Chitambaram temple & backwater trip

Still here. I seem to get attached to places. I like it more and more you see, so I don't know when I will leave?! I met another German man, Jurgen. He is staying at the same place as me, and he also knows the people who owns the place Im staying at. So yesterday he was invited with them (Shakila and Ramalingam and their son Vishnu, 2 years old) to go to a very holy Shiva temple in Chitambaram (uh....it was called something like that...I never get the hang of all these Indian names of places!!!)

Anyway, they invited me along as well. It was very nice, went in a rented car there, Shakila did some puja (prayer/offering to Shiva). Every 1st of January they have a special ceremony in this temple and all the Brahmins recite a lot of mantras for good luck the coming year. Everyone who comes there on this day are all supposed to be blessed with this good luck, so obviously MANY people come here! It was very interesting too see.

After this we drove far into the countryside into a beautiful place full of backwaters. In the end we came to a bigger lake and there we went on a small boat trip. So the whole day was really good.


Ramalingam,Vishnu and me

Oh, forgot to tell about New years eve. I didn't have any plans, so I just went to this restaurant almost next door to where I live and there I met Jurgen. We had some food together and then we asked Riaz (friendly guy running the place) if he knew of any parties and he told us about one held by Auroville in this remote beach place.

He described the way to us very simply as this; just go across the bridge and then turn right!!!

Hehehe, we passed about 5 bridges and after every bridge we had to look for someone English speaking to ask if we were at the right place. It took such a looong time to find the place! But in the end we managed!

It was quite ok, but most people were Aurovillians and a lot of families with kids, not really a party atmosphere, so we left actually before midnight. But it was still fun :)

Uhm, this is getting loong. Today Jurgen and I joined this introductory tour to Auroville (it is for 3 days) to get some more insight into the place. It was very interesting. There were 3 other Germans, 2 French, 1 Finnish, 1 Italian also. Interesting bunch. We saw some videos and a couple of people spoke about the place and about the philosophy of "The Mother" who founded the place in the 60's and Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, enlighten person who also is a big part of it....

Then we went around a bit to some projects they have going. Like some pavilions they are building to represent each country. So far they have only made one for India and Tibet.
uuups, I got to run. Will add more about this in some days.