Pondycherry and Get Together

Get Together!

Mahatma Gandhi statue, Pondicherry

Last Tuesday Lukas and I headed for the former French settlement Pondicherry (Puducherry). We hadn't taken into account the post-Dasara traffic jams in Mysore so after a desperate try with the rikshaw we had to face the fact that we would miss our train. Shit happens. We were forced to take a Volvo Airavat Multiaxle SuperComfort-bus, which cost four times the price of our train. We didn't worry too much about the price. After all, we were on our way to a FSL arranged Get Together, so they would pay the journey.

Welcome to Pondicherry!

After a short night of luxury (watching Bollywood movies and freezing because of the air-conditioning) we arrived in Chennai before sunrise. Half asleep we managed to get ourselves into a Pondycherry bus, which made a great contrast to our previous vehicle. The bumpy ride to Pondy took around four hours. We were hungry and exhausted and looked very much forward to check in at our luxurious two star-hotel, which had been the cheapest alternative on Bookin.com, 7 euros per head only. But first we needed breakfast. After some arguing with the riskhaw driver we got the tourist prices down a little bit and were promised to be taken somewhere where we could have a nice and cheap Indian Breakfast. But as experienced India-travellers we knew not to expect anything. We were dropped at a fancy French bakery/café where the cappuccino costed more than a couple of Indian meals. At least we got to experience the French influence while enjoying our croissants and observing all the other white customers who chose to buy their morning baguette or sandwich for a price that my host family could have eaten for a whole week. You can travel all the way to India to get the same food and service as you get at home in France. So it is definitely worth coming here from there..?

Luxury

Our hotel exceeded all our expectations. It was amazing. And next to the beach. There were almost no people on the beach except some little boys, which were happy to swim with me in the crazy waves of the Bay of Bengal. During the day we visited an interesting Ganesha-temple where a gigantic elephant was entertaining the tourists with its presence. I don't trust those enormous animals any more after the killer-elephant story so I kept my distance to the poor animal. We visited Sri Aurobindos Ashram as well, even though we didn't actually know anything about him and the Mother at that time.

The next day we had to leave our lovely hotel and find our way to the FSL Get Together. This proved not to be as easy as we had thought as we ended up in a random bus which was not going to our destination (the driver got us wrong when we asked for the direction). All the people spoke only tamil, and we just had to trust that they understood where we were going and would help us to get there. Fortunately Indian people really care and want to help, so at last we reached the REAL training centre.

view from the rooftop

The Get Together was nice as usual. It was so lovely to meet Nishkal and also the other coordinators. We were only six volunteers, but it didn't matter. We visited a place called Baby Sarah's home, which was a kind of orphanage for disabled and non-disabled children. They had expanded the concept to even contain a school for the children living there. The disabled children where trained in basic interaction with people so that they maybe later could return to the society and live there an almost normal life. It was impressing the work that was done there. We could even meet a volunteer from FSL who was working in the orphanage. So valuable work!

Country presentations and dancing
with the children

Next morning we all woke up at 5.30 to see the sunrise on the beach. It was amazing. So calm and beautiful. We went swimming with Lukas. The ocean was so warm but also very strong. Several times you really could loose control over your own body when the enormous waves pulled you under the water and the world went up and down a couple of times. Afterwards it took a long time to get rid off all the sand in the clothes and in the hair etc. But it was totally worth it.

Nishkal and Malati

Now I would come to the Auroville part of the journey, but since there is so much to tell I'll have to write a whole new text about it. Auroville is an exceptional village concept founded by the Mother and inspired by the freedom fighter and spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo. I recommend everyone to google this on the internet, it is very interesting and exceptional!

http://www.auroville.org/