Ponticherry, Auroville, Chennai, Kanyakumari

I didn't blog for quite some time, but here is my update.
First of all, let me tell you about the most interesting day I had until now. The day began with a wonderful breakfast in Ponticherry, at one of the places owned by an american woman. An Indian person Bec and I met the night before, let us call this person S., had his coming-out, apparently he trusted us enough to tell us his life story. To respect S. privacy, all I say is, that there is still so much to do about this India. Sure, by now homosexuality is not illegal anymore, but still coming from an "influential family" means that there is no chance to ever live a normal (homosexual) life in India. The psychological problems that occur are terrible and a disgrace for this society. In India all religions are tolerated without the problems we know in Europe, but homosexuality is still a taboo. Let us hope that this changes within the following years.

Afterwards Bec and I went to Auroville again, to see a respected Ayurvedic Practioner. I was amazed how much he knew about my personal health problems just by feeling my pulse. The place where he has his "office" and homestays is a paradise. They have a wonderful garden with all the ayurvedic herbs, a little hut to cook food and two beautiful rooms. The accomodation and one week "stress-relief" on the basis of ayurvedic medicine is rather cheap and the way it looks it sounds like it is worth going there. We then walked through Auroville and met a cute and clever 15 yr old boy who showed us an incredible place on a water tower, we could oversee all of Auroville, until the beach. He told us that when the (apparently an earlier one) Tsunami came, all boys met up on the tower to watch the big wave.

The next morning I got up very early to take the bus to Gingee, a wonderful place for someone who likes ruins as much as I do. I walked up a very steep hill (look at the pictures google image search returns) and had the most wonderful overview over the region. You could see the leftovers of the walls of that fortress between the green rice paddies and the surrounding hills, each blessed with another part of the fortress on the top. There I met Anant, he looked as foreign as I did: the only person with a helmet to ride his bike ;). We met up later on in Ponticherry, sitting on the beach and talking about cultural differences, and I could really feel the differences between the poor people and people from the middle class, like him. Everyone stating that the castes do not exist anymore is a lier.
The next day I agreed to come to Chennai to see the nice parts of the city, apparently there is a clubbing culture and so on... This wouldn't be too bad for my travel plans, as Chennai has overnight train connections to most of South India. However, everything got messed up, a little misunderstanding, an empty cell phone and a motorbike accident: and Hendrike alone in this huuuuuuge and scary city. I was so lonely and homesick as I have never been before. I checked into an overpriced but nice hostel and went to the train station to buy a ticket for the night train to Kanyakumari. Thank god, Anant saved me from a major depression; we finally established contact and met up. Too late for going out we had a nice chat with his friends (who knew some German without ever having spoken to one ;). I think I found a really good friend in Anant. Apparently he doesn't consider Chennai as huge as I do --- coming from Dehli this is understandable.
Yesterday, I met a wonderful woman, a close friend of Anant, Nita. She had cornflakes and fruits -- the best breakfast in a long time. We talked for hours about everything. She works for an NGO and asked me whether I would like to spend a week or two in a town/village, teaching in a local school. Considering that I will have no better chance to understand the people, I am inclined to do so. And isn't it a nice feeling to do something good? We had lunch at Subways -- that was great, I didn't expect to miss western food after only 11 days. Later, I took the train to Kanyakumari and here I am. A terrible place, just created to fullfill the needs of tourists and pilgrims. Tomorrow I am going to hike up a holy mountain (holy because it is full of medicinal herbs and some god of the extensive pantheon has been saved by the herbs).