Yes, yes, we all know 'plage' is nothing but the French for beach but I only found it apt to encrypt my favorite beach place in my favorite foreign language. Oh is that also a hint to what the place actually is? Keep guessing until you get there! Yes, you'll get at least a half a dozen other hints along the way because sadly, I am not imaginative enough to nickname every place I visited in Plage. :P A biggg shoutout to the traveler in you, eh?!
Yes, yes, we all know 'plage' is nothing but the French for beach but I only found it apt to encrypt my favorite beach place in my favorite foreign language. Oh is that also a hint to what the place actually is? Keep guessing until you get there! Yes, you'll get at least a half a dozen other hints along the way because sadly, I am not imaginative enough to nickname every place I visited in Plage. :P A biggg shoutout to the traveler in you, eh?!
I visited Plage as a weekend getaway in March 2018. It was an impromptu trip with a group of friends, and saying it lived up to my expectations would be like saying, "I won ten million dollars in a lottery," dead-panned. Plage is everything you would expect a beach place to be, and so much more. I am afraid it's just the beach lover in me talking, but who doesn't love beaches now?
We reached Plage on a Saturday morning, at roughly 6 am, to a very humid climate, and to be honest, I was not impressed (because humidity, duh!) but thank God, it's not always that first impressions are last impressions! After checking in to our hotel and freshening up a bit, we headed out for breakfast. Being an ardent lover of the South Indian cuisine, I didn't really mind eating anywhere and so, we hopped into this local restaurant we found. An amazing masala dosa and a delectable filter coffee later, we decided to head towards the Paradise beach, mainly for the water sports it is famous for, only to find out that that section of the beach was under construction, but we decided to go to the beach anyway. We took a boat ride to the beach through the Chunnambar backwaters because the beach is located on an island, and here's the most brilliant part about this: the authorities make sure that the island is accessible to only a fixed number of people at a time, thereby evading the ruckus usually associated with beaches, here in India especially. Upon reaching the beach I realized how aptly it had been named, I kid you not when I say I was left with my mouth wide open when I saw the beauty and charm of that place. Maybe because it had been long since I last saw a beach or maybe because it actually was so picturesque, I definitely had a hard time figuring out how to take it all in in one go. The turquoise waters, the immaculate sands, and the serenity of it all made me fall in love with beaches all over again. I am usually a shy person but here, I danced to the melody of the waves like there was no tomorrow. There were just a very few shacks and some coconut water stalls in addition to the vast expanse of crystal blue waters and splendid golden sands. I swear I could have spent my entire life there, but hey, let's come back to the real world. After spending a good 3-4 hours at the Paradise beach, we decided to head back. We had some really refreshing coconut water and lemonade on our way.
Our next stop was Cafe Xtasi, the most talked about cafe in Plage, and why wouldn't it be? It serves these enormous 18" pizzas, good enough for a family and we ordered one, too. Owing to my teeny appetite, I was saturated after just a slice, and so I spent the rest of my time there watching my friends eat (yes, I find happiness in that too. :P). We started walking towards the Rock Beach, aka the Promenade Beach, next and after reaching there we realized that the beach had been named very literally because we couldn't touch the waters there, we had to sit on huge rocks and enjoy the view- although we were lucky enough and got a wave splashed at us while we were sitting there- and because there's a fabulous pavement for people who love sauntering to mesmerizing views. To top it all, this beach is really close to some absolutely amazing cafes and dessert shops and bakeries, some of which we visited and were thoroughly delighted by are Baker Street (for brilliant apple pie), Zuka Choco-la (for tiny, palatable chocolate desserts) and Le Cafe (if you are a sucker for Cappuccinos like I am) and that's how day one came to an end.
The following morning we took a bus to Auroville which is an international town devoted to the ideal of human unity and even though a few hours is a rather small amount of time to actually feel the tranquility and the spiritual significance of the place, the aura there was unquestionably soul soothing. After a visit to the famous Golden Globe, we headed back to Plage stopping for shopping and food on the way. There a lot of shops for cheap shopping and marvelous food on the way. Now here's a secret for the shopper in you: the prices of goods in the shops increase as you move further away from Auroville, so if you really, really want a particular piece of apparel or jewelry to be a part of your wardrobe, buy it right then, don't wait for prices to drop in shops further ahead because that's not happening. Also, there is a shop that sells gorgeous leather-based waist pouches, just in case you don't have one already. For food, we stopped at Tanto Pizzeria where I really liked the strawberry sorbet, and although I am a vegetarian, I could see that one of my non-vegetarian friends had attained nirvana when he had that first bite of the sole fish meuniere with the lemon dip that he had ordered.
In Plage, we went to one final beach, the Serenity beach, which is a paradise for seashell lovers (no, I am not one :P). There we met this Italian couple where the husband was a photography enthusiast and that's how we got a very aesthetic beach album made for ourselves, free of cost. We went to one final food place before traveling back for home, The Indian Kaffe Express and that was the end of the trip to one of the best beach places ever!
Oh yes, you guessed it right. We had been to Pondicherry.