Pondicherry and Auroville

Pondicherry was an old french colony in India. The french have left, but they seem to still have influence there. It is by far the nicest city we've been to so far. Everything is clean and nicely organized...they have traffic lights ! The place has a very laid back feel to it and the architecture is really nice. There are no specific sights to see...it's just a nice stop on the way. Incidentally, Pondicherry is where Mahatma Ghandi trekked to in protest of the british ban on making salt. He decided to go there and make some salt on the beach...it was a media fan fare and people around the world took notice and it was covered in the international press...a big embarassment for the british. The backed off and repealed the salt ban after that.

A wierd kind of hippie culture also emerged in the area with Sri Aurombindo. He sort of merged hindu and bhuddist philosophy with some western ideals and found an audience willing to listen. He also married a french woman of egyptian and turkish decent who also became quite influential. She sparked a movement to develop Auroville in 1968. It's a sort of utopian ideal community where material wealth is not supposed to matter and people live to serve each other and to persue their intellectual and spiritual interests. We stopped by the place to check it out...it has a very cultish feel. They're building this gold spherical structure (something like a small epcot centre in disney land) to be a place where people can go to meditate and stare into this crystal ball. The concept is very interesting, but in all honesty, I think it's doomed to fail. It is somewhat impressive that it has lated 30 years though. I got upset after we left though, because they are building this town in the middle of an improvrished area...a lot of money comes into the place and very little seems to go towards helping the people surrounding the "city". Most of the residents seemed to be new age europeans who decide that this is a life for them. Apperently, the utopia is running into difficutly with some infighting and lack of unity. It might be interesting to go a live there for a couple of weeks to see how it all really works.