later that same day...

we continued our "run" throgh tamil nadu by taking a bus to french-influenced pondycherry.

on the bus we met two charming (yet foul-smelling (just kidding) of garlic) frenchies, the handsome Brice, and the charming Amandine.

it was a long tiresome ride and we arrived before dawn to our destination, only to discover that we have arrived on a rather auspicious event: it was the birthday of "the mother" (?)
apparantly some old hag who died 10 years ago is a revered saint in pondycherry, along with a guy named aurobindo. anyway this birthday didnt turn out to be such a good thing for us,
because basically we spent (with brice and amandine) a couple of hours looking for a hotel, finding nothing... finally we just sat down at the beach, watched the sunrise (again!) and waited for the tourism office to open.

then linda and amandine went o the bathroom and were gone for an hour and a half -
so naturally I involved the police... however all was ok, since linda was only victim of peer pressure - by amandine who wanted to stroll around... Brice called the police off and after some time the frenchies started talking to some guy who got us a really nice hotel room with 4 beds and we all shared a room together. this was the first time since the beginning of our trip that we really travelled in a group and we loved it. sometimes it was hard because everybody was trying to be polite and considerate and democratic all the time, so reaching an actual decision could take some time, but eventually we got the hang of it and were a very nicely formed group, which explains the nice adventures we had later on...