12 Sep 06
Just off the smooth palm-lined main road, India is hard at work. Salt farmers carry basket loads skimmed off rectangular salt pans, dumping it onto great pyramids of the stuff. Drivers of ox carts laden with hay stop to pose for photos, and even the traffic seems benign. That all ends as we hit the coastal town of Pondicherry, our stop for the night. 'Pondy' was French until around 50 years ago, but even Parisians would balk at driving here. Gaps stay that way for mere seconds - in India, there's always a vehicle that'll fit. Bicycles, cycle rickshaws, carts, trucks, buses, Hindustan Ambassadors (the still-manufactured 50s Morris Oxford copy) - all flow with almost balletic chaos. I thank whatever god is responsible that the rickshaw is so utterly manoeuvrable.
Finally we pull into our anonymous tourist class hotel (£4.50 per person), tired, hot and dirty, but mercifully unscathed. Pondy has relaxed booze taxes, so we head out for several Bio Beers ('Less than 8% alcohol'). What do we drink to? No contest: our continuing survival, of course.
