It's been a slow week for the blog. Chris and I spent another couple of days in Pondicherry and discovered the truly French part of town. At a little outdoor cafe, we enjoyed the best meal either of us had had since we began traveling: soupe de poissons, a cheese and mushroom crepe and chocolate mousse for dessert.

The next night, we went in search of Pondy's nightlife and found the most diviest dive bar on earth (in case you've wonderered where it was). From the street, the bar looked like a run down liquor store. Hidden in the back was "the bar," a cramped dingy room with a row of old beer and dirt-covered tables with stools perched precariously on an uneven, filthy cement floor. There was no music, no pool table, no toilet- no ambience niceties whatsoever to woo us into a drinking mood. A lone group of Indian men sat near the door and fell silent when we entered the room. They watched us intently as we sat and listened closely as we talked for a few moments before fading back into their own conversation. While downing our Kingfisher Beers, a rat the size of a cat (I know, you've heard this before, but *seriously*) scurried up from the floorboard and disappeared into the decaying wall. Cheers!

With two more of his tabla-selling friends, Raja cornered me on the street hours before leaving for Auroville and suckered me into buying a drum. He was such a sweet kid and I felt bad for his bum drum-selling luck, what can I say. Oh, Chris and I decided we are getting old now that we call people in their early 20s "kids."

Some of you may have heard of Auroville, an intentional community a few kilometers north of Pondicherry that is home to 1500 people from all over the world. The city was inaugurated in 1968 as "the first realisation of human unity based on the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, where men of all countries would be at home..." Then, the land was a barren field with a view straight to the Bay of Bengal. Now, thousands of trees have been planted around the community, which consists of settlements that have built an infrastructure of roads, water, electricity and telecommunications. It's all organized around Matrimandir, a giant Epcot-type dome covered in gold foil tiles, which houses the central meditation chamber. On a tour, we filed past the door of the chamber itself and caught a glimpse of the gorgeous white marble walls and the world's largest crystal sphere in the center of the room.

We checked into a guesthouse that turned out to be Auroville's geriatric ward (at least it felt like it). Despite the fact that the bill of fare consisted of food bland enough to befit the majority of the guests' ancient western palates, our first night here, Chris got bacterial dysentery. He spent the next two days confined to our room. I spent my time helping a slightly nutty German woman preparing fliers for some self-help workshop she's leading and reading "The Life of Pi;" the main character is supposedly from Pondicherry.

It seems to me that the only real way to "get" this place is to spend a lot of time here getting involved in some way. I think it could offer a lot to to someone who has the time and interest to do so. But it's not a tourist attraction, and it certainly doesn't feel like India, so Chris and I are ready to move on. I miss the clamor, excitement and insanity outside these quiet tree-lined lanes.