Staying in an Ashram

Joe drove us to the bus station where we got on a crowded bus that would take us in 3,5 hours to Tiruvannamalai south of Chennai. Travelling by bus is an experience that is for the strong and the mighty. Because nobody likes standing for hours in a hot, non-airconditioned bus that wobbles and swerves all over the place, with noises everywhere and where your nose is constantly attacked by smells that are sometimes undefinable, and often very recognizable unfortunately. The good thing about busses are that they run on time, there are lots of them and they are very very cheap. a typical 100 km distance will cost 25 Rp, less than 50 eurocents. After sitting on the floor board for a while (there are no doors in Indian busses) we managed to find a place to sit.

Ashram_1 Monkey

Rajan had arranged a meeting with a friend of a friend, Ravi, who would meet us and escort us to an Ashram. Ashrams are a kind of spiritual community, often founded by a Maharishi or Baghwan. This particular Baghwan (Shri Ramana Maharashi) spent 50 years in contemplation and is worshipped here.

Tiruvannamalai Arunachaleshvara Temple

We had many difficulties contacting Ravi (who speaks little English) so we decided to go to the ashram ourselves. Although normally no accommodation is given to passers-through, we kind of convinced the administrator to help us out. Our room was very sparse but nice and clean, with pictures of Shri Ramana everywhere in the room and on the streets. Finally Ravi managed to find us, and he showed us another ashram dedicated to guru. There we made offerings and received some rice.

He showed us also the most important temple, Arunachaleshvara Temple which is famous for its monkeys qnd the 1000-pillqred mandapam. Normally it takes ages to get into the inner sanctum, but we paid our way in and jumped the queue. There we underwent two blessings and our foreheads were coloured white and red, the colours of Shiva.