morning Sebastian leaves to go diving carrying an enormous spear gun. He is a free diver, which means he can hold his breath for a very long time and go very deep without any equipment. He wants to bring back a meter long giant fish and talks about asking his friend who runs a pizza restaurant if we can cook the fish in the brick pizza oven. After he goes Kat, Sandra and I head into town with Sandra acting as our tour guide. We meet another couchsurfer, Doris and we duck into the local markets to see whats on offer.

Walking with three white, young ladies obviously gets a lot of attention from the boys in the market, but its all good natured, they even form a que at one point to have their photo taken. Its the usual smelly fish and seafood area but in India they have rubbed all the seafood in masala powder. The spice section smells amazing and at the flowers we get swamped with requests. Free flowers get handed out from all the sellers and photos are asked for. The men at the market ask for the photo to be posted to them and hand over their address on several occasions.



After the market we walk over to the French half of Pondicherry, a remarkable change in the city. Its peaceful, there is no littler and the buildings have been cared for. We are going to FabIndia a fair trade clothes shop so Kat can find some clothes that are not skin tight, which attract a lot of Indian male stares. Sandra points out where to find the best vegetable samosas in Pondy and then we go back to their apartment to escape the afternoon heat.



Sebastian comes back later looking a little disappointed. He explains he was diving, waiting behind a rock and a huge barracuda swam past, they looked at each other and Sebastian shot it and was dragged along until the Teflon fishing line was snapped by the fish's weight. There was going to be no giant fish party tonight but he did bring a smaller fish back, Kat and I went out to get some take away vegetable biryani and we all sat down to eat the fish which has to be the freshest fish I've eaten since staying on Gili T island.



We hired a bone shaking bicycle in the evening and went out to meet Gary, a French uni student working a semester for a travel agents. Sebastien suggests we try to get tickets for a Tamil movie which is similar to a Bollywood movie just in the Tamil language. New movies here are huge events and tickets for them are like gold dust, helped along by a evident black market in sales. In the theater car park its chaos. There seems to be two ticket offices and the signal they are open is the light inside coming on. When the dark ticket office turned on a light it was a swarm of Indian men rushing to the counter, climbing over each other, pushing towards the tiny window of opportunity. Men sat on each others shoulders, then someone tried to climb on top of them, meanwhile Sebastian had disappeared into the crowd, sucked into the vortex of pandemonium, promising us tickets.

I took pictures of the rugby scrum, laughing at the mayhem, Indian men standing around me laughed at me taking pictures and laughing at the mayhem. Twenty minutes later Sebastian emerged from the mass his t-shirt soaked with sweat. That was an experience he said, someone sat on my head, but the tickets had all sold out. We went off to find some good street food before going to the other theater and watching a bad American movie over dubbed in Tamil, so we couldn't understand a word, but the movie was so bad it didn't matter.



The next morning the four of us cycled down to a French bakery for chocolate croissants and coffee, and we were joined by Cris, Matt, Doris and Gary. After a good sugar fill for breakfast Kat and I sat on the internet to book some train tickets for the rest of our India trip, it was out mission to minimize the number of times we had to travel by bus in India. Cheap and deadly pretty much sums up an Indian bus.

In the evening we all cycled out of Pondy to a place called Auroville. Auroville is an experimental town project that I found very bizarre and unique. Set up in the 60's with a clear hippy commune vibe about it, I heard the inhabitants agree to rules like no religion, no money, no ownership, no saying no to kids.





We were going to visit a Tibetan restaurant on the outskirts of Auroville and had planned to visit the town the next day. As we cycled out of Pondy everything was plunged into darkness as the electricity to the town was cut. We cycled along receiving illumination from the headlights of cars and motorbikes coming up behind and being blinded by the buses coming the other way. It was an unforgettable bike ride, cycling along a road in the pitch black but we arrived at the restaurant and it was very good food. I talked to Sebastians friend, John, who lived part-time in Auroville, he said he enjoyed the sense of family the community provided but he confessed he needed to escape for part of the year and practice some Capitalism to keep his bank manager happy.



The next day we cycle out to Auroville to visit the visitors centre, the golden golf ball and hunt for a good salad. As we cycle into the car park a couple of Indian men approach us and explained they are scouts for a Bollywood film being shot in Chennai and they need some 15 westerners to be extras. He offered us three nights accommodation and food in Chennai and pay of 1000 rupees a day if we would agree to have our white faces in their film. There will be dancing and costume he smiled at us. It seemed to good to be true, fantastic I thought, I'll sit around for three days, wearing sunglasses indoors, looking cool. This is my big break,

We said goodbyes, with a promise of a later phone call to sort out some final details and walked over to the visitors centre to watch a video about Auroville and read about the people who set it up and what their aim was. We got tickets to see the centre of the project, a building that contained the largest crystal in the world. The building resembled a giant gold golf ball, it was clear in the 70's, when it was built, that it would have been very futuristic, but against todays architecture it just looked a bit dated and weird. We cycled off to the solar kitchen which manages to cook thousands of meals every day for the residents using just solar power. We wanted to eat but there is a rule of no money so we were not allowed to pay. Instead we asked a resident, a swiss backpacker staying there, to order for us and have the cost applied to his account, then we slipped the resident enough rupees to cover the cost. It was great to eat an organic salad, first salad for weeks.

On the Sunday evening we all walked along the sea front, a popular activity for the whole population of Pondy, and sampled the different street food available. I ate some amazing curry dishes served in small balls of fried dough that looked like spaceships. We picked up a bag full of local fruits and went back to Sebastians flat to watch a Woody Allen movie with his projector. No phone call from the movie director - our movie star dreams are withering away.

Over breakfast, more chocolate croissants and coffee, we ring the scout to find out when we are going back to Chennai. It turns out scouts in Chennai have already recruited 15 westerners and we wont be needed; our movie star dreams shattered.

We spent our last day in Pondy doing some more shopping and on the internet travel planning. The four of us went out for a farewell dinner, asking for a Kingfisher beer we were served a teapot and 2 mugs. The license fee for serving alcohol is too expensive in India for most small restaurants so they get around the prying eyes of the police with serving beer disguised as an innocent cup of tea.

Cooper Out

Love Dan & Kat