Welcome to Auroville. May I Take Your Aura?

Cooking our own breakfast (and making our own coffee) is a treat, and enjoying it in Gaia's Garden is the tops! But it's time to see more of Auroville. Our rented bikes do the trick, although it's amazing that such horrendously heavy, ancient single-geared bikes can be pedaled anywhere. But we ride into "town" through the local village, constantly on the lookout for anything on the road bigger and faster than us. Even inside Auroville, Indian roads are Indian roads and nobody looks out for you!

We make it back to the beautifully constructed Visitor's Center for the first of some special reunions. In one of the shops that sells Auroville handicrafts (for real money, I must point out), Eshwari is still working there eight years later! When Lori and some of her fellow students weren't building their earth structure in 2002, they got to know her pretty well when visiting the store. They even visited her village. Lori walks into the shop and they recognize each other right away! We steal her away for a quick coffee and make plans to visit her house later in the week.

Then it's time to start the process of visiting Auroville's spiritual center, the unusual, strange and amazing building called the Matrimandir. First-time visitors can only view it from a distance (after watching a spacey video telling its story). So we go, thereby earning the right to return a few days later to make it inside.
 

After this glimpse of humanity's vessel towards a new Future, it's back to the past as we pedal to the American Pavilion to see what has become of Lori's handiwork from eight years ago...