Travel Day 982 – Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
Of course it got late again yesterday and of course we had to sleep-in again today, so it came to no surprise that this day seemed to be lacking energy and motivation again as well…
Village in Tiruvannamalai, India
It was really strange I thought and I wasn’t really sure if it really was the mountain that drained my energy or the heat. Whatever it was, I definitely could not understand why someone would want to live here for a longer period of time and potentially just laze away time that could otherwise be used creatively. Anyway, after listening to the usual conversations of the Western residents for a while, I decided to get myself off the seat and go for a walk…
As I mentioned before there seemed to be not much to do in this town and the Western people mostly spent time either in the Ramana Ashram or in the few Western cafes talking about spirituality and their life here in Tiruvannamalai. The funny thing was that there were really only about three café places where everyone would go to and only about 15 to 20 Western people in town. So after three days in Tiruvannamalai, I felt I not only knew all the places to go to but also all the people in town…
Village Kids in Tiruvannamalai
So today I decided to venture a little bit beyond the usual places and walk a little bit through the local village that existed in the area. This little walk was nice for a couple of reasons: obviously it was good because it got me out of the house, but also it reminded me that I was in fact still in rural India and that there was a life beyond all Western talks about the Arunachala Mountain or the Ramana Ashram. The people here just seemed to be living their regular life, unaffected by what was happening so close by…
So here I not only found more typical houses that belonged to the area and were in stark contrast to those that the residing Westerners were inhabiting, including air conditioning and all sorts of other amenities. But here I also found the local kids playing around and coming up to me to say hello, as they would in any other Indian small town. With this strange contrast in mind, I walked back to the Ramana Ashram to see if I would feel better about it today…
Village House in Tiruvannamalai
Naturally I skipped the rather boring daily events at the ashram which I had joined last time and I rather did a little walk around while exploring some rooms that I had not seen before. There were actually a few really nice, small rooms that were rather quiet and arranged like a little museum with lots of photos of Ramana. While the atmosphere in those rooms was far better than in the big meditation hall, the pictures of Ramana were not really talking to me…
It really seemed to me that on every single picture Raman was looking either unhappy or even arrogant. While this unfortunately prevented me from making any sort of connection, I rather went back home, called it a day and finally went to be early…
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