I had set the alarm for 4:45, 55 minutes before our arrival. But when I got up and checked the phone's satnav/GPS from the window it turned out that we were behind schedule by about 45 minutes so I let Claire sleep for another 30 minutes. When Claire got up we rejigged the luggage and I raised the two surfaces to make seats of the bottom berth. We sat down and listened to the 2-3 noisy guys from last night get up as they turned out to be due to get off at Villupuram just like us.
About 5 minutes before arrival we moved down to the exit part of the carriage and bumped into the 3 guys. Apart from them pulling at my hair and asking me if the colour was natural (yes!) they also proved somewhat useful by telling us that there was a (commuter) train leaving for Pondicherry - we actually saw the train parked up as we came in and when our train stopped we got off and hurried down to the ticket counter where we quickly got two tickets for a 40km journey for Rs.12,- (€0.20 !)
We were very lucky as the train wasn't scheduled to leave until 6:35, or we would never have made it, and we ran down to the bottom of the platform, across other tracks and over to our train and just barely made it in before it took off - the lucky part is that allegedly there's only a couple of those commuter trains leaving every day - and the alternative would probably have been a cab as we had no idea what part of town that buses would depart from for Pondicherry - we literally arrived in Villuparam hoping that a solution would present itself when we arrived as we simply couldn't find much relevant information online about our options. And it did within minutes - lucky break alright ;-)
After some aggressive haggling with rickshaw drivers outside the station we finally got a rickshaw for Rs.100,- to our hotel, which is only like 4km down the road - still a rip-off, but better than the Rs.150,- quoted. After about 10 minutes of driving we got to the hotel and were well impressed.
Hotel Annamalai International is a 3* hotel and in need of a paint job on the inside but the rooms are quite impressive in size, character and furniture & style. Also, the hotel is a so-called 24 hour hotel (the first I have ever experienced), meaning that the hotel lets you book for 24 hours and not just until the day after - so it's obviously catering for the business community. This also turned out to be perfect for us as we arrived for check-in at 7:30 in the morning - and in 5 days our bus departs at 9:15 and you get a 1 hour grace to get out (so 8:30) - perfect indeed! ;-)
So after our check-in, getting our luggage up to the room with the help of a bell boy and finally a shower, we also cheekily went down to the restaurant for breakfast where they confirmed that we could have breakfast too, for free, on the day of check-in - groovy! ;-) The breakfast was well varied with both western and Indian options available - they even had juice from grapes, which was really nice.
Then we went on an exploration walk and found both the pool and the "health club" (very basic gym) on the top side. It looked OK, but tired - usable and relatively clean though, which is the most important thing. And this for less than €40 a night isn't a bad deal.
Full and tired we went up to the room and did a bit of unpacking etc before we decided to take this day out for relaxation away from touristy duties and instead went for a 4 hour snooze until 14:30, as I was well knackered.
Then we got up and watched a bit of TV from the bed, tried to book some train tickets etc.
We got room service at around 18:00, which turned out to be well overpriced - and they also served us 4 cups of tea (we're 2 people?!) that we hadn't ordered so I had to argue with the room service guy over this and he promised to refund the money for the tea - but left it in the room?! We won't be using room service here again.
Anyway, we watched some more episodes of Big Bang Theory and a movie before going to sleep again at around 23:00 - it was great just to have a day out to chill, away from touristy stuff!
About 5 minutes before arrival we moved down to the exit part of the carriage and bumped into the 3 guys. Apart from them pulling at my hair and asking me if the colour was natural (yes!) they also proved somewhat useful by telling us that there was a (commuter) train leaving for Pondicherry - we actually saw the train parked up as we came in and when our train stopped we got off and hurried down to the ticket counter where we quickly got two tickets for a 40km journey for Rs.12,- (€0.20 !)
We were very lucky as the train wasn't scheduled to leave until 6:35, or we would never have made it, and we ran down to the bottom of the platform, across other tracks and over to our train and just barely made it in before it took off - the lucky part is that allegedly there's only a couple of those commuter trains leaving every day - and the alternative would probably have been a cab as we had no idea what part of town that buses would depart from for Pondicherry - we literally arrived in Villuparam hoping that a solution would present itself when we arrived as we simply couldn't find much relevant information online about our options. And it did within minutes - lucky break alright ;-)
After some aggressive haggling with rickshaw drivers outside the station we finally got a rickshaw for Rs.100,- to our hotel, which is only like 4km down the road - still a rip-off, but better than the Rs.150,- quoted. After about 10 minutes of driving we got to the hotel and were well impressed.
Hotel Annamalai International is a 3* hotel and in need of a paint job on the inside but the rooms are quite impressive in size, character and furniture & style. Also, the hotel is a so-called 24 hour hotel (the first I have ever experienced), meaning that the hotel lets you book for 24 hours and not just until the day after - so it's obviously catering for the business community. This also turned out to be perfect for us as we arrived for check-in at 7:30 in the morning - and in 5 days our bus departs at 9:15 and you get a 1 hour grace to get out (so 8:30) - perfect indeed! ;-)
So after our check-in, getting our luggage up to the room with the help of a bell boy and finally a shower, we also cheekily went down to the restaurant for breakfast where they confirmed that we could have breakfast too, for free, on the day of check-in - groovy! ;-) The breakfast was well varied with both western and Indian options available - they even had juice from grapes, which was really nice.
Then we went on an exploration walk and found both the pool and the "health club" (very basic gym) on the top side. It looked OK, but tired - usable and relatively clean though, which is the most important thing. And this for less than €40 a night isn't a bad deal.
Full and tired we went up to the room and did a bit of unpacking etc before we decided to take this day out for relaxation away from touristy duties and instead went for a 4 hour snooze until 14:30, as I was well knackered.
Then we got up and watched a bit of TV from the bed, tried to book some train tickets etc.
We got room service at around 18:00, which turned out to be well overpriced - and they also served us 4 cups of tea (we're 2 people?!) that we hadn't ordered so I had to argue with the room service guy over this and he promised to refund the money for the tea - but left it in the room?! We won't be using room service here again.
Anyway, we watched some more episodes of Big Bang Theory and a movie before going to sleep again at around 23:00 - it was great just to have a day out to chill, away from touristy stuff!
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