Tamil Nadu, India: Pondicherry

We got in from Chennai in the evening, so the morning was our first proper look at Pondicherry.

The view from our hotel room

We got up pretty early and headed to Auroville. Auroville is a spiritual community just outside of Pondicherry. They follow the teachings of the Mother, and have built a fairly large, self-sustaining international community. It sounds really cool on paper. But after about half an hour there, it comes off pretty cultish. I think the things they are doing there are really interesting and there are a lot of good ideas there, but the vibe is a little weird.

Nevertheless it’s a very interesting place to go and walk around.

Their main place for meditation is a completely white room inside this giant gold ball in the middle of a field. You can only go in to meditate if you are involved in the community I think. The ball thing is probably the most sci-fi thing I’ve ever seen in person. It definitely contributed to the cultish vibe.

After Auroville, we headed to the colonial part of Pondicherry. We went to a temple, which is still in use, so I couldn’t take any pictures.

We walked around a little bit and went shopping.

Then we met some family friends of the family I was traveling with. He works at the ashram, which is like a meditation center. It has a really similar philosophy to Auroville, but it’s just a colonial style house, which is dedicated to meditation space and a small library. We got a little tour from the family friend and we meditated for a while.

Then we all went to get tea together and he told us more about the ashram and his spiritual journey, which was really interesting. It was a nice, long chat.

After that we walked on the beach for about 45 minutes during golden hour. It was a really nice stroll.

We were pretty exhausted by this point, so we went back to the hotel to rest for a bit. We went out and had a really big south Indian dinner. It was one of the best meals we had. That night was New Years’ Eve. We stayed up until about 11pm, but were all too tired to make it to midnight. It was probably the best NYE I’ve ever had and we didn’t even count down or celebrate at all. It didn’t feel like New Years.

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