We leave our comfy hotel after check in and head to a typical Malaysian restaurant for some authentic local cuisine. What a treat. It’s the first time our travelers are trying Malaysian food and they love it.
The desert is especially memorable. Known as Ais Kacang, it is a traditional Malaysian desert that contains red beans, sweet corn, grass jelly, shaved ice, ice cream and lots of other delicious surprises. Our travelers are in love with it.
That’s Malay for welcome. We arrive in Kuala Lumpur and make the hour long drive from the airport to the hotel. Our travelers are looking forward to exploring Kuala Lumpur plus attending the grand Thaipusam festival.
We arrive at our hotel in Kuala Lumpur centrally located in the heart of the city.
The view of the Petronas towers from our rooms. Quite breathtaking!
We gather with thousands of Hindus outside the Mariamman temple in Downtown Kuala Lumpur awaiting the departure of the silver chariot carrying Muruga, God of yoga and the spiritual path, to Batu Caves for the grand Thaipusam festival on Tuesday.
We look today at day 3 of our journey where we spent the morning within the sanctum of the Arunachaleswar temple in Tiruvannamalai, South India. The temple is thousands of years old and radiates a spiritual power that is extremely palpable. Our group was blessed to have the opportunity to witness the abhishekam (bathing ceremony) of the presiding deity of the temple, God Siva in the form of a lingam (an elliptical shaped stone that represents god as timeless, formless and spaceless). Special thanks to one of the main priests at the temple who is a friend of mine who arranged this special experience for the group.
No photography is allowed in the inner most sanctum so we share with you a few photos that were taken in the outer areas of the temple complex.
We pose with Dandapani's friend, Ganesh Kurukkal, who is one of the main priest at the temple.
Amy, Lauren and Jo reflect on the amazing ceremony they just experienced in the sanctum of the temple dedicated to the Goddess. A loving and dynamic energy is strongly felt.
Lauren loves this town with its sacred hill, Arunachala, and the special temple.
Some of our travellers...blissed out after the ceremony.
Lots of stalls line the street outside the temple selling offerings for pilgrims to purchase.
We leave the temple walking under the massive tower that is almost 13 stories tall.
Arunachala hill in the background and the temple are certainly one of my most favorites places in the world and now have won the hearts of my fellow travellers.
Our spiritual adventure began on January 27th but we’ve been without internet for 9 days now so have not been able to blog about the amazing journey we’ve been having. We’ll start to cover it in detail now so you can follow along. Photos in today’s post show us in Chennai, where we started our journey. From here we made our way south to Mamallapuram for a few hours then to the sacred town of Tiruvannamalai. Here are some photos from Day 2. (On another note, we’ve been focused on taking videos on this journey rather than photographs as we normally do so much of our journey will be shared later on when we’ve had time to upload video clips from our spiritual adventure).
Dandapani poses with Pam for a photo. It's Pam's second spiritual adventure with Vedic Odyssey.
We make our south from Chennai and spend a few hours in Mamallapuram exploring the ancient rock carvings. Lauren attracts lots of kids wherever she goes in India and here she is surrounded by a whole bunch who want to shake her hand.
Jo capturing on video the lovely smiles of these kids
Amy takes the opportunity to get an Indian top custom made for her in 2 hours. Only in India can you get this done on the spot and the tailor did a great job.
From Mamallapuram we head west inland to Tiruvannamalai. We stop on the way to stretch our legs and meet a few local ladies caring for some goats. Amy is overjoyed to be able to pick up a little one. We learnt a lot about a life of a goat herder in our brief encounter.
We continue on our drive and further along the road we come across a lorry (truck) being loaded with sugar cane. We pull over to see what is going on and ended up spending an amazing hour with a family of farmers.
They invited us into their home which was kept so clean and neat inside and out. Mud walls that were about 3 feet high framed the house with a thatched grass room that extended down about 3 feet off the ground. This forced you to almost crawl into the home but keeps the home very cool during the hot Indian summers. The floor of the home is thinly layered with cow dung that becomes hard like cement. We find out that cow dung is anti septic and keeps the floor of the home clean. No need to mop with modern detergents!
We’ll upload some videos of visit to this home soon.
Gary says hello to the very friendly farm dog.
The lady of the home is thrilled to see a video of herself on Jo's camera.
The dog follows us everywhere on the farm and here he says hello to Chris.
Amy gets to chew on some freshly harvested sugar cane. It was so deliciously sweet.
The trucks are loaded and now ready to be delivered and the sugar cane sold. It costs a little over Rs2000 (USD40) per tonne of sugar cane which is not very much for all the work that goes into producing and harvesting it.
I wanted to share with you a movie I watched recently called “Watching Water“. It was filmed and edited by my dear friend Jo Tyrrell. Jo, originally from South Africa, is a film maker, photographer and artist who now resides in the UK.
Jo Tyrrell
On another note, Jo will be joining me on this upcoming spiritual adventure to help me document parts of the journey. We hope to have some footage available for you to see in the coming weeks so you can virtually experience one of our spiritual adventures.
Our blog received its 200th “Like”s today as I make my way to India to begin our spiritual adventure this Friday. Thank you everyone for all the Likes. If you haven’t Liked it yet please do so.
Participants on the adventure have already begun their journey making their way from the US, UK, Germany and Australia. A wonderful small group perfect for a profound spiritual journey.
Arunachaleswar temple in Tiruvannamalai
We begin our spiritual adventure in India’s 4th largest city, Chennai, located in the south eastern coast of the country. We spend one night in this city that is scurrying with activity before heading south west to Tiruvannamalai. One of my favorite towns in all of India with an amazingly spiritual vibe. The sacred Arunachala hill and the massive old temple to Siva have long been a place of profound spiritual experiences for countless spiritual seekers.
I have enjoyed a few pilgrimages here over the years and needless to say it has had a profound affect on me. But every spiritual journey is as rewarding as the amount of energy put into the preparation for it. I always tell my fellow travelers this. Our spiritual adventures is a time for self-transformation. Getting to know yourself on the inside while enjoying the beauty of everything around you. But the preparation is the key. Always! So prepare well for a spiritual adventure and you’ll have a profound journey.
Check back regularly as we’ll do our best to post photos each day though on a couple of days we’ll be in places with no internet connection.
We’ve been doing some work on our blog to improve it over the last couple of weeks and hence I have not been blogging. But I’ll resume blogging now that I am on the road again and our next spiritual adventure begins this Friday. You’ll see some changes in the blog in the coming weeks and we hope that it will add to a better experience for all of you who visit the site.
The Golden Temple in Amritsar is one of my favorite places for so many reasons. One major reason is that they selflessly feed tens of thousands of people every day. What an act of compassion and service.
I came across this video on Vimeo and it’s really well done showing the kitchen at the Golden Temple in Amritsar and how they go about feeding the masses. I was there last year during Diwali, the Festival of Lights, and it truly was a special experience. It was my second Diwali in Amritsar and this time I had a group with me on one of our spiritual adventures. If you ever make it to India do try and make your way north to Amritsar and if you can, time it with Diwali. You are sure to have an ineffable experience.
To see photos from my previous visits to Amritsar, click on the following links
Diwali at Amritsar in 2010
Diwali at Amritsar in 2011
freedom of food and the golden temple from the source project on Vimeo.
Video Description From a culture of sharing we have become a culture driven by possession and profit. The century of self. This short film comes from the kitchens of the golden temple where every day around 100,000 people, regardless of colour, caste or religion, donate, prepare, consume and clean for nothing more than compassion. Are we really moving in the right direction?
This year the world will produce enough food to feed twice the world’s population, yet every day almost one billion people will sleep hungry.
music by DJ Shadow . Organ Donor . www.djshadow.com
Produced by Chintan Gohil www.chintangohil.com
Today’s question on meditation comes in from Louise from the Philippines who asks “How do I concentrate better – I manage a good quality 5 mins at most with minor drifting but then my mind wonders massively after this…?”
The best way to learn how to concentrate better is to practice it more. We become good at what we practice. Know that the mind has no ability to discriminate between what practice is good for you and what is not good for you. If it did we’d all be excellent at concentration. The mind becomes good at whatever we practice. If we practice being distracted 10 hours a day then we become good at that. The same way, if a dancer wants to be part of the best ballet company then she would have to practice many hours a day.
So, to be good at concentration you need to practice it more each day. In my workshops and spiritual adventures I share specific concentration exercises that can be integrated into your every day life to help you be better at concentration.
If you have questions on meditation please feel free to reach out to me. You can do so by sending your questions to me on email at info(at)vedicodyssey.com.
As we get ready for our two upcoming spiritual adventures at the end of January and February to India we share with you this inspiring video we came across on Vimeo. It’s titled Namaste India from Burning Flag. The description of the video reads “A short montage featuring some of the footage that we shot during Burning Flag Films, Cancer Train project in North West India.”
On the 7th of January I was asked “what are the techniques of meditation” and responded to that on the blog. The natural next question to follow from that was asked…which was “How do you know a meditation technique is good or not?”
It’s hard to know this answer if you are new to meditation. How would you know anyway if you’ve never tried it out long enough. Hopefully this can help shed some light on the topic.
Whatever meditation technique you choose should make sense to you. You should understand it thoroughly. A clear intellectual understanding is essential to make progress. How can you practice something well if you don’t understand it, right?
So make sure the technique you choose makes sense to you. It’s clear, practical and systematic. Its practicality allows you to develop your meditation skills slowly in your consistent practice of it.
If you don’t understand something about the meditation technique then ask questions about it. Understanding is essential. And whoever is teaching you this should be able to answer your questions logically and if they can’t then they should be able to direct you to a resource that can.
Hope this helps.
If you have questions on meditation please feel free to reach out to me. You can do so by sending your questions to me on email at info(at)vedicodyssey.com.
