Coastal homes in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu

Pondicherry keeps two house types on either side of a filled-in canal, and the best of them borrow from each other. In the Tamil Quarter the front of the house is a thalvaram, a tiled verandah on wooden posts overhanging the street, and a thinnai, the raised platform beside the door where people sit, talk and put up a traveller. Behind it lies the mutram, a colonnaded courtyard with red oxide floors and a Madras terrace overhead, brick laid on edge across teak joists, which is what keeps these rooms bearable in May. In the French Quarter the same courtyard plan is wrapped in a garden wall with a blank street facade, tall shuttered windows and lime plaster in ochre and grey. Plenty of houses on Vysial Street and around it are frankly both, Tamil below and French above.

The town is small, flat and walkable, the grid runs down to the sea, and the promenade closes to traffic in the evening. Auroville is ten kilometres north and is a different place with different rules.