oh india

you know you're in india when:

-you blow your nose and the snot is black.
-you are asked 10 times a day, "what country?" and everyone assumes europe.
-you think $7 a night for a double room is outrageous.
-you step out of the shower and already feel dirty because you've started to sweat.
-your choices for transportation are catching a rickshaw or jumping on a moving bus.
-no is never an answer you will receive.
-your choice of food is: fried food, fried food, fried food or fried rice.
-nothing opens before 11am.
-toilet paper is non-existent and you learn to squat like your life depended on it.
-your hotel bed doesn't have any sheets because you don't need them.


today sara and i took the tour of pondicherry and were taken all over the place. we started off visiting the sri aurobindo ashram which is rather strange and i feel slightly cultish. then we hit up another hindu temple and a sweet paper making factory. the next stop was a place called auroville and honestly i am super freaked out by it. this place was founded by a french woman called "the mother" who wanted to create an intentional international community where peoples from all nations can live together in peace. the wierd thing about it is that we were only allowed to see the visitor's center and the matrimindar which is this giant gold orb with a crystal ball inside where aurovillians go to meditate and find the ultimate truth. to live in auroville you must renounce all religions and seek only "the truth." anyway, it was strange. we then moved on to the botanical gardens, the pondicherry museum and a boating complex. it was a pretty exhausting day with lots of walking but well worth the two bucks. the pictures are of a strange hindu god in the botanical garden, the matramindar at auroville and and elephant giving blessing at a hindu temple.