First Daytrip (Ashram)

I apologise. I am getting lazy writing new blog posts already, but to my excuse it's a really busy schedule here and so far I preferred to use my free time for relaxation :).

So in this post I will cover the first daytrip from the first Friday (Friday is the day off here, and if enough people are interested the Ashram organises a trip) and the second one will follow in the next post.

The bus took off at around 6 a.m. heading towards our first destination...breakfast. I sit in the back which feels good at first but it turns out to be the worst position in the bus because of the roads and the not so good suspension :D. On the way we stopped at some kind of a Pittstop to put some air into the suspension I guess, because they did not connect it to the tires. To my disappointment it did not help much.

It's a very nice landscape down here in Kerala. There are small mountains and lots of vegetation so the ride is still quite enjoyable. After some time we arrive at the breakfast place. I am glad I am sitting at a table with someone from our group who knows the local food so he helped me to order :).

After breakfast we drive to the first sight which is a palace. We had a nice tour through its long halls. It was mainly made of wood and had a lot of very cosy chill out areas inside and a pretty garden. Yes, I did not mention whose palace it was because I don't remember and still don't care ;), so if anyone wants to read up it was Padmanabhapuram Palace. After this we drove to the most southern point of India where 3 oceans meet (Triveni Sangam). We took a short ferry ride to get to the close by super small island Vivekananda. It's a cool place including a footprint of some Guru in the rock, his statue and also a dark meditation cave where you can meditate - mysterious place so of course I gave it a try. There are a lot of tourist here but mainly people from india. "White" people seem to be rare so every couple of minutes we were asked to be on a foto with someone or sometimes even a group of 20 people :). It feels very strange but fun at the same time. After some time we decided to ask them to return the favour, because to have a picture with Indian people is cool for us especially if it's a group of girls ;).

After this we went to a spot on the mainland where you can go down some stairs into the water of Indian ocean, Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal. The custom is to wash your head and feet a the bottom of the stairs.

The downside was that it's a very touristy place which attracts a lot of poor people asking for money and so this was the first time I got into contact with the very dark side of india. A lot of these poor people were badly disfigured and/or burned, it was very shocking and I was unsure how to deal with it. I probably have to get used to this especially at tourist places.

The last sight we visited on that day was the Suchindram Thanumalayan Temple. Sadly it was already dark so we could not see much of the outside area but what we could see was impressive. Nevertheless the main aim was to visit the inside. Like with any holy site cameras were not allowed, but one thing was new to me, men have to go in shirtless - too bad only the men ;). The inside of the temple was even more impressive. It was huge and everything was made out of stone, so it felt like being in a cave. The temple looked extremely old and was not mainly a tourist attraction but an actively used temple so there were lot's of different things going on. On our way through it we got color to paint the front of our head to mark the third eye. In summary a again very mystical and awesome experience.

On our way back we stopped for dinner and than we went back to the ashram where we arrived at 11 p.m.. It was a long day ...