Pondicherry

This weekend four of the Auburn students traveled 2 and a half hours South to Pondicherry with 6 students from Michigan state. Pondicherry is in a different state than Chennai making it okay for them to have cheaper alcohol and beef. Pondicherry was also colonized by the French so it looks different from the other Indian cities. We arrived late Friday night and stayed at a hostel that was a little outside of the city's center. Saturday morning we moved to L'Escale guest house on which was a much better place and was run by a British man so less communication errors. We went to the beach and then enjoyed steaks for dinner. Sunday we went to Auroville which is this utopian type area outside of Pondicherry where they do a lot of experimental things with food and housing. It is also where Matrimindar is located (giant gold dome ashram) but it was closed by the time we got there. There were some neat shops that sold crafts and food products including Kombucha (a health promoting tea made from fungus).