Podicherry (Auroville)

Ok so pictures are hard to get posted, but hey I finally did it! :)

I arrived in Auroville (a huge eco village that is very strange and cool at the same time and quite touristic) and met Madeleine here and we have been having a fantastic time. I met her crazy energetic friends and had an exciting holiday week or two. After all the excitement of playing on the beach and partying and hanging out, Madeleine and I decided we really needed a break.

I fasted for a day and then we left to a place called sadhana forest: a reforestation project on the outskirts of Aurovile. When we arrived here we found out that two days later, half of the people were starting a 7 day fast. Seeing as how i wanted to fast for longer than a day i was really pumped about it and am now on day 4. Day 3 has been the most difficult and just walking 500 meters was incredibly taxing. I guess I will share with you the implications of this fast. Basically it is no eating for 7 days and if you drink, it is only water or urine unless you really feel that you need fresh juice.  I wont go into the supposed benefits of urine drinking right now as it would take a while, but yes it is as strange to me as it is to you. They are recommending Urine/water enemas, urine nasal cleansing, urine drinking and putting urine on our skins, we shall see about all that. This so far has been an incredibly taxing and intense experience. I have waves of energy but mostly i am exhausted and feel like my body is a great burden. Some minor exercises give us an energy boost and swimming in the mud pond is helpful as well, but other than that, I do very little aside from laying down, drinking, talking or reading, sleeping, and peeing quite often.

The people here are all really cool and interesting. half of them are Israeli and the rest are from all over the world. Only four of us are American. My Hebrew is improving slightly and I can understand a bit more than when I came here. Since I am fasting i am not working on the reforestation project, but after the fast i will start working here for at least a week. We are all having dreams and fantasies about different foods and it is slightly torturous. had the words "quattro formaggio" going through my head for half the day yesterday. I wont get to have any pizza or real food for a few days after the fast because we need to slowly integrate foods back into our diet.


Here is another update:
I finished the fast on the 6th day because my body felt it was time. I wound up getting sick from eating too much soup (probably because my body rejected cooked food after such a long time of no food). I am pretty much good now and have worked up to eating cooked foods with pretty much no problem. After the fast, I have been eating slower and enjoying my food more and am attempting to eat more responsibly. I feel good and have started working on the farm now. We are building a clay oven as one of our projects and that is the one that holds my attention and enthusiasm most. I am leaving the forest in a couple days so i can go be by myself for a bit before I take a 3 day ferry ride to the Andaman Islands where I will spend the last of my time with Madeleine before returning and traveling more through the Indian mainland.

Madeleine and I went to Chennai (a big city 3 hours north of here) to book our ferry but when we got there we found out that we cant buy tickets more than 5 days in advance for any sailing. The sailings are erratic and that day all the people there freaked out and had a protest and blocked off the main road outside the port because their boat was rescheduled. It was a pretty intriguing thing to be in the middle of. The cops wound up coming and got them out of the road and tried to calm everyone down and then we left back to Pondicherry.