Himalayas

Serena, an Aurovilian and filmmaker, recounts her journey with the nuns of the Buddhist Karsha Monastery in Ladakh, documenting their inspiring story and the powerful exchange that unfolded.

“In the midst of the mountains, unable to hold onto their stillness, I was swept away. Only Silence remained. Tracing silhouettes of mountains became the mantra of my hands.”

For Claude Arpi, the Bangladesh Liberation War symbolises a promising uniting event. Claude is an Aurovilian, historian, and journalist, whose journey of historical discovery of Tibet, China, and the Subcontinent started with a visit to the Himalayas in 1972.

In the growth and busyness of today’s Auroville we can forget the many small miracles that contributed to its formation, those men and women of goodwill mysteriously drawn here, via dreams, books, synchronicities and all that chance entails.

In early February, Ashwin Ezhumalai presented his photos of the Himalayas at an exhibition in Citadines Centre d’Art. Taken over six years during different treks with other Aurovilians in rarely visited valleys and passes in Himachal Pradesh, they capture the different aspects of this stark yet magical high altitude landscape: deep valleys, rock-strewn glaciers, grassy uplands, sacred lakes, immense starscapes, and stunning snow-capped mountains playing hide-and-seek with clouds.

The distant worlds of Zanskar, in the north Indian Himalayas, and Auroville’s coastal plains, met in December through the visit of Lobzang Wangtak, a Zanskari activist who journeyed down for the Auroville Learning Exchange (ALE).

One offering I had always wanted to make to Auroville was the Ganga Yatra experience. Why? Firstly, I have always had a fascination with the Himalayas and the Ganges.