Pondicherry
I will be posting the pictures from our trip today shortly. It was a great, and long trip. It's around 83km, and took us about 2 - 3 hours to get down there. I took a few pictures of some of the houses you see along the highway. Please don't mistake this to be the way everyone lives, but it is the way some have to live.

Along the way we stopped by a monument to world peace. You'll see the pictures to the right. It's a giant gold sphere. My understanding today is that this will become a place of meditation. There will actually be an entrance you can go into and spend time in prayer in meditation. It is not yet complete. It is understandable that a region such as India, which has seen its share of terrorism and war, would want something as a symbol for world peace. I thought about this later today. It's interesting that the Christian symbol for world peace is an empty rocky hill outside of Jerusalem, and a church that sits atop an empty tomb around a similar location. So basically, our faith offers peace by having nothing to view, because we believe the God of peace is alive and will return one day, so there is nothing else that is needed. I don't mean anything disrespectful, or judgemental by my statement. I just thought it was an interesting comparison in how those who follow Christ view the world, and the hope others are hoping to find.

Pondicherry is an old French colony, and a weekend getaway for the people of Chennai. With today being Sunday, it was very crowded. We had a good time and walked about 2 miles near the coastline. I really enjoyed the town and the walk. I even had them take some pictures of me, Donna is not going to believe it. I hope you enjoy all the photos. India is still a wonderous place to me, even after a week.

Well, this was my first cultural foible. The world peace globe is actually sort of a temple. It is used for meditation once it is opened and considered sacred, as I was told after this post.

Now for my favorite memory of the trip, it had to be coming back to Chennai. We are riding along in the car when our driver suddenly kicks the car into high gear. He locks the door and the thing sounds like we've just been vacuumed sealed. Even the TCS guy with me was wondering what the "feature" was. When asked why we were suddenly playing chicken with very large trucks, even by India standards, we were told, "There is no help out here if we break down." Uh yea..... That was pretty much our reaction. I learned later that the road was not all that safe after dark. We had left Pondicherry quite late, so we were working to get back before dark. I'm still not sure if I buy that completely since our other car arrived about 30 minutes after us, but at least it makes more sense.