Travelling Auroville

The weeks are passing fast. While I am sitting in front of my computer, doing revolutionary work in the field of linguistics, outside lots of rain is happening. Sometimes the rainy season feels quite strong. But all nothing to what I knew from Nicaragua 1999, and nothing compared to the usual say the locals here. It seems the global rain distribution is changing a huge bit.

Auroville is great but a bit out of my focus right now. I am living here and appreciating my insights. I am not so happy about organic food supply and about beach access. Most people would call that luxury, for me it is becoming something essential. But, working so much is a boring thing for a trevellers blog. Well, at least I did write something and you know I am doing well! 

The last week I was doing some work for GEN that I promissed to do a month ago. Because of my broken computer and the travels it was delayed. It was the last point on my todo-list before I could focus on EXALOT fully. Wow, it was not easy, it took me three days to restore lost data into a very complex Drupal-system. I was about to give up sometimes, it was kind of symbolic to me. All those years I had to do things I did not feel to do, often it felt so hurtful not to be able to focus on my holy mission. And then, at friday, I finished it. Yuhuu. I was happy, and many others are happy it's done. 

So, now, I am getting ready to fulfill my karma. EXALOT will be presented to Auroville in the best way I can. I already made some good connections. The general mood here is great: Open to new technology, curious and technically savy. In a way it feels like it all comes together, as if the universe wanted everything to be here now, as I am just a servitor for something so much bigger thats about to happen. Well. I keep myself as I keep EXALOT: Small and simple! And I feel this most beautiful of all feelings: Being part of something epic!!

And its work waiting for me. Work on all levels. Finishing the semantic part of the interpretor, creating a nice complete documentation, updating the websites and getting into the legal part of setting up an international nonprofit, putting down the user interface. It's all planned and prepared. I just have to finish it and I feel so ready for it.

In the meanwhile I keep exploring Auroville and meeting nice people. At monday I give myself a therapeutic massage. Here are quite some healers around. I want them to check my body that I need a lot for work and fun. Yes, I am having fun. I am happy, I am smiling. I basically feel very healthy and strong even tough my stomage rebels sometimes, but thats normal in a country like India.

The pictures above show a Yin/Jang mandala in place called Joy community here. And the other shows big Granitophones made at a Auroville unit called Svaram that employs lots of people creating musical instruments. This project was set up and run by an Austrian fellow called Aurelio. Again, a very nice person. I love people doing great things!    

It feels like a long time I am here already, and, wow, its 2 weeks nearly. Thats quite some piece out of my 12 weeks I got to be in India. I am not sure if I want to travel around or just stay in Auroville. If I go to travel I propably visit Hampi and/or Goa. Maybe I do that around New Year, I will see.

My new computer arrived and is set up. Not so bad for a 300 Euro made in India, but also not really good. I miss my ASUS Zenbook. But I can do waht I have to do with this one. It has a 15 inch display, the biggest I ever had for a laptop.

I am happy here, people and nature treats me well. The animals are so nice and not very afraid of humans it seems. Even the birds come very near sometimes. When I settled at my little house (see pictures below) hundreds of birds came as they would say hello to me.

Well, I have all kind of troubles still. The Internet at my place doesnt work. A SIM Card is not responding. My bicycle needed some repairs and so on. India keeps one busy. And, it's not all cheap here. The European style food is crazy expensive. A tiny can of sardines is about 3 Euro for example.

Al in all, I am doing great and I am looking forward. At Saturday a 5 day workshop about the grammar of Sanskrit starts. I need Sanskrit for EXALOT, at least that is my vision to make it the core language of the library. (Of course direct transaltions to English (and any language) will exist.) So, actually I should do some studies to be prepared for the workshop.

The last two days were challenging, I needed to organize a stable good internet, a new computer and a place to stay 3 month. At some point I was about to give up, and then, like a miracle, everything turned out well. Above the solar kitchen in a cafe called 'Terrace' (first picture) the internet is perfect, about 4 MBit download speed, thats better than at home :) It costs a bit, but not much. And the cafe has amazing things to offer, organic and cheap. And some IT people I met trough an Austrian Aurovillian called Otto  helped me to order a new computer, it will arrive in a week. 

Then, only my biggest problem was still there: I needed to find a place to stay until end of January. It is easy to find a place for November, but December the season starts and for January really everything was booked already. 4 days I was riding around with bicycle (second picture) and then with motorbike, visting all guesthouses and private homestays that exist in Auroville. You see at the picture how bad the bicycles are here. My bum did hurt sooo much. Riding motorbike is really dangerous here, soecially for me, because traffic is at the left side (English way) and Indians drive sooo fast, and nobody carries a helmet, they don't even know what helmet means. Once I had to drive to Pondicherry, to get a SIM-Card. I am soooo happy that I survived, there was soooo much traffic, you see it at the third picture, but reality is even worse.

And then, very late yesterday, far out in the woods, I was searching for a place that somebody recommended to me. I was driving and driving and searching around at those little dirt roads around Auroville and I could not find it. I was about to give up, but then some Indian girls helped me and finally I found the place. And guess what: The owner, Ambra, knows me from GEN conferences in Italy and Purtugal. She said, Look, the crazy Austrian. She has a fantastic place for me, just what I was searching for. I am soooo happy now.

With one sentence: I love it here!! 

Great nature, great people, great community, great food, wow, wow. Let's see what comes next.

It started with Papaya. That is my favourite fruit for breakfast. Yes, papaya, and since then the day went on being great. Well, my bum hurts a bit since I was cycling so much around. Yesterday already I tried to find a great place to stay for 3 month, something with silence, safety, internet and basic comfort. I was lucky in the first half hour and found Sonyas place with a few sweet huts to stay. Wow, India is sooo cheap. Today I did not find places that attracted me, but all my visits were interesting.

I have seen some Tamil villages and lots of shrines and temples. The picture shows some saint, seemingly a very cool one :). It's sooo dirty, but there is some fantatsic feeling around. Spirituality feels as natural here as drinking beer in Germany. Something already catched me, I am very happy to have the honor to meet this culture. I feel welcome by lots of smiling faces. Random people stare at me or talk to me or just send me a smile. Something is really different here than in the Western world. Tomorrow I will borrow a motorbike and look around in a wider circle.