More pictures

Okay, we are about 5 minutes from the beginning of inaugural coverage, but here are the latest pictures. They are in sort of reverse order (from bottom to top is chronologically correct). Hope you can make sense of them!

Gandhi's memorial.
The view from our window in Delhi.
The main street where our hostel in Delhi is.
Josh at the very foggy, cold, early morning Taj Mahal. A goofy morning.
Villagers in one of the surrounding villages outside of Auroville.
This is Swadhin and his wife and child. He was our fantastic host who lived outside Auroville and was planning to move and live in Auroville, as an Aurovillian, in the next couple years.
This is an image of the inside of the Maitri Mandir (main meditation hall) in the center of Auroville (see gold orb picture below)
Three sweet villagers in one of the surrounding little villages outside Auroville proper. Man on right....there's something about him.
This is a house in one of the little neighborhoods of Auroville. People approved for residence in Auroville design and build their own house using the local Auroville building business--also a way to keep the economy funnelling and cycling through Auroville.
This is the Maitri Mandir, or main meditation hall in the center of Auroville. You have to book an entrance time if you're not a resident of Auroville, which Josh and I failed to do, so we never made it in. But the pictures and diagrams of the inside are...awesome I guess is the only way to describe it.
This is Josh in front of Upasana. This is a business that employs local Indian villagers to make and design clothes and bags (various textiles). It's headed by a friend of Shim's and is run out of Auroville.
These little businesses are all over Auroville.

From the 5th floor of a rickety New Delhi hostel

Hi Hi all, I'm in Delhi.

These rows of computers in this hostel (The Smyle Inn) are new enough to put up some pictures. We arrived in Agra two days ago at about 3am after about 30 hours on a train and took a nap on the marble floors of a holding room at the station waiting for dawn to come. On the train we had interesting and passionate discussions with a Hindu Social Activist and a doctor, mostly about differences between the U.S. and India, Obama, and Indian politics...also about religion and the Spirit and the indivisibility of existence (that's absolutely true, haha). Both very interested in us and very sweet and helpful. When we got in however, neither of us could sleep, either because of the screeching train whistles every 15 minutes, the stern lady announcing the train's arrival or departure both in Hindi and English repeating the same message 5 times in a row (not an exaggeration, I counted), or the large Sikh seated next to Josh snoring and hacking. Rough morning.

We took a cold rickshaw to the Taj Mahal (I'll admit, mostly out of obligation- neither of us had a burning desire to see the Taj, but felt we had to since we were in India! haha). It was about 15$ for foreigners to gain entrance and a donation based charge to store our backpacks in some side alley with no sign, in the care of an old bearded man who drew numbers on our packs in chalk and handed us a golden token. At any rate, we made it into the Taj Mahal complex at about 7am (when it opens) and stepped in, cold, tired, all giggles, and feeling rather unimpressed. Why? We couldn't see 10 yards in front of us because of a very thick fog. So we got the gist of the structure, and saw the marble, and got the tour etc. But the farthest we could view it from was about 30 feet. As I recall it now, it was a ridiculous morning. Multiplied by our frequent revelations and re-revelations that we were actually in the middle of India on a Sunday at the break of dawn...still so weird.

We took a bus up to Delhi that same day and had a hell of a time finding our hostel, because it's located in and between various alleyways and hidden tunnels and spaces in a mess of buildings, wires, signs, and stairs. We're in an area called the Main Bazar, around a main and torn up/muddy street where all...ALL types of shops exist. Along with the usual cows, rickshaws, beggars, peddlers, flowers, spices, toys, shoes, carts, fruit, and on and on.

Today we visited the Gandhi Memorial and large garden and the Lodhi Gardens (old garden/park surrounding a 500+ year old mosque. Tomorrow we will visit the Gandhi Museum, the oldest Jain temple in Delhi, and some Indira Gandhi/Nerhu museums and the garden where Gandhi was assassinated.

That's a brief sum-up, and I'll post some pertinent pictures from the trip up until now, you can click on them to make them bigger:
Top is Josh and Mayukh standing at the balcony of the room Josh and I stayed in at Vijay and Shim's apartment. Bottom is their living room-- notice the lack of television and general simplicity :)


This is "Papa VJ" buying tomatoes from farmers in the countryside outside Hyderabad















Then a family picnic on the lawns of a Hindu Temple


















Here we see a white tiger at the Nehru Zoo in Hyderabad



















Top is Mayukh being a superhero, middle is Vijay, Apparajita (head of that JK Center, the very radiant and magnetic woman who offered Josh and I a stay at the center), and Shim, Bottom is the main meditatio hall at the center (Vijay sitting in front of a TV and a man on the right, who worked at the center, bringing us a video to watch of Krishnamurti)




There are six bunks in each little section, with another 3 on the side (it's difficult to describe), with about 15 little sections in each car, and they fold up and down for sitting or sleeping. The toilet in the middle is a traditional squat toilet that drains into a hole in the bottom of the train unloading onto the tracks below. There was one western toilet per car. 30 hours on one of these. There were various people who would stream up and down the walk way yelling out what they were selling in these weird high pitched robot voices, "ChaiiiCoffeee, ChaiiiCoffeee..." or "BhiriyaniBhiriyaniBhiriyani..." over and over and over, endlessly, at all hours.


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What remains to be seen are pictures from Auroville, the Taj Mahal, and the beginnings of our Delhi tour. The internet started to go screwy when I tried to put more up, so I'll call this good for now. More in the next couple days!

Missed our train from Chennai

Currently it is about 4:45 in the afternoon and I am sitting in a dirty little "internet cafe"-- which consists of two rows of computers (Windows 95) stacked in a little hallway on top of each other (we're on top--with a small rat which just ran from out of the corner). Last night after riding a bus from Pondicherry to Chennai through the rain and noisy streets where various Pongal celebrations (the Tamil new year) were in full swing, we arrived a little later tan expected (right on schedule in Indian time) and ended up missing our train by about 45 seconds. We saw it pulling slowly out of the platform, but we couldn't quite catch up to it. So we talked to various railway ticket attendants and found out the next train will take off today at about 7 pm. So we got a hotel room and watched Indian music videos, road-runner cartoons, and CNN (top U.S. story was Barack Obama's wax figure being unveiled...). We were very hungry, but all the little food shops had closed down (it was around 11:30) and the room service only had "toast and pepsi." We snacked on dried mango and triscuits.

The station and the whole city are hot and filthy and smelly with all sorts of crippled beggars and homeless families sleeping in the medians of the train station parking lot. Horrifying, but there's no escaping it--certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

The last week has been a whirlwind, and I don't think I could have asked for a better introduction to our India trip than the one that we received. We flew into Hyderabad and were staying with the coworker of Josh. His name is Vijay Nandula and his wife Sharmila and son Mayukh. I've never met a family quite like this one. Mayukh is a brilliant 7 year old who has a wider vocabulary than I do. I got a little video of him sitting me down and telling me a very elaborate story about Vishnu, as well as describing to us how to build an electrical circuit. Sharmila is working on her Ph.D. now in fashion technology and made Josh and I feel very comfortable coming into the bizarre world of India. Her cooking is unlike anything I've ever tasted- when we arrived I was feeling really sick, with a sore throat, headache, chills, stuffy nose, etc. She knew exactly what to do and how my illness would play out, and sure enough I followed her directions, ate what she told me to, did what she said to do, and bam, the next day I felt fine. Vijay is, like the rest of his family, just a step beyond. You know when you meet someone and you think, 'They get it.' Well this man gets it. He has a very calm and deep presence and has a fantastic sense of humor. I've never felt so welcomed and comfortable as I did around him.

The first couple days in Hyderabad we spent driving through the surrounding countryside and city. The driving, as I'm sure you know, is absolutely insane. No rules. Period. There are signs on the side of the road every so often that say "Follow traffic rules, Stay alive." But it seems the only rule of the road is to stay alive. Honking and swerving (on your side or on the oncoming side...doesn't really matter), cows, pedestrians, buses, motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles....all in this fantastic mess of movement. I would say that driving through the city gives you the best taste for what goes on there. Everything is so casual, very little rules or structure. People sort of do their own thing everywhere. Driving, working, walking, resting, etc. everyone seems to be sort of hanging out and flowing in this very relaxed yet very chaotic way. It's difficult to describe without having been in the center of it; sitting in the back seat, mouth open, dumbstruck, without seatbelts while a family of four rides past on a motorcycle, Dad barefoot driving, with a baby sitting on the gas tank and his wife in full sari riding side-saddle on back with his son squeezed between... Vijay calmly weaving through, honking, telling us a story about Shiva or something.


I will recap the main events of the last week, before we have to go get our things and head to the train station (finally off to Agra).

We were talking in the car one evening and I brought up Jiddu Krishnamurti. As it turned out Shim and Vijay had come across Krishnamurti years ago and he had "been happening to them ever since." With this connection having been found out they decided to take us to the Jiddu Krishnamurti Center, about 1.5 hrs outside of Hyderabad. They had been going there for retreats and stays for a couple years and thought we would like to see the place. It was a rural little plot of about 25 acres that had a main library and meditation hall, a kitchen and dining hall, several surrounding buildings for people staying there, and then various garden plots and cows and chickens etc. We had lunch and meandered around the grounds. There was a mainly French group that had been staying there for a week or so and they were leaving that day. Josh, Vijay's family and I watched a Krishnamurti video in the main hall then came out to meet the woman who sort of runs the center. Her name is Apparajita, and we got into a discussion with her about politics, the environment, the spirit, etc. Josh and I didn't quite fit her view of the average American boy, and she later extended an offer to stay on at the Center and work, farm, and learn about ourselves, as well as maybe even talk to local Indian youth about the "perils of Western consumerism, etc." We stayed at the Center that night and listened to Vijay sing Hindu folk songs by the fire under the full moon, and got up before dawn to watch the sun rise over a near by lake. Where Vijay taught us how to brush our teeth with the branch of a Neem tree.

The next stop was Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal where Auroville is located. This is an experimental utopian village (which seems to be working) where 46 different nationalities are living (about 2,000 residents). We stayed with a friend of a friend of Vijay and Shim's, a man named Swadhin who lived outside Auroville proper but has been affiliated with it for years. It was started in the 60's by Sri Aurobindo and a French woman called "The Mother." I have plenty of pictures that I will try to upload as soon as I find a computer younger than me. We stayed here for about 4 days and rode motorcycles through the winding dirt roads of the town. It's about 400 acres and there are little neighborhoods (like Serenity, Calm, Quiet, etc.) with little houses and businesses. It's
an extremely well organized and functional system of communal living. It's hard to describe it really...for a black and white account, the website is good enough. But as far as I can tell you...it really is like a little utopia in the forests of southern India where anyone can come and live and contribute provided you are dedicated to leading a life aimed at Peace and Truth. I wasn't really aware that places like Auroville existed or are possible, but I was shown that they do and are. I'm sure I'll refer more to this as the posts go on.

Anyway, we're running out of time and my internet costs may jump up to about $1.50 if I'm not careful. Hope this paints a semi-coherent picture of the goings on here. More in a couple days, I'm sure!

First Off

Hi all--

Sorry it's taken so long to get this up and running. Josh and I have spent the last week in Hyderabad and Pondicherry and are about to rush off for our 30+ hour train up to Agra. Either in Agra or New Delhi I will post a more extensive description of what we've just been through...and we've been through quite a lot.

But do know that I'm safe and healthy and kind of stunned at everything!

More soon!