Auroville, India

Just under that roof is where we stayed for our 2 weeks at Sadhana Forest. Chris stands outside brushing his teeth, trying to hide the fact that being sick made us finally break down and treat ourselves to a little non-vegan contraband...Cookies! Unfortunately, cookies, or more specifically sugar is not the best thing when trying to deal with amoebas...they love sugar. We ate mostly rice porridge. After feeling better, we still couldn't kick the end of our illness, so we resorted to those good 'ol western drugs. Those drugs gave Chris a UTI (urinary tract infection), which was quickly cured, but the fight for health goes on.

The work with the biological waste treatment was slow going. Many Aurovillians were helpful in giving us what knowledge they had, we just had to piece it all together into a workable system. By the time we left, we were finally hammering out the final details of a pretty comprehensive and feasible plan. Matt, another person staying at the forest, helped with the research, and we have entrusted him with continuing the project (Go Matt!). We hope that we will get pictures someday of the completed system.

We are now in Madurai. We wanted to break up the trip across the southern tip and Madurai was smack-dab in the middle. It has a famous temple that is known for its touts. But we braved it anyway. The colorful sculptures on the gopuras (tower entrances) would take a year to fully appreciate. They are exploding with carvings of people, gods, animals and everything else. We are back to eating the normal Indian diet...thali. Most are served on banana leaves and eaten with the RIGHT hand. In India, left hands are only used as toilet paper, and it is rude to shake/ eat/ accept or give money with the left. This is proving quite a challenge for left-handed Chris.