Goubert Avenue

Pondichery

A fragile day, an hour of which was spent waiting in a ticket queue to be told tomorrow morning four a.m. you come here queue...ouch, a four hour queue for a taktal ticket. Who knows, today grotty guts have prevailed, lethargy has felt like the driving force....not that it's been uninteresting...

Firstly there was the, dreadful, boyband video shoot...first on the way to the french quarter, later on Goubert avenue. Some photos on flickr.

And then the most wonderful coffee house; coffee.com it's called and just like the espresso bar in allepey local beans, chosen and roasted by the proprietor. But it was the style which captivated me. It was like a Franco Indian concept of a Viennese coffee house...in the background classical music, distinctly Viennese in style; Mozart piano concerto, Beethoven piano sonata, waltzes. All very much adrift in space and time. And the coffee was wonderful, the owner liked to talk, wasn't impressed by my beloved la pavoni, actually at points I think my attempts to change monologue into dialogue were mostly just seen as tangents for him to drift off on.

And then I tried the local wine, a half bottle of Cabernet/shiraz ...preferred to the full bottle, a screw top so pewe's worries were unfounded;-)

Sat down on the sea front, glass cut from the bottom of an empty water bottle, sun almost gone, light hanging golden upon the mix of sea, dust and sand in the air, the wine poured a policeman approaches: sorry no permission to sit here any longer.... plastic glass in hand I moved on, sniffed...not unlike wine...tasted...pulled a funny face...eh....tried again....spat...curious...hmm liquorice? odd...another glug, another spit...so, that's Indian wine...hmm....not the worst ever, but one glass is enough....

And then the lurgy....