Our spiritual adventure begins
February 4, 2012 • Spiritual Adventures
Our spiritual adventure began on January 27th but we’ve been without internet for 9 days now so have not been able to blog about the amazing journey we’ve been having. We’ll start to cover it in detail now so you can follow along. Photos in today’s post show us in Chennai, where we started our journey. From here we made our way south to Mamallapuram for a few hours then to the sacred town of Tiruvannamalai. Here are some photos from Day 2. (On another note, we’ve been focused on taking videos on this journey rather than photographs as we normally do so much of our journey will be shared later on when we’ve had time to upload video clips from our spiritual adventure).
Dandapani poses with Pam for a photo. It's Pam's second spiritual adventure with Vedic Odyssey.
We make our south from Chennai and spend a few hours in Mamallapuram exploring the ancient rock carvings. Lauren attracts lots of kids wherever she goes in India and here she is surrounded by a whole bunch who want to shake her hand.
Jo capturing on video the lovely smiles of these kids
Amy takes the opportunity to get an Indian top custom made for her in 2 hours. Only in India can you get this done on the spot and the tailor did a great job.
From Mamallapuram we head west inland to Tiruvannamalai. We stop on the way to stretch our legs and meet a few local ladies caring for some goats. Amy is overjoyed to be able to pick up a little one. We learnt a lot about a life of a goat herder in our brief encounter.
We continue on our drive and further along the road we come across a lorry (truck) being loaded with sugar cane. We pull over to see what is going on and ended up spending an amazing hour with a family of farmers.
They invited us into their home which was kept so clean and neat inside and out. Mud walls that were about 3 feet high framed the house with a thatched grass room that extended down about 3 feet off the ground. This forced you to almost crawl into the home but keeps the home very cool during the hot Indian summers. The floor of the home is thinly layered with cow dung that becomes hard like cement. We find out that cow dung is anti septic and keeps the floor of the home clean. No need to mop with modern detergents!
We’ll upload some videos of visit to this home soon.
Gary says hello to the very friendly farm dog.
The lady of the home is thrilled to see a video of herself on Jo's camera.
The dog follows us everywhere on the farm and here he says hello to Chris.
Amy gets to chew on some freshly harvested sugar cane. It was so deliciously sweet.
The trucks are loaded and now ready to be delivered and the sugar cane sold. It costs a little over Rs2000 (USD40) per tonne of sugar cane which is not very much for all the work that goes into producing and harvesting it.
South India’s Mouth Watering Treasure
Tamil Nadu, the land of the Tamils, was dominated by the Dravidian culture for 2500 years. The cuisine is distinctly different from that of the north, and is based primarily on rice rather than wheat and an abundant use of coconut. With a largely vegetarian population like much of India, Tamil Na...
Read More
Madurai’s Sacred Citadel to the Goddess
Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple in South India, Hinduism’s grandest citadel to the goddess, is a sacred place of pilgrimage for Hindus the world over and one of the most famous temples in India. This temple, centuries old and hand carved out of granite, covers an area of 16.5 acres. In Mad...
Read More
Ayurveda and Yoga Retreat in South India
An invitation to join Jasmine Grace on a Vedic Adventure in South India from Nov 29 to Dec 10, 2017. “On my upcoming fifth trip to India, I feel it is a deep honor to guide beautiful beings through the soul-stirring and beautiful land of India. In true Dandapani style, this is no ordinary yoga&he...
Read More
A life-transforming journey awaits you
Every year I conduct a retreat in Asia which is open to the public. These journeys are opportunities for people to get away from their daily routines, study with me in a deeper way and embark on a journey of self-transformation. In February of 2017 I’ll be guiding a group of individuals on ...
Read More
