South India:Pondicherry-Sadhana Forest-Thiruvanamalay

This Unplanned trip to Pondi did turn out to be the best,inexpensive and most fulfilling trip ever.Nampally station :15th june 4.30 pm Train to chennai leaves .A ticket to chennai would cost you around 300 (one way fare)I reached chennai central at around 6 in the morning.Completely clueless of where i had to go .I set out on the mission to find the local bus stop to get to the chennai mofussil bus terminus from where i would get a bus to pondicherry.Since i was travelling on a budget the only thing i could afford was taking the bus to pondi.You can also take a taxi but that would cost u 4 times more than the bus fare.(the bus ticket to pondi is like 55 rs).Some how I got to the CMBT bus station.When you in chennai its really difficult to communicate with the locales becuase even if they know the language you speak they refuse to speak anything but tamil.By some means i found the bus that would take me to pondi.Its a 5 hour ride by bus from chennai to pondi bus stop and there is really nothing you can do to pass your time..Since it was early in the morning and the weather being really pleasant I decided I'd look out the window to pass my time ...I could see the long stretch of the coco beach .It was a heavenly view..I hadn't seen anything So So beautiful.Unlike the Goa beaches the coco beach is less crowded .Anyway after a 5 hour long bus ride I reach pondi bus stop.Waited there for a friend for half an hour and took a taxi to Sadhana Forest.The taxi would cost you around Rs.180 .
Day 1 at Sadhana Forest:The day starts as early as 5.30 in the morning.We wake up to someone playing the guitar and singing a song to you.Then we assemble outside the main hut where we form a circle and meditate and sing a few songs and then we work for 3 hours..My work for the first day was compound cleaning..We had to find things which were not in their appropriate places and put them in the rite place .Pick the rubbish and put it in the rubbish room and wash 3 ragzines which were used for wormi compost.After that we break for Breakfast and then we have the second task for the day .We work for 2 hours the second time and then break for lunch.My second task was to clean the children's room





This is how the room looked after we cleaned it .

After our 2nd task we have lunch together .We maintain a moment of momentary silence after the lunch has been served to us.



This is the main hut where we all have our break-fast lunch and dinner


Since wednesday's at Sadhana is Night out ,everyone goes out to the towns to have dinner and we went to this tibetian restaurant called Lhasa.This place served the best mow mows I ever had and Thentuk(Its a soup with boiled vegetables) which is also a tibetian dish.The Nights are usually very dark since there is no electricity .They use solar panels to conserve energy and so there is power only in the main hut.
Day 2 was a little laidback..WE Had to make the forest path and this is how it looked



We left for thiruvanamalay on friday.It was a long long drive from the forest around 5- 6 hours.The village is really beautiful surrounded with hills and it is believed that Lord shiva resided in one of the Hills and so it is called the Shiva mountain.Most people believe that the mountain has intense energies and worship it.We stayed at thiru at a friend's place.There was company ,Jack daniel's and rain......you couldn't have asked for anything better .:)We slept on the roof while it was still drizzling a little but we didn't bother.We had a good night's sleep on the roof:P
The next day wasn't very eventfull we just lazed around the whole day and went for a walk and then chai in the evening.And then came sunday ,the day I was leaving .We woke up early that morning to go to the Shiva linga Temple in tiru.


This is the elephant they worship in the temple.If you give the elephant a one rupee coin it is said that the elephants give u blessings by placing its trunk over your head.