Auroville

After a very hot and sticky night in our non-AC hotel room, Jess and I had croissants for breakfast and set off on a bumpy rickshaw ride to Auroville...

The international community of Auroville is a project in human unity which has around 1700 residents of 35 different nationalities. Its principles are that Auroville does not belong to anybody in particular but humanity as a whole and is a place for ongoing education, progress and research, with its main focus that everyone should live in unity. We walked around the gardens and saw the amphitheatre Matrimandir which looks like it is about to take off! Its like the spaceship in which ET's parents come to get him in at the end of the film!! After lunch Jess and I had to split up as she's off to Chennai so I had a walk along the promenade, visited the Gandhi Statue and then took cover from the sun in the Pondicherry Museum. It was still boiling hot when I exhausted all of the rooms in the museum but I walked into the less-french-more-indian side of Pondy where there are lots of shops and I was brave enough to go to an Indian hairdresser! My night train is later this evening - I'll make sure I get on the right one!!

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