Pondicherry

The French East India Company took Pondicherry in 1674 and, apart from a few British interruptions, held it until 1954, which is why the town follows a grid drawn in 1756 and why its policemen still wear red kepis. The Grand Canal, now a covered boulevard, separates Ville Blanche from Ville Noire: on the sea side, low villas in ochre and grey with garden walls and louvred shutters, on streets called Rue Dumas and Rue Suffren; inland, Tamil houses with thinnai verandas, carved teak doors and thicker street life around the Grand Bazaar. The promenade along Goubert Avenue is closed to traffic from evening until morning, and by six the whole town is walking it, past the Gandhi statue ringed by eight granite pillars carted in from Gingee and the 1836 lighthouse.

Sri Aurobindo's ashram on Rue de la Marine keeps the flower-covered samadhi where visitors sit in silence; ten kilometres north, Auroville, founded in 1968 as an international township, centres on the Matrimandir, a golden sphere holding a meditation chamber, which needs a pass booked a day ahead. The beaches are north and south rather than in town: Serenity for surf lessons, Paradise reached by boat across the Chunnambar backwater. Eat Creole food that mixes both kitchens, then a filter coffee at a Tamil mess.