Journey to the east, Tamil Nadu
30th April 2015, Thursday
The time has come to choose the region of India, where we want to spend the rest of our remaining six-month visa… and maybe more….
The choice fell on Auroville, an international city founded by Mother – The Mother – along with Sri Aurobindo. We wondered for some time and we thought it might be something for us. Anyway – it’s worth a try, at least to see.
To buy a train ticket from day-to-day in India is not a simple thing (For more information visit my article about Indian Railways and Tatcal system)… we were able to get a ticket to Bangalore. Night journey in Sleeper Class.
At 3 pm we got a bus to Tiruvannamalai. It was our first experience so long-awaited “real India” … because Goa is a little European. This trip was our first “happy bus” with Indian music on full volume, speeding along the road with singing horns, offers of delicacies for 10 rupees serving at every stop, and monkeys jumping on the road. We arrived late in the evening and after that, the rickshaw drivers took care of us. Immediately we sat in front of the TV in the hotel’s double deluxe, and my father, as traditionally, left on the hunt for a chicken.
In the morning my dad, as always, brought us some rolls and gave us a speech about the outside world culture and about him drinking tea with local people. After that, my parents went for a walk while we stayed and watched cartoons.
My mum told me many times about how much I had missed by staying in a hotel instead of going with her to explore the world.
In the afternoon we went by bus to Pondicherry. The next journey was a little more tiring. On the bus, we got stuck in the afternoon traffic jams of the city. In the end, we got off and began searching for the bus that will take us to Auroville. No one knew what we meant … in the end, the two rickshaw drivers took the opportunity to drive us to the destination. Now we know that Auroville is a little absent on Indian maps of communication – it is situated on the territory of the Indian villages, which you need to ask about when you want to reach there; Moratandi, Edayanchavadi, Kottakarai, and Kuilapalayam, Irumbai.
Of the several Auroville units offering us accommodation and basic information necessary for us to discern there the choice fell on Sadhana Forest. Without consultation with the family, my mom chose what she was most into; an ecological experiment in the middle of the forest. We were quite shocked that we will live among trees in a house made of wood.
And here we are in Sadhana Forest, Already three days – without chicken, without coffee, without normal toilets… Instead, we have forest silence, interesting International Society, morning gymnastics, and night society of mosquitoes.
