Yes, this is the first time I am making an attempt at writing a travelogue, so don't go making fun of me guys. I have made a number of trips with my family in the last 7 years, but this is the first time I am relating my experience to anyone at all.
29/5/2007 - Tuesday
Started around 9.00 am, broke the fast in a restaurant near our house in koyambedu & took the East Coast Road towards pondicherry. First stop was the Crocodile Bank, my elder son's favourite haunt. Both my sons had a fantastic time looking at those lazy arrogant blokes who do not move an inch for hours together except during feeding time. Here are a few snaps of those ugly prehistoric monsters. (My son would kill me if he can read this).
My sons (Caleb & Timeus) in 7th Heaven holding one of those little buggers 
Caleb holding a tortoise 
Holding a baby Python 
Timeus' turn with the Baby Python 
Crocs are cool & so are my kids 
Now for some Croc Images 
I think you guys have had enough of the crocs for now. Getting on with the journey. After an hour in the croc bank, we started off to Pondy in the famous ECR (East Coast Road). Yeah, the road is scenic allright, but not to my taste for driving. It is a single lane, very well laid road that curves & curves & curves throughout the 150 km journey. My elder son became sick just 10 km before pondy & we had a short stopover because of that. To make matters worse, the AC was just working like a cooler.
Finally we reached the outskirts of Pondy around lunchtime (sorry i don't keep time, i remember them by the various acts of the day). My reservations in a city hotel were for monday & tuesday. Since we did not turn up on monday (thanks to ABT maruti, read it here....
Esteem AC Issues the bookings were cancelled.). I was desparate to find a decent hotel & called up 10 of them out of which 3 confirmed they have rooms ranging between 700 to 3000. Confused about what to do, we drove on & came across this beach resort 5 km before Pondy. It is called the St.James Court Beach Resort. We drive in & enquire about the rooms & we are shown a magnificent, large room with a view of the sea & i immediately settle for it. It costed 2,500 per day but was really really worth it. Here are some pics.
View from the room
The beach is just a 5 min walk from the room & it is very clean & also private which is just not there in chennai. Wife & kids had a great time playing in the sand
There you go, dad's got fish for dinner.
Second part to be continued tomorrow. Cheers