Elephant/Hippies (with video)

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Took a cab into Pondicherry, a town about an hour and half outside of Chennai.

We went to town a town called Auroville- we past some old book stores (used) and lots of motorcyles with multiple people. This is where the "Oh oh oh!" game came into play.

So we pull up at Auroville, and we arrive to a commune where hippies live. I don't quite know how this commune came to be built, but the mission statement begins,
"Auroville wants 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 realise human unity."

Auroville has this huge big metal gold ball that you meditate in, no joke. Here is the link to the video..... it's not long and you need to watch it to know what I am talking about.

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--- You see the kind of vision they have for the place- Perfectly legit vision for the place, legitimacy as to the practically of function of the society is questionable. One cool thing about the town of Auroville is that they had 12 flours representing each one of the pillars of human characteristics that were important to Auroville, (If you care, http://auroville.org/)

After Auroville, we went on a mission to find a Harry Potter book, The Philosophers Stone, which apparently is a British version of the Harry Potter book, The Sorcerers Stone. Chelsea and I checked at a few hole in the wall used book stores to find said book. Ate at a restaurant called Tanto's. I had seen this postcard in the town Auroville where people were getting blessed by an elephant. We had to take our shoes off for Auroville, or we didn't but did anyway, so we had spent most of the day barefoot.





We showed the picture to the driver and he took us to this temple where the elephant was supposed to be. The temple did not open for an hour so we headed to the nearby beach where me and Chelsea found ankle bracelets from a local vendor and took pictures. One picture that happened to be taken that day will stick in my mind forever. We had been taking pictures of people doing mundane beach things, playing in the water, selling from a stand ect.

Well, there were these kids that were working a vegetable stand so we tried to get their picture with the polaroid camera that Chelsea and Mike had brought. After all the chaos that ensues when we do a picture taking event, there was this little girl in the crowed that Chelsea picked out and chose to take a picture with. the girl obliged and does the mandatory "thank you's" but then Chelsea tells the little girl she was beautiful and the little girl starts crying. This girl was about nine or ten but what I didn't know was that she had fallen off of a motorcycle and was missing part of her skull and had some sort of vision impairment. Her and Chelsea hugged it out and it was just a touching moment all the way around. After a good shot of the feels, time was up and we headed towards the blessing elephant.

We walked, barefoot, into the temple and there was no elephant. Apparently the elephant was on a pilgrimage to Kerala. There is a huge religious reason which I don't fully comprehend behind this, but long story short no elephant. Head back to hotel, late for a meeting with mom.

What happens at the Westin, stays at the Westin.

The next morning, we set off in set off to find the elephant that bops you on your head. This time at the temple, (with no shoes on,) we did find the elephant. It was tiny as far as elephant sizes go, but still pretty massive. It had this white paint on it's trunk and ear and had dangly bells around it's neck. I went to get blessed, bowed, and it "bopped" me on the head with a blessing. The India guy (elephant handler) sees me and asks me where I am from. When he finds out I am American, he wants American money to get ON TOP of the elephant. I did not have any one me at the time, but I searched through my backpack and was offering twenty million amounts of rupees to get on top of this thing, and I am shouting to my mom over this huge crowed asking for dollar bills, and one of the gentlemen we were with happened to have a ten dollar bill, so I gave that to the guy and he let me and Chelsea separately get on the elephant. He taps the elephant and calls out a command and the elephant raises his leg so that I could climb up to the neck and grab a rope and climb on up. I got to the top and was kind of confused as to what to do. I look out and there is a sea of people with offerings to the elephant and here I am just sitting on top looking down at all the people, so I just start smiling and waving. then after a few minute the elephant handler says "okay we are going for a short walk" and the elephant takes a few steps forward and I kind of freak out but the elephant stops and backs up, and the "ride" was over so I climbed down. then he had me stand in front of the elephant and it blessed me again with nice slobbery elephant slobber.



I'm getting eaten alive by mosquito s and it is past midnight here, so I will tell you about the offerings and temples and the rest of the few days tomorrow. Have a good night, and safe travels everyone!

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