Puducherry

Puducherry, formerly known as Pondicherry, gained its significance as "the French Riviera of the East" after the advent of French colonialisation in India. Puducherry is the Tamil interpretation of "new town" and mainly derives from "Poduke", the name of the marketplace or "port town" for Roman trade in the 1st century, as mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The settlement was once an abode of learned scholars versed in the Vedas, hence it was also known as Vedapuri. The history of Puducherry can broadly be classified into two periods: pre-colonial and colonial. The pre-colonial period started with the reign of the Pallavas, who ruled the empire from 325 to 900, after which came the Chola dynasty, from 900 to 1279, and the Pandya dynasty, from 1279 to 1370. …

The topography of Pondicherry is the same as that of coastal Tamil Nadu. Pondicherry's average elevation is at sea level and includes a number of sea inlets, referred to locally as "backwaters". Pondicherry experiences extreme coastal erosion as a result of a breakwater constructed in 1989, just to the south of the city. Where there was once a broad, sandy beach, now the city is protected against the sea by a 2-km-long seawall that sits at a height of 8.5 m above sea level. Whilst there was an early seawall made by the French government in 1735, this was not "hard structure coastal defence" so much as an adjunct to the old shipping pier and a transition from the beach to the city. Today, the seawall consists of rows of granite boulders reinforced every year in an attempt to stop erosion. …

Prince Pondicherry, a character from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, named after the city Pondicherry is the setting for the first third of Yann Martel's 2001 Booker Prize-winning novel, Life of Pi. A portion of the subsequent film adaptation was filmed there. Lee Langley's 1995 novel, A House in Pondicherry is set here.

In 2012, the Ministry of Power inaugurated the "Smart Grid" project in Puducherry. Farming around Pondicherry includes crops such as rice, pulses, sugarcane, coconuts, and cotton. In 2016, the Pondicherry State Government Employees Central Federation presented a status paper on the fiscal and social crisis in Puducherry to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The report stated that a "combination of a staggering debt, stagnant tax revenues and rampant misappropriation of funds has throttled the economy of the Union Territory" and called for measures on a war footing to "deliver good governance and end corruption".

Pondicherry is a tourist destination. The city has many colonial buildings, churches, temples, and statues which, combined with the town planning and French-style avenues in the old districts, still preserve much of the colonial ambiance. While the sea is a draw for tourists, Pondicherry no longer has the sandy beaches that once graced its coastline. The breakwater to the harbour and other hard structures constructed on the shore caused extreme coastal erosion, and the sand from Pondicherry's Promenade Beach has disappeared entirely. As a result of the city's seawall and groyne construction, the beaches further up the coast to the north have also been lost. An enormous deposition of sand has accrued to the south of the harbour breakwater, but this is not a large beach and is not easily accessible from the city. The government has taken steps to construct a reef and re-dose the sand. …

Pondicherry is connected to Chennai via the East Coast Road through Mahabalipuram. There are daily bus services from several main stops from Chennai. The Pondicherry Road Transport Corporation runs buses within the city and outside. The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation operates air-conditioned bus services from Chennai to Pondicherry. Pondicherry is connected by train to all major Indian cities, such as Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata (Howrah), Mumbai, Kanyakumari, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam, and Mangalore. Moreover, Villupuram Junction, which is at a distance of around 24 miles (39 km), is connected to several other Indian cities. Pondicherry Airport is located at Lawspet, an Assembly Constituency in the Union Territory of Puducherry. It has direct flights to Hyderabad and Bengaluru.