My first and solo

by Aishwarya Unnikrishnan (India)

I didn't expect to find India

That was a time when technology was getting hard on life and I needed a break. I had started with my IT life and that was the time when my bucket list was to be taken care of. I wished to travel places when young but could afford and wasn't allowed too. Now since I had a job and earned mine own money, I could fly anywhere I wished to. We, during college had planned to visit places once we get settled. Keeping that in mind I asked my gang for a trip. But no one showed much interest. I asked many people but none showed up! I had 3 days in hand and some money to spend. I could lavishly spend these 3 days at some good place with a good company. But nobody was ready for a trip. Finally what I came to was, one fine day morning I boarded a bus to Pondicherry. It was enough that I waited for people to fulfill my own dreams. I was disappointed! I was furious! I was sad! And emotions combined to form motivation which finally resulted in a solo trip! I took the local bus on the early morning of the first day of my trip and went straight to Mahabalipuram. Getting down the bus after 2hr travel, I looked around. All I could see was the whole street covered with people wearing red clothes. That was the Pongal day and it was special there. I walked through the crowd exploring places. There were solo bag-packers, families who came for picnic, friends who came for leisure, etc. There were also tourists from different states and different countries. There I found a foreigner lady who was all surrounded by local vendors and struggling to come out of that chaos. I wished to help and went into the crowd to pull her out of that. But instead of helping her I ended up being in trouble myself. It had almost become a bullying scene when a guy, tall and healthy showed up. He asked the vendors to move away and made way for us both. After that incident, the foreigner lady went away and that guy bought me a bottle of water and looking at me asked, "What are you doing here and alone? Is it?". It was then that I looked at his face and recognised him. He was my old friend, a senior from college. We had not been in contact since a long long time and came into contact at the very best time! He had also come up for a solo travel and landed up seeing me struggling with the locals. We had lots and lots of memories to share of past and lot to laugh about both of past and present. That was a very unexpected meetup and to my surprise again he was headed to Pondicherry too. We both had booked rooms for ourselves there at Mahabalipuram for that night to stay. The next day both of us packed our bags early in the morning. He had a bike and we both went to Pondicherry on that bike. Pondicherry is a nice place to be. Beautiful and cheap at the same time. The beaches look serine. The waves look furious during the day time and during the night time it's even more furious. We spent most of the day at the rock beach. Although the sun was hot yet the cold breeze from the sea helped to keep the atmosphere calm. Evening was colourful and night was calm. Pondicherry doesn't have a sunset side , yet the the sky looked full of colours. One could see all the unusual colours on the sky during the sunset. That night we spent in our own rooms and the next day we were in time for the sunrise. The sunrise was beautiful and peaceful. It was not like a rich sunset we see at the mountains. It was simple, next to a sea and rich in its own simple way.