Day 26 - Friday - Auroville

Up early, awoken at 6am by someone shouting “Hello, hello”. Got a bit annoyed with the landlord over being woken so he could get more guests in. Tried to go back to sleep although the mixture of the Indian music being played over a tannoy, hip-hop on a stereo, a group of young guys chatting and laughing loudly and ants nibbling on me, was too much. I took the hammock with my book. Over the morning I met the 10 Indian that had moved into our little resort. They had all just completed their final exams in Bangalore University. Really pleasant and friendly guys, who offered me to join them for breakfast. I politely declined.

Myself and Greg went for breakfast of Bombay (French) toast, pancakes and coffee. Really delicious and something I will rave about for years to come :) We rented a rather battered looking moped. Headed to Auroville and got a puncture just before we arrived in the Visitor Centre. Ended getting shafted by the security guard and the local puncture repair service. Ate one of the cheapest and tastiest lunches. Saw the Auroville information video and got our passes to Matrimandir. Looked around for somewhere to stay. Got lost for quite some time. After and hour or so we found the main Auroville Youth Hostel. Met a smiling Indian kid with the most striking eyes. He smiled the brighest and biggest smile and we smiled and stared at the each other for 10 minutes. The hostel only allowed a minimum of 2 weeks stay. We moved on.

Headed to the Matrimandir. Ended up dropping Greg's camera as I went to take a photo of him pinching it between his fingers. The moment was lost, as you might imagine. He tried to turn it off and restart it. To no avail. The camera was screwed. The lens was extended as the camera fell onto the square paving stones. We returned to the moped in silence. The walk felt twice as long as it had on our way there. I was battling internally with whether I was to blame or not. Trying to recall the event and running over the consequences in my head. Hilarious. Us humans. We are sure are a special species. All of our own. The damage we do to ourselves internally is really something else. If we saw someone treating a friend like we abuse ourselves we'd either protect them are punch them. Nevertheless, we spend so much of our lives beating ourselves mentally. What use is there in wondering in what happened or what might happen? I started to realise I was doing myself no favours tormenting myself like this as we walked along. Greg was in the same state and had a number of other things going on in his head. I looked at the situation. I was to blame. I had being looking at buying a camera the same as Greg's. Greg is 24, a student and was living on a tight budget. As perception has thought me, €200 to him is a lot more than it is to me. Bite the bullet, Sam. All this thinking had being going on and now we were both on the moped, motoring along, still in silence, returning to the guesthouse.

As the bike hopped along on the dirt track leaving the Auroville complex, my self created cloud began to lift. I felt so much lighter after making the decision. I hadn't said it to Greg yet, although I was sure of the decision. We got back on to the main roads of surrounding and in a minute we came through the first town. I took the right junction, waved at a few locals and sped on. Greg mentioned were we going on the right direction, which I replied to with certainty. Well as much as you can, on the bucket we were driving. 1Km later we came around a corner and were moving along at a good speed when the bike lost control. The back started fishtailing and wobbling. I started braking in bursts to bring the speed down while trying to control the bike from crashing. Amazingly we brought it to safe stop. The same back tyre that the guy had repaired earlier had gone again. We pushed the bike to the nearest entrance to a property. Rang the the bike owner and asked him to pick us up.

An hour later we sat, being entertained or perhaps we were entertaining them, by a few plumbers. They were working on the construction of a new house. Greg thought perhaps we should check with someone else if they knew where we were on the map. We stopped a man and his daughter on a bike and another man, with a blue baseball cap, stopped as we were chatting. The map was turned and looked at in puzzlement by all. Know one had a notion where we were. When we mentioned names of places they were a little more helpful. They said Pondicherry was in one direction and Auroville was in the other athough as to where we were or the beach road we were staying at we might as well have being asking them where Ballygowackwards was. We kind of worked out we were lost, not where we originally thought we were and had relayed this to the bike owner an hour ago. Oops. I rang to update the bike owner on our situation. So we, actually I, because Frenchy seemed a bit annoyed, understandably, began pushing the bike along the road in the direction of the nearest village we had passed through. I was still smiling and laughing internally at the hilarity of the situation.

As we approached the village our blue capped gentleman, that we had learnt, from Auroville kept us company with questions and chat. He was incredibly pleasant and a very interesting man that under different circumstances I'd love to have sat down over a cup of Chai with. This wasn't really the moment. As we walked through the village I noticed a young man and an older one cross towards us on their bikes. Obviously, the rather annoyed older gentleman was the bike owners father. They young boy offered an older bike in swap for the one we were on. This was hard to believe as they one we were on, sounded and looked like it had come straight out of World War II. Well this one looked WWI. Inside I was laughing hysterically. The father seemed to saying something about money as I explained the day we had being through, to the young guy. There was some communication between them and we were off, on our dinosaur. Whizzing along, in the right direction this time. Beeping, our speed induced horn as we went.

We gave back in the bike when we got back. Auroville had not left the best feeling in our short visit to it. This is silly, although we are only human. The rest of the evening was used to catch up on internet, rock in the hammock reading my book. Dinner with 10 Bangalorians in a rather dingy looking place. There waiter looked like he came from the same era as the later bike we had that day. It so strange seeing such old people working in India. Crippled over with age. Its some sight. Quiet shocking. Later Greg told me he had received a lot of bad news when he was on the internet from back home so his head was all over the place. I told him I'd cover the camera, although I think it was the last thing on his mind. I sat up for an hour after he went to bed reading and swinging.