Ginger Pondicherry

... last week and a man approached me asking “German? German?” I told him where I was from but long story short he asked me to walk with him (which ended up being well over 2 miles) and then invited me over for lunch with his family on Sunday. He is the retired registrar of the engineering college but he now lives across from the campus. His wife cooked an awesome meal with locally caught fish and chicken. It was the first ...

... lined boulevards or among colonial villas, taste excellent local food (a mixture of Indian and French cuisine) or enjoy the sea breeze, but that in Pondicherry it is possible to leave behind the hectic and chaos, the dirt and the traffic, the beggars and the touts than flood the streets of Indian cities. In fact, only the streets within the old quarter are like this. Once you leave this area, the same as seen in Delhi or Chennai applies. But at least for a couple ...

... haven’t got on a bus yet that I actually have known where it is going to drop me off at…it’s always a surprise. On the way into the city the bus hit someone’s car and took the back bumper off! The conductor yelled a few words out the door and off we went. Talk about hit and run! The city is a former French colony that is separated by a partially covered canal ...

... this project, though he was not there the day we went. He was on a Nature show we saw about crocodiles and alligators. We saw lots of Garials, some with half of their snouts broken. It is good that they have a place to be, as they would definately not survive in the wild. There were turtles at the farm as well. Mamaji worked at this farm for a while when he was at Auroville in college. We enjoyed seeing a place that Mamaji had been to before.

... celebrated with all our friends as we attended the drug/alcohol free dance party put on at the Visitors Center in Auroville. Before we got to the dance we all made jokes about how we would have to dance an arms length distance and keep the dancing G rated. I had expected to see a younger crowd but when we got there the majority of the dancers were actually older. There were a few teens sitting outside in the pavillion just watching which just goes to show ...

... the tens of thousands of our Indian friends. Emily bought an authentic Indian outfit that unfortunately didn't fit to well. Unable to return it the shop the owners exchanged it for some fabric and directed us to their tailors. Located on the third floor in a tiny room situated in the most frenetic of bazaar's a one man band sculptured a perfect outfit in little under an hour for the ...

... be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages. 3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations. 4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

... warm beer and competing (a loose term) in drunken sumo wrestling. Not a bad day all in all. Early the next morning we bid farewell to Lars and Anna - who incidentally had agreed to buy Mattias' bike from him when he was done with it - and set off in convoy on a two day glide towards Madurai along a dream of a road that curved sumptuously through some of Tamil Nadu's and perhaps India's most beautiful countryside. Within no time at all it became clear that this ...

... and dropped us at the Aurobindo Ashram. Sri Aurobindo founded this ashram in 1926. The ashram conducts various workshops on yoga, meditation and arts. To participate in the ashram activities one has to register at the welcome centre and get a pass. Visitors are allowed access to some parts of the main building where Sri Aurobindo and The Mother lived. This building now houses the samadhi of both of them. I entered the main ...

... and ubiquitous poverty abound, the people of this land (for the most part) still carry themselves with pride and dignity not seen elsewhere. Even the maids of our hostel and university workers, many of whom support families on around $1/day, are unbelievably friendly and gracious. I've become so numb to bad driving, I fear for myself when I get back to the US. Indian drivers use the horn more than the brake, and a typical ...