Pondicherry
Granite temples, palm fringes and filter coffee. The food is older than most countries.
Pondicherry — locally Puducherry — is the French quarter India that other towns pretend to have. Mustard-yellow colonial buildings, baguette cafés, a seafront promenade, and a grid of streets named after Marquis de Lafayette. Stay in the French Quarter (White Town), not the Tamil quarter, if you want the postcard. Auroville, the experimental township 12 km north, is worth half a day for the Matrimandir gold dome and the bakery. The food is the best Franco-Tamil fusion in the country — try Le Café for sunset and Sarguru for thali. Pair with a Tamil Nadu temple loop (Mahabalipuram, Madurai, Thanjavur) for a full week.
Source · Wikipedia · Puducherry_(city) · CC-BY-SA
Granite temples, palm fringes and filter coffee. The food is older than most countries.