Best places to visit in Auroville and my travel experience !

After visiting Auroville and staying there for like 3 days, it became my top place to visit in India. It felt so resonating with my ideals of living with higher principles. And with huge innovations of peoples all around me and the lifestyle, technology and harmony through spirituality, with which they are living there. I went to Auroville around mid of 2018.  It is like a melting pot of culture and you can meet people from all parts of the world working cohesively and building future.

I went there with my Assam friend, we took a govt bus from Chennai to Kuilapalayam. From there we asked a few auto, being priced too much we just took a walk into the jungle inside which the Auroville is situation. On the way, after enjoying the green scenery and scorching sun, we took some coconut water and carried on. It took around 2 hours walk to get to the Auroville Visitor center. We booked a guest house, it was cheap like 700 Rs per day for a single bedroom with complimentary breakfast and paid dinner.  Its better to book everything in advance because the place is fully occupied in holidays. 

 

View of entrance from Top floor

Nearly Garden filled with herbal and flowery plants

A lovely pond !

We went to the Atithigraha guest house, the ambiance was so great and beautiful we felt quickly rejuvenated and the tiredness of the 2 hours went off like a breeze. I felt so grateful to stay there. We then headed to the Matrimandir, the central point of Auroville is a huge golden globe build for doing meditation. The migratory birds just circle around the matrimandir before going from one continent to the another, it has become an astral lighthouse for them. We too can feel the serenity and peace that is emanated from this awesome structure. It is what like a grid is powering all the tremendous activity happening in Auroville for the betterment of mankind. We could not go inside because you have to book 4-5 days in advance to get inside.

View from the Main Entrance of MatriMandir

 

This was the secret view from the Auro theater

Then, due to lot of walking around the town, everything was far away from each other when compared to walking. So, we hired a rental cycle. Do check the cycle before getting it, cause in some you have to pedal harder as the terrain of Auroville is little up and down and not flatter, especially inside jungles of the Auroville that we went to see other spectacular places.

Captivating, One of a kind, Sound Garden !

 

We went to the sound garden where there was lot of things to play with that generator sounds from falling metal balls to thunder and the hustling of bamboos and a stone where you can stick your head into and if you hum Aum, you would hear its vibration all off your head. It was so awesome.  We then went to musical instrument museum, the photography was prohibited inside. You can find all kinds of instrument present in this world there from drums to the huge tibetian bell. You can buy crazy music generating musical instruments that they use in the background for the meditational music. They also conduct music therapy for healing people. We went cycling to the bamboo museum, there were less people and stuffs to see there. But the ride into the jungle with a cycle to reach that spot was thrilling. They also had exhibits of different types of bamboo and the products made out of those.

For checkout out the entrepreneurial activities happening around we tried to meet and talk with few small scale organizations there. These things does not meet the normal tourist, cause these people are below the radar of normal tourism and they are busy people. But, looking upon our interest they agreed to meet and discuss their entrepreneurial journey they had taken experimentally and the success they are having. We went to the electric bicycle assembling/renting/selling company there called Kinisi. They are experimenting with mountain electric bikes and they rent e-cycles to the people who live in Auroville.

We spoke with the employees there, we couldn't meet the founder. They import parts from china and assemble and make these electric bicycles. The renting model of theirs is popular among the people living in Auroville, where people use these e-bikes to travel for short commutes within the town. It is brilliant, that they are trying out new things.

 

I with my friend then visited the organizations called EcoFemme and meet the Co-founder Kathy. She spoke in lengths about how the normal sanitary napkins create a huge problem of non-recyclable waste. And to improve the mensural hygiene of the rural women, they started the manufacturing and selling of reusable cotton based sanitary napkins. You can order it on their website ecofemme. It is economically equal in price and it can be reused and at the end of life can be biodegraded or recycled. She has done a lot of work in creating awareness among school girls and rural women to switch to these products. She also mentioned about using the mensural cup which can be reused and using it with the reusable sanitary pads can solve lot of hygiene related problems. 

As we where staying at the guest house, we met a couple of foreigners. A daughter documentary film-maker and his father, a microbiologist professor. We went with them out to the garden early morning and was watching birds. He brought with him the book "The birds of Indian Subcontinent", we were like spotting birds with a tiny binocular and having fun. We spotted Red Woodpecker, Jungle babblers (birds looks brown and are always spotted in a group of 6-10 calling them Six Sisters ), lots of myna, very shy and trying to hide from human visions are the Red billed Blue Magpie. It was really very thrilling adventure to do bird watching early morning.

During the dinner, the Swedish documentary film maker showed her recent movie on the lives of elephants in India. She also screened the movie "Big Social Nomad" on many forums and got good acclaims.  We were moved emotionally seeing the documentary on how the elephants are treated in India and what is the solution to these problems.

All these things happened in a matter of three days. And there were so much, that we didn't explore there. My Assam friend came back alone and spent nearly a week to see all the things that we missed in this trip such as the solar kitchen, Mckinsey natural farmland food based restaurant, Auroville center for Scientific Research, etc. There were also wide ranges of workshops going on sound therapy self-healing, tibetian singing bowl massage, deep tissue massage, life coaching, MeDiClown laughter workshop, Aqua yoga, farming classes, paper-making classes etc. What we explored is only a fraction. I would love to go there once a year to just relax and rejuvenate. Do you find this interesting ? If you would liek visit Auroville, where would you like to go ?