Pilgrimage Creations Newsletter

After a five-month period without a Pilgrimage Creations Newsletter, we are back this month. In the last issue in August, we told you we were headed to India for extended time, we did just that. We chose to concentrate the time we had to write on the blog and publishing pictures in place of this newsletter. This issue outlines our wanderings and adds some insights we have yet to publish.

• Our India pilgrimage.
• Our pace.
• Where next?
• Namads.
• A gift.
• Our Books.

Our India pilgrimage

Our current pilgrimage in life is our journey in India. It is, indeed, the core of Pilgrimage Creations these days. This article gives you a quick rundown on some of the things we have been doing the last four plus months. We have published the details of most of these things at various places on Pilgrimage Creations.

Why go to India and stay so long? We have spent a total of eight months in India four times before and just wanted to know what it would be like to stay there for an extended time, a year or more. So here we are, living it. So far, so good.

We spent the first two months in Kaivalyadhama (K'dham) Yoga Hospital in Lonavla (near Mumbai) doing yoga and taking naturopathic and Ayurveda treatments. After that, we spent the next two months in a circle around southern India before coming back to K'dham Feb 2. That trip took us to

1. A seacoast village north of Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala.
2. The tip of India, Kanyakumari, where three oceans come together.
3. Amma, the Hugging Guru, in Amritapuri.
4. The tea plantations of Munnar in the mountains.
5. A huge temple in Madurai.
6. Auroville, an experiment in international living near Pondicherry.
7. Chennai for a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat.
8. Auroville.
9. Back to K'dham.

You can read the details about these wanderings on our India.WalkingWithAwareness.com blog.

Our pace

We have spent longer times in several of our stops in India: 5, 5, 12, 10, and 10 days and 2-1/2 months in K'dham. It is pleasant to spend longer times in each place, longer than one usually spends on a vacation. As we sat a few days ago drinking a masala chai in a local café where we are known, Petra remarked, “We have been the right amount of time in a place when we can go downtown and meet someone we know on the street.” Yes, it is a joy to be in a place so distant from your home territory and recognize or be recognized by someone on a neutral street. That’s the speed we are moving.

Where next?

We fly to Varanasi (Banaras) on the Ganges River on February 23^rd. It looks like a good place for an extended stay. The next stop could Bodhgaya where Buddha spent so much time sitting under the Bodhi tree on his way to enlightenment.

Beyond Bodhgaya? We have been in the country a bit over four months now. We both have a 10-year tourist visa. But India requires tourists to stay no longer than six months at a time. So we have to leave the country before we have been here 180 days. Until last year we had to stay out for a couple months before coming back. Now we can return at any time as long as we leave the country. April 10 (six months for us) is coming up soon. After Varanasi (and maybe Bodhgaya) we have to cross the border. Where to go? This is Southeast Asia; there are a lot of choices. Being in the north of India in April, we’ll likely head for Nepal. Petra’s mother in Germany will be our summer destination. After that, there are a passel of possibilities as we fill each succeeding required exit in our two- to three-year stay here: Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Bali, and… a bit farther afield, a return to Eritrea and Ethiopia and maybe even a repeat walk on the Via Francigena are also on the ledger as possibilities.

Nomads

Whether any or all of these wanderings beyond India happen or not is not clear; but what is clear is that we are wandering now; we feel like full-fledged nomads on our pilgrimage. And to add a little spice to the pie, this is only how we see it today. We are quite open to change. We arrived with the sole plan of two months at K’dham and a visit to Amma. The rest of the two or three years were to become known on the fly: “Where shall we go next?” We changed our plans three times in the south, making major alterations to our route and stops each time. So it shall continue.

A gift

I (this is Mike writing) am quite happy today. I don’t know who I really am, where (if anywhere) I am supposed to be going, or where I am going. In fact, I don’t know whether I will ever know the answers to these questions, much less, whether it is important to know the answers. I know that all I have is today and that I can enjoy it and live it well as I look for where to put my next foot down for my next step. To be able to experience this day to its fullest is a wonderful gift as we whirl through space on this tiny rock in a corner of the universe.

Our Books

Visit Pilgrimage Creations' Our Books page and browse through and consider buying one or more of them for yourself or as gifts.

Peace and Joy,
Petra Wolf and Mike Metras
Pilgrimage Creations.