On the Feb 16/17 week­end along with a gang of friends trav­elled to Pondicherry for the Auroville marathon. Auroville turned 40 on Feb 28 and this was one of the events to com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion. Though I must admit that I shuf­fled and walked through most of this one since I had fallen and knocked my knee a few days ear­lier while run­ning in Cub­bon Park. But I did man­age to com­plete the half marathon of around 22 kms.

A group of school­girls pass by a lovely yel­low coloured build­ing fringed by a bougainvil­lea tree in full bloom

The trail was lovely : I did more of sight­see­ing and admir­ing while going through some of these kac­cha roads that I would never have found on my own! Auroville was a pretty sight with the yel­low, orange, red, pink bougainvil­lea in full bloom adding so much colour to the atmos­phere!

We arrived in Chen­nai at 4 am in the morn­ing and then had a yummy steam­ing break­fast at the sta­tion before catch­ing a local bus to Pondi that was ready to depart. The Pondi bus deposited us at the junc­tion of ECR Road where the turn forks off to Auroville. We started on a good note : a big break­fast right on ECR road called Beach Café.

We found our way to the Cen­tre Guest House in Auroville, a place we fell in love with imme­di­ately. Just as you walk in is this huge and lovely tree in the court­yard that forms an umbrella, tow­er­ing over every­thing around. It must be a really old tree and had so much char­ac­ter. The guest house was serene and peace­ful and had a lovely room with a por­tico look­ing out into the for­est. Sadly, we couldn’t spend too much time in it.

The lovely court­yard of the Cen­tre Guest House

We hired a few cycles (most of them were really tall for me, but I man­aged to get onto one finally). We cycled around the area and I was finally get­ting a lit­tle con­fi­dence maneu­ver­ing except for the part when a vehi­cle would come from the other side and I’d ride straight into the bushes. Ermm… It was fun.

A father and daugh­ter spend some time by the sea in Pondicherry

In the evening we got our­selves a few noisy TVS champs, and went to do some Pondi sight­see­ing — walked along Gou­bert Avenue, stepped into the Alliance Fran­caise, had cof­fee at the La Ter­rasse and then a drink at Le Club. Got back to Auroville and went straight to the Visitor’s Cen­tre to get our reg­is­tra­tion packs. Din­ner was pasta and lasagna and we wrapped by around 930 pm and headed back.

The night before the race at the Visitor’s Centre

The next morn­ing, woke up around 6 am and then started off for the Mat­ri­mandir gates : the half marathon started at exactly 7 am. I started off very slowly, quite scared of my knee. There was one cyclist lead­ing the front and one at the back : Venkatesh. I soon got talk­ing to him and he asked me if I planned to actu­ally fin­ish the run. He was obvi­ously skep­ti­cal look­ing at my painful and slow progress.

As the miles went by, he got a bit more con­fi­dent. After the 18 km mark he con­fessed that he thought I was going to give up very early on in the race (like the 1st km) and was impressed that I had come so far. “Now you can do it,” he said con­fi­dently. Venkatesh proved to be a big help for me : if I was alone I would’ve pos­si­bly just quit at around 10kms.

The trail was awe­some : it was a spi­ral inside Auroville — green­ery all around, a few cosy houses and build­ings on the way and most of the race was inside for­est area and thank­fully quite shady. The only down­side was the heat in the parts that were in the open, but thank­fully they were few and far in between.

There were quite a few vol­un­teers along the way at the aid sta­tions and in between mak­ing sure we didn’t get lost. The only thing I missed was some Relispray or Moov, which would have numbed my pain : but apart from that it was quite well organized.

At the fin­ish line!

At the fin­ish line, break­fast awaited us : lovely big idlis and sam­bar and we also got our cer­tifi­cates and a packet of Himalaya salt to soothe our feet. There were ice buck­ets but most of them were taken. Around noon, we were back at our guest house, tired and achy and thank­fully they had lunch for us. After lunch, we packed up and headed back to Pondi town from where we took another local bus back to Chen­nai. This one took another route (not the ECR) and cov­ered the dis­tance in 4 hours, just in time to deposit us for our Aira­vath back to Bangalore.

- The Auroville/Pondicherry album
– More about Auroville
– Auroville Guest Houses