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Published: January 28th 2008
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Hi Folks!
Sorry it's taken so long for me to write.. I have actually been writing my blog, but just haven't got round to uploading it all, so some of this was written a while back..
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So I decided to make a dash through the monsoon madness to Malibalipurum. A two-hour hairy bus ride through what looked like a river but was actually a road. I’d left Kannipan a lovely thank you letter with my address etc. and saying that I’d look after his daughter if she ever made it to England. I also left them some money to go towards her education.
I definitely felt like it was time to leave Auroville, actually I felt like I’d over stayed by a few days. When you’re traveling you just know when it’s time to move on. You just get that feeling. Solitude was great, but I just didn’t have enough time there to make it truly worthwhile. Maybe if I'd gone there right from the start, I would have felt more like I was part of the community. It definitely seemed like a healthy functioning community though, which was great to observe. They mostly all
worked and ate together on a daily basis, and everyone appeared to be equal. I had a really nice few days there though. One of the days was spent hanging out and looking after this German guy called Riza. He is a very beautiful young hippy lad (too young for me, so don’t panic Doug!). He had a dodgy stomach and didn’t have anyone to look after him. That’s one of the things I dread about traveling alone (getting really ill, and not even having the energy to get water). So yeah.. I became Florance Nightingale for the day and cycled out through the rain to buy him curd, fruit and water. Oh.. and sang him a few tunes on the guitar. Haven’t really played for about 10 years, so was extremely rusty. Managed to pull off a couple of nice ones though, and we both taught each other a tune too. He taught me ‘Hit the Road Jack’, and I taught him ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ (which is gonna be quite appropriate in 3 weeks time when I leave for Oz. Gulp ;c)
I didn’t get a chance to impart any Permaculture knowledge at Solitude though. It
just didn’t happen, and I didn’t want to push it. Perhaps it was a tad presumptuous of me to think I could just turn up with new ideas and expect them to be open armed? I just can’t help myself though, cos I feel so strongly that the wisdom of Permaculture should be shared. Perhaps Krishna will look into it himself anyway, I hope so.
I arrived to Malibalipurum in the middle of an electrical storm. It was great. I jumped out of the bus, straight into a tuk tuk, and shouted ‘tina view guest house please’. I was grinning from ear to ear from adrenalin as we drove in the pouring rain through the lightening and darkness. The village had no electricity as the storm had taken it out. We pulled up to a man sitting in candlelight in a small-darkened room. I could hardly see his face, but from what I could see he looked really weird, like he was deformed or something. Scary! Luckily there was a cute puppy there too, so I spent about 15 minutes playing with her waiting for the power to return. When the power didn’t return I was shown by candle
light to a rather manky room. I figured the best thing to do was to get washed and dressed and get out to a restaurant to try and find light, and someone to have a good natter to. I’d built up quite a lot of talking time at Auroville, and I needed to get it all out on some unsuspecting pair of ears ;c)
One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, especially when you’re on your own. That night I met two guys, a wild life specialist called Ian who was from England, and a CZ republic guy called Onzo. We sat up chatting about all sorts of things.. I ended up ranting at them about the Shamanic Ayuaska ceremony that I did last April. I spoke about the importance of getting this ancient healing plant knowledge out to a wider/western audience. They were both extremely interested in my jabbering, but then it got late and I decided to get some beauty sleep. (Perhaps I'll write a seperate blog about Ayuaska another time). It felt good to be out and about chatting to ‘normal’ travelers. I felt like they were missing at Auroville. But then Auroville makes it very clear that it's not a tourist destination, and that wasn’t my purpose for being there.
Malibalipurum was mental! I was very glad that I decided to only have one day there. It was really touristy (but kind of in a good way), and some of the stone carvings were quite impressive, but I think I may have seen a few too many temples in this lifetime. After seeing the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, nothing else seems to come near (Matchu Pitchu perhaps?). But really, I think it was more a case of me itching to get to Goa. I woke early the next morning and wandered through the empty scary streets in the darkness to catch the 5.40am bus. Goa Goa Goa!! Woo Hoo!
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