Pondicherry or Puducherry (everywhere seems to have two names as they try to move away from Anglo names) is a small part of India that was once part of the vast Fench empire, we went to the other little town in New Zealand. Given this heritage there are lots of Rues and probably some fromage curry.

The town itself, while fairly pleasant doesn't have a great deal going on and as we had ended up in a slightly nicer hotel we had a lazy afternoon after getting here. We did however arrange for a car to take us sightseeing the next day, very luxurious, a driver and car for the whole day for about 30 quid. We spent the day visiting Gingee and Tiruvannamalai. Having not climbed a hill for a while we decided to climb one that had something on it and visited the Rajagiri fort at Gingee. It was fairly hot work getting up there but it was nice to get away from the crowds and we could wander round the ruins which we had all to ourselves, bar a few monkeys, and admire the views which stretched for miles.

We then headed to Tiruvannamalai where we visited the Arunachaleswar Temple, our first experience of a temple still in use. Indeed we ended up using the temple as we were ushered into a queue not really knowing what we were waiting for we found ourselves with lots of worshippers in front of a statue of Lord Ganesh (he's a man with an Elephant's head) and a fire while being given some ash to put on our foreheads and two wraps of different coloured powders which we still don't know what to do with. We also didn't have any food to offer Lord Ganesh, it's the festival of pongal at the moment which is like harvest festival at home but as we didn't have any tin cans with no labels such as the ones Mum used to pack us off to school with we dropped 10 rupees and hastened for the exit. The temple itself was really impressive with the detail in the towers incredible.

We then headed off to the Sri Ramana Ashram where people visit to meditate and follow the teaching of a particular guru (that's over simplifying), we climbed part of the way up Mt Arunachala for views of the city and temple complex and visited the caves where the guru Sri Ramana Maharshi meditated for more than 20 years.

We the headed back to Pondy and experienced our first cow hold up. The cows here are everywhere and they Lord it over everyone, as a sacred Hindu animal they can't be penned in or shepherded and they seem to like the middle of the road. It's a bizarre sight seeing buses, lorries and every other vehicle being bought to a stand still by some fairly laid back cow lying down on the high street. At least a passing rickshaw driver wasn't too devout a Hindu as he eventually got out to whack the ringleader cow on the bum so we could get past.

It was a really interesting trip, especially seeing the temple in use, plenty more temples to see here in Tamil Nadu which seems to have some of the main ones in India. Next stop Tiruchirappalli where there's an either bigger temple.