Mahé, Puducherry – Travelling Cooks

We got to Mahé in the late afternoon. We checked in straight away, donned our running gear, and headed straight to the harbour side for a 5k sunset run. Of course, we made a stop to admire the sunset and the completely empty white beaches. We struggled to find dinner options. The only place we could find was at our hotel – nothing wrong with that, we just tend to like to venture out.

We were quite off the beaten track in Mahé, staying at the only hotel on Booking.com, and we couldn’t find a laundrette close by either, so we did lots of hand washing that evening and laid it all out to dry (unfortunately, with no balcony, we had clothes hanging in lots of random places around the room).

We had an early night as we had planned to do another run in the morning to beat the early Indian sun. James had mapped out a 10km route, whilst I committed to just a 5km. I was doing the first half of his route. At about the 2km mark, James passed a group of kids – a mix of boys and girls. A few minutes later, I ran past the same kids, where we exchanged some quick greetings whilst I continued running. I got a few hundred metres further and met James, who told me he had passed the same group of kids and that they had asked him to play football with them. So, he was going to just do a 5km run and play football instead. I was surprised to hear that he said yes and would cut his run short to do this. He said I would pass him on my way back. The only problem was that I decided I wanted to go a little further but got slightly lost, so ended up doing a total of 12k. James hadn’t taken his phone with him, so he was expecting me back within 15-20 mins. He ended up running back to get his phone but left a message with the boys if they saw me running back, they knew who I was as we said Namaste to one another as I was passing earlier. So, when I passed the kids again, they recalled the message from James: he had gone back to the hotel to get his phone. The boys then started playing, but very quickly the girls gathered around me and all wanted to talk to me and take selfies using my phone. Some of the adults came out with their phones for pictures too. They were very impressed with my very broken Hindi. It was about 9am by now, and it was starting to get hot, and I had just run 10km, so needless to say, I was sweating like mad. The Indian girls were asking me why I had water on my face – they couldn’t quite understand that it was from running. They were very kind and sweet, offering me water. Although I really wanted to say yes, I couldn’t be sure it was “safe” water so I declined the offer. I carried on with my run, and by this time James had messaged me. He came to meet me with an ice-cold bottle of water – what a hero of a husband!

There wasn’t a huge amount to do in Mahé. We went into the town and found an abundance of liquor shops lining the streets – such a totally crazy experience that we weren’t expecting. The breakfast at the hotel was pretty abysmal, so we tried to find some brunch in town. We managed to find a restaurant called the Ritz, which we thought could be a winner, but once we sat down and ordered, we were told the breakfast menu was no longer available, but we could order anything else. James asked if we could order off the tandoor menu, and we were told yes. A few minutes later, we were told the tandoor wouldn’t be on for a while, and we should choose something else. We decided to give up on the Ritz and go elsewhere. This involved more wandering around the streets until we came across a very busy ice cream parlour. We had no idea why it was so busy, but we thought we would check it out. We went in and were given free food and drink. We didn’t understand why we were being offered free food and drink, but eventually, the owner of the restaurant explained that this was the opening day of his restaurant and welcomed us inside and got us a table to sit at. Waiters and waitresses kept coming over with trays of food to sample, and at one point, we had to decline. The photographers for the event were taking a lot of pictures of us and then asked us to do a video about the food. We were very much put on the spot without a script, which I found challenging, whilst James embraced this opportunity to use his acting background. On our way out, we were also given a big cake as a thank you. We didn’t really want the cake and tried to tell them they didn’t need to give it to us, but we gracefully accepted it as we didn’t want to appear rude.

The remainder of the day, we continued exploring the town on foot, but there wasn’t a huge amount more for us to do, so we made use of the beach for the rest of the day. We also had a competition to see who could make the best time-lapse of the sunset.

Our final day in Mahé involved zero running – our legs were knackered from the day before. We had a lazy beach day until 2pm, and then we had booked a driver to take us to our accommodation in Wayanad.

India