Travel Day 954 – Amritapuri Ashram, Kerala, INDIA
With Amma gone and with more time on my hand, I decided to join some of the remaining program that I was never able to join before…
Sunrise at the Dolphin Beach Backwaters
Participating in the morning Archana was my very first goal and even if I had bought the book a long time ago to be able to read the 1000 names of the divine mother along with the speaker, I never managed to get up before the 4.50am start of the Archana. But today I took great pride in the fact that I did managed to get up early enough and even if could not pronounce all the names, I still really enjoyed the calming mumbles of the monotonous prayer that lasted for about one hour…
When the Archana ended, free chai was served. I had never enjoyed the free morning chai before as well, but today I was actually meeting some friends and with the chai in hand we were catching a local bus up the coast to a place called Dolphin Beach. The ashram was obviously really close to the local beach, but because of the 2004 tsunami, the entire coastline had been reconstructed and reinforced by rocky breakers. So the only place to actually go for a swim was supposed to be the Dolphin Beach…
Dolphin Beach by Amritapuri, Kerala
Once we arrived we walked out on the long peer where backwaters and Arabian Sea met. This was the perfect spot to watch the dolphins in the current while the sun was slowly rising in the background. We even had some musical entertainment as one of the other ashram mates had brought his instrument along and so today became one of the best starts of the day that I had in quite a while…
Well, a jump in the cool and calm sea did the rest to make this morning feel like little mini Daycation and it definitely reassured me in the thought that before I would travel north in India, I definitely had to stop by Varkala. The beach town south of Amritapuri was supposed to be a bit touristic, but on the other hand it was apparently offering nice beach atmosphere and some stunning cliffs…
Empty Dolphin Beach by Amritapuri
Anyway, the rest of my day was the usual routine. I was working my Seva shift in the canteen, spending time chatting with other people from the ashram, reading my book about Amma, joining the meditation session on the beach, practicing some Tabla and then going to the evening teaching. Unfortunately since my busy day had started already as early as 4.30am, I was literally falling asleep in the teachings and I called it a day…
But it was amazing to see how much there still was to do even in the absence of Amma and I decided to get up early again tomorrow to enjoy every single bit of my last days in Amritapuri…
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