A little more about Sadhana

---

I've taken some photos of the forest for you to see a little more about where I'm living. To explain the shower system, we fill up a bucket, and that's pretty much it. We have a cup, and scoop the water out to then pour over us. The cold water is like a blessing as it seems to be getting hotter and hotter by the day!! The toilet system is fully sustainable. We use our waste as compost, sounds pretty gross, but it really doesn't smell in there. I might actually volunteer to be the shit stirrer one week, haha! Although there is no toilet roll, so you can work out the rest for yourself...

I havn't yet been in the pool as the indian workers that are maintaining the rooves at the moment go in everyday without showering, so as you can see by the picture, it's dirty as hell! But they'll be gone in a few days so going in the pool should be amazing 😊

The spirulina pool is where we harvest spirulina, it looks like mushy seaweed but actually tastes pretty good once it's dried! It's a really good source of protein and lots of other minerals that are generally missing from a vegan diet! I must say though, being vegan here has made me feel so much better, without going into too much detail, I don't feel bloated at all, I have energy, I never leave feeling hungry, I don't crave anything else like sweets (as we can't have processed foods) or fish or anything.

We use solar energy for the electricity we have here, if the sun isn't strong enough then we use good old manpower to create electricity, using the bikes as photographed. I am actually looking forward to having a go at that, i feel so lathargic as i literally don't have the energy to do much more than the few hours work in the morning. There's much more to the processes that occur here than I've explained, but once I know and understand more about them I'll update this, as it's really interesting and really sets an example of how we should be living if we want to maintain the beauty of the world, rather than destroying it as we are now.

So a little more about my time here....the past few days have been really good. Yesterday we had a dance party in the morning to start the week off nicely, which part I filmed and have attached! 😊 We then had a concert in the evening, a guy from Auroville came over and played classical indian music for us on his sarangar (i've probably mispelt that). It was really good, an interesting experience. The instrumnet actually has 37 strings amazingly, but only 3 are played, the rest are sympathetic springs, so the three springs create echoes with the others (that's the basic jist of it). Oh and just before that I went into Auroville with Grace (one of the few English people here), who sadly has left us now for her travels around India with Anaaig and Mellie, and in Auroville I bought some new clothes which cost about £2 each, I can't help but feel like I'm ripping them off as I'm used to paying so so much more for clothes! I bought a beautiful tunic, scarf and hareem pants!

The day before that Ann and I also made it out for a mango juice and diet coke, which was seriously the best thing ever. A cold drink....pure heaven!!! As you can see from the photo I was so hot and sweaty and thoroughly enjoyed every second of it!!! It was Anns first time riding on the main road with someone on the back of her moped, which was memorable, as we ran out of gas like 50 times and literally rolled the last 10 feet back into Sadhana! She did well though! 😊

Also, today we had a guy come teach us about snakes so we will know which ones are venemous and which ones aren't if we come across any here, which apparently are seem quite often. As you can see from the photos, I was a little too scared to get too close, but now I can say I've actually touched a Cobra!! They feel so beautiful, really smooth1

---

Photos

Juice stall
The indian women look pretty disgusted with me, although they seemed pleased when I showed them that they were in the picture!

Ann
Happy with her mango juice

Diet coke heaven!
There's no fridge in Sadhana, so this cold drink was amazing!!

My beds
I try to be tidy, but it just doesn't work!!

Willis
He's so tiny and amazing, I have to feed the animals this week, so i guard him as he's eating as the other big dogs try to steal his food!

The meeting area
Where we meet to talk about first work, hold hands, hug, clap etc during the meeting