David Grajal

After Pondicherry we headed to Kodaikanal, a hill station close to the Kerala border that has a long history as a retreat and popular tourist destination. You can notice the change in temperature instantly! The air is fresh and the hills are filled with amazing, beautiful and mysterious mist. We stayed in suite on the very edge of the hill, with panoramic views of the towns below. We stopped in Kodaikanal for a few days just chilling out and enjoying the nice weather.

Kodaikanal hotel

Kodaikanal lake

Kodeikanal magic mist ...

... and gorgeous views

Dancing bollywood style

Auroville is a self-sufficient community a few kilometers from Pondicherry. It stretches across a vast area of land amidst some local villages. Wikipedia describes this place this way “Auroville (…) was founded in 1968 by Mirra Richard and designed by architect Roger Anger. Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity. Mirra envisioned a town where unity will be celebrated and all will have a spiritual vocation. The town has 1,700 people from over 35 different nationalities, from which about one third are Indians (more than 15% are French and 15% are German).

The four point Auraville charter:

1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will 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.

We visited the beach entrance of the city and spoke to a frequent visitor there who has totally sold us the idealistic idea of it. Once we left the place we realized how big Auraville really is. It was extremely interesting for me, the people seemed extremely relaxed and calm and conscious of their lives and their environment. It was captivating,  far from the hippies smoking weed and doing nothing with their lives we saw in Mahabalipurum. I would love to  return to Auroville for a couple of weeks for an enlightenment experience!

Ann on her way to the mist

From Mahabalipurum we headed south on the East Coast Road till Pondicherry which was a former French colony and is considered an autonomous state where French is still an official language. This place was full of tourists!

Yes, 20 kids packed on one autorickshaw

The city is a strange place in South India where the traffic is not too crazy and the streets are clean and full of Mediterranean style houses. They have museums with lots of European antiques. At night, a lot of locals hang out in European parks and on the beach by the ocean front, where a big statue of Gandhi

To describe the traffic in India you only need two words: Organized Chaos. The traffic is a mix of cars, bicycles, motorbikes, trucks, buses, ox carts pulling goods, rickshaws, cows and goats, sometimes monkeys near temples and lots of stray dogs… all of them driving fighting for the same space on the road!

There are traffic rules but the police not really enforce it, and with good reason: The traffic in India is massive in numbers, and there is a slow but consistent flow of vehicles. If you make the people enforce the traffic laws, you will make everything slower, the people will become frustrated and they will try to do even more amazing stunts to flow trough the traffic. It’s amazing to just sit down on a busy crossroad and watch the traffic. It’s more entertaining than a good movie!

From Chennai we headed south on the East Coast Road towards Mahabalipurum. It’s a small fishing village and a cheap hippie paradise.

Mahabalipurum is known for its stone carvers, the best in the entire country. I did meet some artisans and sat down and watched them work before buying a marble candle holder to one of them.

Mahabalipuram beach. Yes. Cows are everywhere, you reach a point you don't feel strange sorrounded by cows on the streets

Mahabalipurum beach is just a dirty workspace for humans and a resting place for cows. The fishermen are repairing the nets and the boats are parked on the beach. As an interesting off topic, three different Indian people offered me marijuana. This simple fact says a lot about this place. Neither Ann or I liked the place, but I must come back because I had a couple of pants made in this city and they have become my favorite pants ever!