While Quiet is a self-sufficient unit within Auroville, you will enjoy exploring Auroville itself for its special energies and healing activities.

Pondicherry (10 km S)

They like to call it the French Riviera of the East but Pondicherry has no Cote d’ Azure-style resorts, water sport golden beaches. Life is slow, almost staid amidst an ancient native history of kings and temples, the disparate influences French colonial occupation and contemporary cosmopolitanism. All of this happens in the prettiest of settings: the wind-swept Beach Road, and its vistas the Bay of Bengal; the sunny Mediterranean buildings in the French Quarter set upon a neat grid layout; the policemen wearing red kepis (French military-style caps); the friendly clutter of the Tamil Quarter where the houses are smaller temples bigger; the churches, tree-lined avenues and parks; the Aurobindo Ashram and its many properties, each an oasis of contagious serenity; and always is the ocean which is a playful gust away.

The Beach Road and adjoining areas are the prettiest, dotted with late 18th and early 19th-century buildings such as the Town Hall, the War Memorial or the lighthouse. Rue Dumas is where the first French settlers lived. The Church of Immaculate Conception (1791), Romain Rolland Library and Museum (1872), and the mansion of Ananda Rangpillai (1738), a unique specimen of Franco-Tamil architecture are well worth a visit.

? Location 10 km down East Coast Expressway, on the Coromandel Coast, by the shores of the Bay of Bengal

The Auroville brand name is identified with aesthetic, hand-made products with an emphasis on ecological soundness. There are only postcards to be bought on the premises of Quiet, but if you venture into the Visitors Centre in Auroville, you can buy clothes (Rs 400-3,000), pottery (Rs 200 upwards), jewellery, paper products (Rs 50-500), Auroville’s famous incense (Rs 60-100) and handicrafts at the Boutique d’ Auroville. The shop is not far from Quiet. There’s also the Seagull Bookshop, which is small but well packed with books on Indian philosophy, particularly the works of Sri Aurobindo.

Harmonious interiors

Quiet serves three vegetarian buffet-style meals a day. Breakfast is Continental and Indian — fruit, porridge, idlis, bread and an incredible array of Aurovillian jams and honey. Lunch and dinner feature a salad bar with both Indian and Continental offerings. Lunch is the more substantial meal with rice, either dosa/chappati and one Western dish. Dinner is a low-key affair: soup followed by pasta/rice. No desserts served (other than fruit), so best to pack some chocolate bars if you fancy giving in to craving. Otherwise, Pondicherry and Auroville have wonderful cafés and restaurants with all kinds of food imaginable. A meal in Auroville will cost you half of what it will in Pondicherry (an average of about Rs 180 in Auroville).