The Dune Eco Hotel

From the heart of Pondicherry we headed south about 15km. to the Dune Eco Hotel. www.thedunehotel.com Located right on the Bay of Bengal, on the Coramandel coast of Tamil Nadu, it's a fabulous cluster of individual themed hotel rooms built by a Frenchman in the early 2000s on 30 acres of land. There was a tsunami here in 2004 that flattened and destroyed all of it, so it has since been rebuilt. Epod travel agent found this place while surfing on the web. Each of the rooms is unique and comes with its own one speed bicycles for cruising around the property looking for fun art installations.

Here's one of them just by the beach. It's a beautiful steel gateway that leads you down a path to the beachfront. There you can wander for quite a while watching the fishermen and women haul in their nets and pull out all the little fish.

And here just inside the property was a row of antique beds and mattresses for our siesta enjoyment.

Here was a wonderful doorway just for doorway's sake, not connected to anything but the sky and ground...

It has its own Ayurvedic spa, organic farm and its own 7 year old camel named Tahr.

We stayed in the Artist's Studio, which came with its own swimming pool, which we used daily. Check out the cool TV and DVD player suspended above the bed. What a fun way to watch movies!

There were many guests from lots of different countries. We made friends with an Israeli couple named Gadi and Imball, some Swedish film teachers, and a few Frenchies as well.

Epod gets her favorite meal of whole grains and raw "safe to eat" veggies. Yum...

Here's a terrine made of cauliflower, carrots and spinach. Deeeelicious!