PONDICHERRY Ooh La-La!

Civilisation returned in Pondicherry where, in the neat, French-colonial grid of streets, we were able to blend in for a few days, among the coffee shops and wine bars (and yes, EU flags), being the cosmopolitan types what we are.

Our guest house, La Maison Radha, only just on the wrong side of the tracks in 'Indian' territory, was run by fuss-budget Ravi, with his list of house rules and a little too ever-present style.

He was a nice guy really, just a bit keen,  spending the first hour of our check-in poring over a street map marked with every tourist attraction, shop, cafe, restaurant and event in the area.

An exhaustively handwritten list of Indian food types and yet more touristy stuff filled the back of the sheet.

He wasn't taking any chances on us having to ask questions or miss out on anything, so he talked us through that as well.

Everyone got this slightly obsessive welcome. Not odd at all.

Anyway, we loved Pondicherry. The parks, cafes, wine bars, eateries (although we did eat at the same South Indian restaurant four times it was so nice!), boutiques, beach, gendarmes and promenaders were a pleasure to walk around and watch.

So clean, tidy, quiet, ordered and leafy, the Frenchified flavour even extending to New Orleans on some of the quiet side streets.

A walk across the tracks (literally a dingy canal) put us back on the Indian side.

We were able to enjoy again the madness of the Grand Bazaar and get our daily traffic fume and car horn fix.

Blazing sunshine intermitted with rain and, by the final few hours of our stay, a Biblical deluge had us almost marooned in the hotel Ram, to where we'd decamped for a couple of nights.

Luckily, the flooded streets were to our left, the railway station to the right.

Bon voyage and bon chance, Pondy!

MAMALLAPURAM What A Pallava

Good times, bad times at the beach.

An easy-going town with a nice beach, some interesting old temples and a lot of gift shops.

The old rogue.

On our first day of wandering we were railroaded by tour guide David, a good Roman Catholic boy, by marriage said he. Not sure he'll appearing in the Sopranos any time soon.

As it was the first day of Cultural Heritage Week all the temples were free today, he told us.

For a couple of quid he would give us a taster of the Shore Temple.

After a cursory but entertaining bit of 'guiding' he relieved us of another few quid by roping his mate in to tuktuk us around the other nearby temples as well. David came along pretty much for the ride.

We knew were being naive, but he was good fun and, as it turned out, the temples WERE all free that day, so we saved about a quid on what we would've spent next day as planned, and met another great character.

Butterball. For fat Buddha.

The temples themselves were about 1300 years old, built for the Pallava kings, and were beautifully preserved examples of the local stone masons artistry, which filled great swathes of the town, largely in the gift shops.

It was a nice, clean town and recently in the headlines due to Chinese PM Xi Ping's trade  meeting with Indian PM Modi; some cobbled together PR guff about Chinese design influence, which in reality probably involved Chinese slave labour, but why let a bit of historical human suffering get in the way of a good trade deal?

Dancing girls, ready for the show.

Mamallapuram has some decent beach, particularly near the Shore Temple, where we caught a bit of sun, watched the locals go for a dip (looked a bit under-towy for us), admired the local horsemen and saw some nuns taking selfies in the sea.

I was offered a reading with an astrological parrot, but declined. I was a bit sceptical of its powers, to be honest.

There were lots more white people in this town, mostly Americans and Russians, so we must have crossed some sort of invisible traveller border to the South.

Roger from Miami, who had retired from a career as an art director in Hollywood and divided his time between here and Thailand.

Marvin and Trish had been on the road for 17 years, had a pad in Portugal and had upped sticks from Sausalito, San Francisco and never looked back.

Lesley from Boston and Michael from Oz had met some years ago while travelling on a local bus. She was impressed he'd brought a surfboard onto a crowded bus, so they got chatting.

They still travel on the buses, he still has his surfboard, they both carry fold up Brompton bikes, plus their rucksacks. On the bus. Cool, but curious to the locals, I bet.

We had some good times with these lovely, interesting people, drank a bit and ate some good grub, too.

Main drag.

Bottle shop on the edge of town.

Then something made me stay near the loo, so I stayed indoors for a bit.

Kim explored more temples and stuff and told me (again) I was missing out.

Then we headed further south.

Goes down well.