I start my adventure by arriving at Chennai airport, Tamil Nadu, India.
Instead of the 3 hours to Auroville it somehow takes me 8 – bursting for the toilet most of the way… on the bus wildly weaving in the soaring heat with hungry mosquitos.
I arrive and am greeted by my good fellow of a friend Alex. Time for a 14hr nap …
Auroville… (Click on the picture to get it enlarged)
Auroville is an interesting place – quite spiritual, & attracts many interesting people from around the world; working on various projects without money as the objective. Ranging from making musical instruments to solar panel consultation, it’s a kind of half-way introduction to India. Riding scooters through its vast land is fun.
The center of Auroville: no religions & no praying to anything particular inside the giant golden golf ball.. kind of place.
Sam & Alex do a weekend course of ‘Awareness Through the Body‘.
Sams reaction: “Meh. I’d rather focus on playing guitar for 16 hours rather than pretend to be a newspaper on the floor..”
I enter where we’re going to stay… Meera youth Camp
Mine & Alex’ room – which looks out on to the sea. 50p/night.
But the first day I arrived a house fell in the sea
So lots of people came to help build sand banks.
Only a few bags got lost
.. in the proceeding storms
We jammed
and took long exposures at night
got to know the locals
experimented with other sand bank designs
with more help..
We visited Mahabalipuram
and were made to be in pictures with families we did not know, which was great.
hung with four monkeys..
tried to push a round rock..
and slid on smooth stone.
Back at Meera..
A cat and his prey..ing mantis
“HI!”
A nice thing to find at night
This is Sadhana forest, in Auroville – volunteers who help turn desolate dry land into forests.
They put on free tours every week with free food & a film.
Sam & Alex’ leaving party: No pics as was too fun: Tamil dancing, jamming, drinking, great people etc
But we found a new species; we’re calling it the ‘LizardFish‘
Raju is our local hero
and finally just a picture of some “friiiieeennndsss“
Alex and Sam then leave after the 1 month in Auroville to finally start their travels, and head to Rameshwaram (overlooking Sri Lanka.. almost)
… tune in for part 2 soon….
Thanks for visiting!
Sam X
For Sams’ other travel stuff check out:
or Sams short stories….
Great story buddy! Looks great!