Leaving at 10:30am we take a lazy 8-hour boat trip on the backwaters of Kerala seeing lagoons, canals, coconut groves, rice paddies, churches, mosques, and villages. Rice boats float along as you look at bright blue kingfisher birds perched in the trees. Most of the view is dense tropical greenery and we are truely relaxed in the deep south of India. Families here live the simple life (e.g. bathing and washing clothes in the river alongside their buffalo). All the logging is done manually and transport is by boat.
In the afternoon we stopped at female guru Shri Amaritanandamayi Devi's (also known as Mama Hug's) ashram- the pink highrise building pictured below. She wasn't there and we were so bummed because we had hoped for one of her life-affirming "hugs." For the past 35 years Amma has dedicated her life to the uplifting of suffering humanity through the simplest of gestures – an embrace. In this intimate manner Amma had blessed and consoled more than 25 million people throughout the world! She said, " An unbroken stream of Love flows from me towards all beings in the cosmos. That is my inborn nature." Once a press reporter asked Amma how was it possible for her to embrace each and every one in the same loving way, even if they were diseased or unpleasant. Amma replied, "When a bee hovers over a garden of varied flowers, what it beholds is not the difference between the flowers but the honey within them." Similarly Amma sees the same Supreme Self in each and every one. http://www.ammachi.org/index.html India is a very spiritual and peaceful place. Paul and I feel it everywhere we go.
These smiling kids take ferry canoes to go to school across the river. Education is very important in Kerala with nearly 100% literacy rate and almost everyone speaks 3 languages.
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