Parotas, on the way to Tiru

After we left Ganeshpuri and the Nityananda shrine, we flew from Mumbai to Chennai (now Madras), in the state of Tamil Nadu. We spent the night at the Radisson, a good choice in India. That's where we discovered India is in love with Jon Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams' music. The server in the Regency Club played it loudly over and over and said it was the latest rage.

The next morning, after I received an ayurvedic foot massage that came complimentary with the room and Marty ate another dosa, we set off for a four hour drive to Thiruvannamalai (known as Tiru). Tiru is a small town in southern India, famous for its gigantic Shiva temple, Mount Arunachula, and the ashram of the great sage, Ramana Maharshi who died in 1950.

Along the way, our driver, another man named Ganesh, continuously beeped. It was so irritating that we were so relieved to pull off to a road side chai shop. Marty decided to eat whatever the man at the grill was making, because it was in the shape of a pizza. These "little pizzas" were later identified as parotas. This lunch was proving to be both fascinating and dangerous for our health.

The whole time the cook is making the parotas, you'll see a man brushing his teeth and washing up right behind him. Watch how the cook 'manhandles' the food after and serves it to us on a banana leaf.


We also ate the guavas that a woman was selling by the road. YUM! The chai was delicious too. We'll have a video on how to make that later from Rishikesh. We eventually made our way to the Sparsa EcoResort, a perfect place to stay while visiting Tiru.

Sparsa Resort in Tiru

We stayed at the Sparsa resort, a gorgeous eco resort about a mile from Ramana's ashram that we learned about from our friend who had just been to Mukti from Boston.

We watched the traditional pottery making technique, and got a parrot and rat astrology reading (the rat turned out to be a guinea pig.) These two creatures lived next to each other in a tiny divided wooden cage. When the door to their cage slid open, they were trained to run to a spread of cards and each chose one. The cards were pictures of various Indian gods. The ones the guinea pig and parrot chose apparently indicated that I'd have a strong body until I was 90 and that March 22nd of this year is a start of a long period of good luck (it's also our 6th wedding anniversary.) Marty isn't that into parrot, rat, or any type of astrological readings.

In Tiru, we met up with our friend Corrine's husband, Sathya, a Brahmin who's lived in Tiru for 14 years. We ate lunch a delicious lunch of spicy rice and yogurt and dahl at his home that his brother Krishanmurti made. After that he took us to the guest house he was building adjacent a rice field, and toured us through Tiru with his own private tuk tuk and his brakeless car.

Along the way, we saw many, many ashrams either newly built or just being built for followers of the 'living gurus' springing up around the area. This seems to be primarily because of popularity of Ramana's teachings and the people coming from the west to see where he lived who bring a readiness to seek enlightenment and willingness to spend money. In 1993 Marty stayed in Ramana Maharshi's ashram, it was much less crowded than today.

Ramana's Ashram

We caught a ride from Sparsa in a tuk tuk about a mile to Ramana's ashram. We passed an array of monkeys, dogs, and sadhus (covered in sacred ash in a variety of ways), worshippers of Shiva. They lined the roadsides and, napping just about anywhere.

We spent the afternoon at the ashram. It's very peaceful and in addition to the many Indian pilgrims, the ashram we saw many Americans and Europeans. People can stay there for a period of up to two weeks. Ramana's ashram provides a daily free meal to the sadhus, so they line up outside of the ashram gates, waiting.

The routine there consists of Brahmin boys chanting vedic mantras around Ramana's burial site (in the temple) and people circumambulate the shrine. In the video you'll see a very small room where Ramana actually died, or took mahanirvana. We found that we preferred meditating in the old hall where Ramana sat when he wasn't walking around the mountain (Mt. Arunachala) in his later years.

Like Nityananda's, Ramana Maharshi's appeal crossed numerous cultural and religious boundaries. So even though their temples are Hindu based, the teachings transcend any religion. It's the discovery of the Self that is the main emphasis.