Hello Everyone! I’m sorry it’s taken so long to write…things here have finally calmed down after a busy stretch in Auroville, three weeks of travel and another busy week of studying sustainable solutions…. I'll try to write again soon about what's been going on here recently, but here's a bit about our big trip...

Five weeks ago, after a busy Saturday spent packing, cleaning and finishing a round of papers, we boarded a train at about 10 p.m. for a 14-hour ride to Trivandrum, a city in the state of Kerala (which is the southernmost state on India’s west coast). I had been told that traveling by train is a classic ‘India experience,’ and it’s definitely a far cry from riding an Amtrak train from Boston to New York. We were fortunate to have berths in the “3-AC” class, which was air-conditioned and consisted of compartments with two stacks of three fold-down bunks. When we boarded the train it was already dark, and we shuffled through the compartments finding our beds among the other berths already occupied by sleeping people. The train was mostly full of Indian families traveling together, and it seems like train travel is a popular, fairly economical and convenient way to get around the country, especially since driving on the roads here is so harrowing. It was a somewhat restless nigh, and we all woke up pretty early the next morning when men selling chai, coffee and a variety of breakfast foods (mainly packs of biscuits and deep-fried bready things) walked through the train calling out their wares. It was both pleasant and odd to just sit up in bed and find people trying to sell you a hot beverage. A lot of us spent the morning sitting on the open section of train between two cars, watching the different landscapes roll by. The whole ride was dirty, loud and unpredictable in ways that have come define my time in India, but I really enjoyed experiencing train travel here….and as I said, it makes the four-hour ride to New York seem peaceful, painless and relatively hygienic.

Once we arrived in Trivandrum, a bus picked us up and delivered us to the Sivananda Ashram (http://www.sivananda.org/neyyardam/) for our eight-day Yoga Vacation (their title, not ours). We knew very little about what the week would be like, and we quickly learned that the place offered a comprehensive plan for how nearly every hour of the week would be spent. Mornings began with a bell at 5:30, and Satsang (meditation, chanting and prayers) ran from 6 until 7:30. Here in Auroville, we have been doing yoga as the sun rises, and I found it surprisingly enjoyable to meditate and then sing as the sun came up. The main chant we did daily was upbeat and—I thought—pretty joyful, and I didn’t really mind sitting through some of the slower parts of the session. After chai, our asanas class (yoga class) began at 8 and ran until 10. Looking back, we did so much yoga (four or five hours each day) that it all blends together, but I know a lot of us felt like we became much stronger and more flexible over the week. Some of the instructors were more rigorous and critical than others, but overall it was great to be able to devote that much time to practicing.

At 10, we all filed into the dining hall and ate brunch, a meal that consisted of rice, a raw vegetable salad and several other cooked vegetable dishes. Everyone staying at the ashram must complete some form of Karma Yoga (essentially chores), and my assignment was to serve and clean up after lunch. Meals at the ashram are eaten in silence, and my job was to quietly walk up and down rows of seated diners and provide second and third helpings of food. It was sometimes an odd task, but I found the job much easier and more enjoyable than my previous experience with waitressing (perhaps due in large part to the fact that there’s no talking involved). We had a break in the middle of the day with fresh fruit and tea in the early afternoon, and then more asanas class at 3:30, dinner at 6:00, and evening Satsang at 8:00.

At different points throughout the week we all became tired of the structure and of the repetitive nature of the ashram, but I mostly found it liberating to have my days planned out for me (not to mention being free from the pull of the internet, assignments and other typical daily activities). Ten of us (all the female students and faculty) slept in two rows in a dormitory, and I think we all enjoyed having that time and space together. I also saw something really beautiful in some of the singing we did together every night. I wasn’t connected with the religious meaning behind the songs, and sometimes I didn’t even understand what we were saying, but those moments reminded me of singing in the Gospel Choir in high school and of how uplifting and unifying that experience always was.

After a week, we were all ready to leave, and we boarded a bus for the beginning of a more scattered week of buses, hotels, ferries and another ashram. We visited Amritapuri, the ashram of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, before taking a ferry through the backwaters in Kerala to Alleppy. The backwaters, which are comprised of lakes and canals fed by rivers and the Arabian Sea, run along the western coast of India, and our five-hour ride on a private ferry felt one-part cruise ship and two-parts Huck Finn. Many of us spend the whole trip on deck, playing cards and scrabble, enjoying the sun and watching all of the natural and built scenery pass by. After a quick night in Alleppy, we got on the bus and drove to Thekkady, another town in Kerala known for its nature preserves and for its spice growing industry. We toured a local spice garden, went on a trek through a natural park and went on an early-morning ferry ride to watch animals take their morning drink of water at a wildlife preserve. We also watched local performances of Kathakali (traditional dance) and martial arts…Overall, it was a busy week but a great way to explore different types of settlements outside of Tamil Nadu.

Our third and final week was the most different and in many ways the most exciting of the three spent traveling. Auroville owns a small plot of land in the mountains in Kodaikanal. The camp was purchased primarily so that Aurovillian school children can escape the heat and experience a different natural setting for a few weeks every summer. The land is nestled into the terraced mountainside of a small farming village, and the physical setting was one of the most beautiful and unique scenes I’ve ever experienced. After a few months of increasingly hot weather, Kodai’s warm, dry and windy days and cold (in the 40s) nights were a welcome change, as was the relatively peaceful and simple natural setting after a week of busy cities and towns. The camp contained a small kitchen, a large room for sleeping and a covered dining area, and fourteen of us—students and faculty—shared one room for the whole week. At first I couldn’t see how anything positive would come of the arrangement, but we had a great time sharing that room, and on the last morning when we woke up at 5:30 to pack up and leave we were all in better spirits and had a better sense of togetherness than we had had in a while.

We filled our days with work around camp, a seminar, a trek, preparation of meals and lots of reading, but the most significant thing we did in Kodai was a Sacred Solo. After each selecting a plot of land around our camp, we packed up a tarp, some bedding (as much warm material as we could find) and a few days’ worth of water and head out for 40 hours alone in the wilderness. Because the point of the solo is to focus on yourself and nature in a personal and even spiritual way, we didn’t bring books, writing materials or any other forms of amusement, and we also fasted for the two days and one night we were gone. People had different intentions for the experience, and I think everyone took something positive away from their time. For me, it was largely a trial about letting go of comforts (food, shelter, predictability) and getting though a night alone in the woods. I’m still both amazed that I did it and surprised that I thought I wouldn’t be able to…

Also: I didn’t shower or see a mirror for eight days, and it was great. If I can do it, so can you.

On the whole, the trip was a great complement to our studies in Auroville and a way to see how the things we’ve been learning about here—personal, social and environmental sustainability, intentional community, Indian spirituality and culture, the experience of being a Western traveler/student/tourist in the East, being a part of a group—play out and exist in other places. Now we’re back to work here for the final few weeks, and I’ll try to be more diligent about posting (and to write the promised entry about my time on the farm)….

Love to all!-Jessica