Hello everyone. We are in India, living in a village right outside of Auroville. Every day brings new things to see, new people to meet, new things to taste. We are loving it here. We are not set up yet with our own Internet so finding the combination of time to write and being connected has been a challenge. Gerard is working on it!
Rather than write a long description of Auroville here, I will create another page. This is an amazing place. We started by spending a few days in Pondicherry with Amelie, our daughter, to reconnect with her Aurobindo Society colleagues, purchase some beautiful Indian clothing (so inexpensive – my cotton Kurtas cost around $6 and the silk one $16), get over our jet lag and just get acclimated. The three of us then loaded our bags onto an auto rickshaw and headed to the Aspiration Guesthouse in Auroville. There are many communities within the Auroville community and the Aspiration folks live together, eat together (most of them), children play and do their homework together. It was an interesting mix of Westerners and locals. Several Tamil families took us under their wings and helped us to function in Aspiration as well as in the greater Auroville. We rented bicycles for one day but discovered right away that the distances were too great to really get around here, so we turned our bikes in for motorized two wheelers. That’s what everyone does here.
Amelie spent the week with us getting to know Auroville. Below is where she stayed, in one of the huts. After one night next to her (I found it completely charming), I had problems with allergies (grass roof), and we moved to the “brick house.” Not so bad, from our balcony, we looked out over their lush grounds, saw some fireflies, and just enjoyed the magic.
Elephants Anonymous 