Bliss

---

So here I am, at Sadhana Forest. This is my third day here and I couldn't be happier. In such a short space of time I've met some amazing people who I'm already learning a lot from. To top it off my surroundings are perfect. We each have small huts to live in which are simple but that's all that's needed. I thought I'd have a hard time adjusting to live without my comfortable king size, but I've had the best nights sleep than I've had for a long time here. Everything is so open and shared. You wake up to the sun and sounds of many little creatures, it's a lovely environment to wake up to.

There is the main hut, which is HUGE, where we eat, relax, talk, sing, dance, hold eco-film nights, have meetings and so on. Then theres smaller rooms where we can use laptops, phones and what not, which we can't use in the main hut as they encourage isolation. There's free Wifi, which is so good as it will save me a fortune in money for calls home.

We all eat together and the food is actually really good. We have porridge with jaggary which is a kind of sweet sauce which tastes quite like brown sugar, but it's from palm sap. With that we have fruit salad...lots of mango, pineapple, plum, papaya and so on. Which we can go back for seconds and so on if we want to, so obviously I've been stuffing my face 😊 On weekends we also have bread and jam too, the jam today was banana and peanut, which was lush! Everything is freshly made and organic! At lunch we have a kind of soup, lentil stew or something. Yesterday it was ratatouille as Fabian made lunch (French guy). We have this with rice usually and again some kind of pudding. On my first day it was some kind of banana thing. It changes daily as the chefs change (it's whoever volunteers). For dinner we'll have something similar to lunch, last night it was lemon rice and peas, an aubergine thing, bread and salad with a tofu dressing, which was so so good! My fears of wasting away on a vegan diet were definately unfounded! If anything I'll come back 5 stone heavier as I am in love with the food here! We can also go out to eat, which we did on my second night (Friday evening). We went to a really local Indian place, which was just a streetfood place. There's no choice, just one option which was Porota. They're like fried bread circles I think, which you have with a chutney. It was extremely spicy, which will take some getting used to. It literally blew my mouth off!

Last night we held an Eco-film night, where we invite in people from the surrounding community to watch a film with us and have dinner. The film was about streetdancing in L.A. known as krumping. It was a pretty good film, entertaining to say the least. Then we have dinner which I helped prepare. I don't think I've ever chopped so many tomatoes in my life....enough to feed the 80 people that turned up!!! Everyone bought different kinds of instruments so after we had some live music with drums, didjeridus, guitars, flute type things and what not. All in all, a pretty good night, met some nice people, including some girls from Cambridge who are in Auroville doing research on slum regeneration, an old German couple, etc.

Today we're about to go to the beach which I'm a little apprehensive about as apparently the water is as hot as the air, which is around 35 degrees at the moment. It reaches almost 40 at around 2 or 3, which is super hot!! So I best be going as everyone is announcing that we're leaving now. I will update again soon! Loving and missing you all!!!

P.s. I'll put photos up soon too, I've been lazy so far and not taken any!

P.p.s, I think the driving here deserves a quick mention before I go. One word....WOAH. It's actually insane. I know everyone says this about India, but you really have to see it to understand. There are no rules, literally. They don't stay on the right side of the road, they don't use mirrors, they use their horn to let others know they're there, so it's extremely noisy, just an array of different horns! People just walk into the road, almost getting killed. My taxi almost ran over a woman and baby, and I think it actually did run over a dog 😞. They swerrve in and out of traffic constantly, it's such a mad rush! I didn't see one traffic light on the whole way, so I don't actually think they exist. Cars pull out infront of you unannounced so I was jolted forward many times when my driver had to slam his foot on his break to avoid getting us killed. However, all that said, they are the best drivers in the world in a way, as to avoid such life threatening drivers on the road, without mirrors, you really need some skilled, so in a way I felt strangely safe. Being on the back of Jamies moped however, was even scarier, as i lacked a helmet! Fun though, and the breeze was definately welcome!

---

Photos

First meal in India
"Streetfood", we ate off banana leaves!

Eco-film night
80 people came

Comments

[Natalie Owen]

WOW
(natalie from philosophy class :) ) Reading this is actualy Amazing..cant imaging how it must feel to actualy be there and be involved.. Hope you have the world of fun x