This gallery contains 32 photos.
Setting sail from Danish Tranquebar, we wend our ship southward to the jewelled isle of Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka), situated at the southern tip of the Indian Subcontinent. We are bound for the port city of Colombo, on the southwestern … Continue reading
This gallery contains 17 photos.
In Tranquebar, I stayed at the excellent Bungalow on the Beach, run by The Neemrana Group. It was the closest one could get to a Grand Hotel in the town, and I wasn’t disappointed. The origins of the building aren’t … Continue reading
This gallery contains 29 photos.
From the Danish Quarter of Tranquebar, we amble down Post Office Road to explore the Tamil Quarter. Like in Pondicherry, the Tamil Quarter is also segregated into a Hindu Quarter and a Muslim Quarter. The walk down Post Office takes … Continue reading
This gallery contains 28 photos.
In this first of two walking tours of the historic Danish town of Tranquebar, Dream Of A City literally takes you, the reader, down King’s Street – the high street in Tranquebar – where we point out the main sights. … Continue reading
This gallery contains 22 photos.
To the south of Pondicherry sits a somewhat laidback and half-forgotten port city, which for more than 200 years, was the capital of a modest Danish colonial empire in India. This is the city of Tranquebar, or Trankebar in Dansk. … Continue reading
This gallery contains 17 photos.
La grande dame de l’ancienne scène d’hospitalité à Pondichéry, c’était le Grand Hôtel d’Europe, établi par Monsieur E. Magry (qui était un de la communauté créole de la ville) en 1891. Malheureusement l’hôtel a été fermé en 1996 et puis, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 27 photos.
The Tamil Quarter (or erstwhile “Black Town”) of Pondicherry sits to the West of the French Quarter. It was separated from the latter by a Grand Canal that bisected downtown Pondicherry, and still runs through the city today. In size, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 36 photos.
We begin our tour of Pondicherry in the Ville Blanche, or White Town. This is the town the French built, and it as Gallic and Mediterranean as it can be, thousands of miles away from Marseille. Most of the buildings … Continue reading
This gallery contains 29 photos.
Pondicherry was established in 1674, when La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, otherwise known as the French East India Company acquired a plot of land on the Coromandel Coast from the Sultan of Bijapur. As trading settlements went, Pondicherry was a … Continue reading
This gallery contains 15 photos.
The Connemara Hotel was the grande dame of the Madras hospitality scene. Its earliest incarnation was a private residence bought in 1815 by one of the foremost merchants of the city at the time, Mr John Binny. The road on which … Continue reading
Dream Of A City 