The spiritual side (Calicut and surroundings)

As expected this blog entry took longer. Actually  even longer than expected :), sorry for that. The days were really busy and I was too tired in the evening to write. Right now I am at a very chilled place with more time to write, so I hope I will catch up till new year.

(Dec 1st until Dec 5th)

At 8 a.m. I arrive at Calicut (Kozhikode) after the longest and most uncomfortable bus ride of my life. The bus I took was probably the most basic there is, next time I have to choose more carefully. Also there were no toilets on the bus, so you had to get stuff done during one of the 5-10 min breaks every 2.5 hours or so. Luckily I did not have to use that option. The bus also did not have any room for luggage. I mainly thought of Airplanes when I chose Carryon only, but it came in very handy to be able to but my backpack under the seat :)

I get picked up by car at the bus station by my friend Zagi from Germany, his german friend Monja, who currently lives in India and his indian friend Sajesh. We drive to the house of some friends who invited us for breakfast. From this point everything becomes very convenient, I don't have to worry about anything :).

After breakfast we go to the event, which is the main reason why we are all here and that will take place until Dec 10th. I will try to explain all these spiritual stuff to the best of my knowledge, but bear in mind that I also did not understand everything deeply and might get something wrong.
The motivation behind this fire ceremony also called Yajna or Yagna is to summon the energies of some hindu deities. Every day there will be a Yajna for a different deity, where the main Swami and others will sit around a fire and monotonous repeat mantras for over an hour and finalise it with food and other offerings into the fire. This will lead up to doing the Yajna for the main deity, who is Chandi in this case, during the last days. After each of these they will hand out Prasad (food from the offering, ofter very tasty sweet rice) to the devotees and also a full meal. This was incredible because they handed out these meals 3 times per day for free. In the last days hundreds of people participated most of the time, so we are talking about a lot of food. Partly they financed this by the possibility to donate either by just giving cash or by buying ghee or a coconut. The ghee was offered as fuel for the holy fire and the coconut was used to put all your problems and negative thoughts into it and then smash it on a stone.

Later we go to a house close by, where we will stay for the next couple of days. It's a big house in the traditional style of this area. A friend of Sajesh, who also took part in the organisation of the ceremony, got us this house and also stays with us there.

During the next days we regularly go to the Yajnas  (but not all of them). In between we meet a lot of interesting people who are not only well educated in Hindu or Vedic religion but also in areas of modern science or medicine. These people enjoy a high reputation at the ceremony so we often eat in a separated area with them. Besides that we also get invited to some people's homes to have breakfast or lunch. Since as foreigners we also had a certain fame we even made it to the local newspaper. No, I am not sleeping, I am meditating ;).
As expected it is difficult to put into words what kind of atmosphere this created. With all the stuff going on at the Yajna and with everything you learn from the very interesting people, it brings you into a different world, but that was only the beginning.

But ... before we could go on we first had to get some Amla Juice to clear our system. It won't be the last thing I tried to clear body or mind, but probably the last time I drank Amla Juice. Its super bitter and, let me put it this way, it's best consumed close to home ;). My face probably shows how good it tasted.

In between the Yajna we go to some other place not so far away but still a 4 hour drive (indian roads and traffic).
The 4 of us are invited by some local priest to get our own fire ceremony. I go along not knowing what to expect. We are in a rural area and we go to his house that also has a tiny temple area in front with 3 snake deities. The ceremony takes around 11! hours and includes different steps. Among them one is dedicated to do an offering to your ancestors, another one is to eliminate your negative thoughts. The one with the biggest impact, at least to one of us, is in the evening. I don't remember what it is for but it results in one of us not being able to move for some time. I watch how he is standing in the corner of the temple and than suddenly it starts to rain. I move to get some protection but he stays with his eyes closed. I am very impressed by his perseverance.  After another maybe half hour he suddenly tumbles to the balcony and lays down for probably another 30 minutes totally exhausted. Only later I find out that he could not move or talk while he was standing there. Unfortunately the priest also left before to start preparing a room inside for the last step.
The last step is inside in a very small room, we can hardly all fit in. A bed is put up to the wall. The floor is amazingly painted with colored sand and decorated with flowers and candles. It becomes very hot very quick inside but it's an incredible atmosphere. I don't remember all steps but it usually includes drinking blessed coconut water, offering food and flowers to a fire after moving it clockwise around your head or chest in multiples of 3 and eating Prasad at the end.
The whole day is amazing. The amount of time and effort they spend on us for the ceremony and all the food is just unbelievable. I feel bad because since my understanding of all this is so limited it feels like throwing pearls before a swine :).
It is too late to drive back, so we stay in a hotel not so far away.

The next day we drive to another interesting guy who is also educated in many science topics and the vedas. On the way we stop by a holy rock that has a temple at the bottom and on top. Also on the very top there is a huge bolder. There is probably a perfectly good explanation on how it got there but for the geological not so educated (so for me) it looks like it's in an impossible place. The fact that this place used to be frequently visited by Yogis kind of gave us some other possibilities how it got there ;).

After this we continue our journey to get educated in a different version of the evolution theory. The guy we meet looks completely normal, some would say why should he not, but what he will tell us and the stories about him are far from normal. I will only give you a short summary. I was hoping to read up on it on the Internet but I could not find anything. We all sit down on the front porch and then he tells us the story about how men lived on Saturn and women on Venus before they met up on Mars and then moved to earth. Right now we all have to develop some kind of a 7th sense to be able to move to Jupiter. Some are already there but invisible to us. This circle is already going on since 7 repetitions which is half way because there are 14. Yes, that sounds very far away from the evolution theory we learned at school. I can't tell how literally you are supposed to take this, but I can say they guy is far away from looking like a crazy person. The only thing I can do is to take all this in but of course I am also far away from taking it seriously.

Later we drive back to the hotel to stay there another night and drive back to Calicut in the morning. 

On our way here and back we always stop to get sugar cane juice, coconuts or other types of fruit or juice, very nice to cope with the long drive.

Some days later Zagi takes a flight back and we all drive to Kochi because I also want to stay there and go back down south to visit some places I missed because I went up early to Calicut.

P.S. All is one.