The Great Deepam Festival at Arunachala 2019

 

4th December - 12th December 2019

The city of Tiruvannamalai has grown up around a Holy Mountain called Aranachala where, in ledgend, Shiva manifested as a collumn of fire to eliminate the ego. The ancient Arunachalesvara Temple is dedicated to Shiva and specifically to the element of fire, or the God Agni. The history of the temple dated back 1000 years. The juge masonry pylons were built in the 9th Century. The temple has had gifts added to it by ruling dynasties of later centuries.

My room in Tiruvannamalai had a small window with a rooster in the field outside and large ants crawling on the floor, I left them alone and they left me alone. The mattress was big & comfortable and they fixed the dribbling faucet in my shower before it fell off.  In Auroville I had bought essential oils and a burner, the scent of geranium and cinnamon still transports me there. I perched my little kettle on a rather precarious stack of boxes and books so the cord could reach the plug to make my essential coffee. I made it quite comfortable, decorated with scarves and the ganesh statues that appeared. The garden was pleasant and green and there was a yoga room on the top floor with a fantastic view of the mountain.

There was a great vegan cafe, Da Mantra, up the road, we could go to anytime to enjoy good fresh drinks and food in a relaxing open-air setting with wifi. We ate there a lot, for breakfast, some lunches and dinners.

We were staying in a town near the ashram of Ramana Maharshi, an Indian sage who became an enlightened being at a very young age and sat in a cave for all of his life. Many thousands of followers sought his teachings and millions still flock to his ashram every year.​ We climbed up the hill to visit his cave. It was pretty cool. 

We were very impressed by an industrious man who made us beautiful, freshly squeezed orange juice half way up our climb to Sri Ramana Maharishi's cave. He had carried a whole box of oranges and all his equipment all the way up the winding stone pathway - including a sling-shot to keep the monkeys away. He deserved a good tip.

There are other people with stalls along the path selling statues. They all say they made them. But I think they were lying. They pretend to be chiselling at stone making statues but all their statues are the same. I still brought one, of Patanjali (the sage the yoga sutras are attributed to) at the top of the trek to commemorate my climb. It's not really basalt, it's just painted, a little piece chipped off his nose, I'll dab a bit of black paint on it.

Pujan said Arunachala has a very high spiritual energy. A whole lot of stuff manifested that I had to deal with. It wasn't very pleasant, but you have to deal with stuff if you want to over come vrittis.

I had a terrible pain in my foot that lasted the next 3 years. Hopefully I have just had it fixed through a series of torture sessions at the physiotherapist.

I went into town in a rickshaw to get some better walking shoes. It was mad in the city! It was packed with people, it was raining and it was authentic. Most of the million people who were pouring into the city had bare feet. I have no idea where they all slept. They just kept coming, hundreds and thousands of them, for days and days and days. A huge, dark ocean of people walking, all in the same direction; clockwise around the mountain.