My visit to Pondichery

I will say, this place is excellent. Everytime I go here I get refreshed visiting the Mother's ashram, Manakula Vinayagar Temple and the book shops and tourist sites here. You can find a cheaper place than Pondy to get a relaxation.
Its still the place for many French speaking people and they are much much respected.


I spent 2 hours in Mahabalipuram, aka Mamallapuram which on the way to Pondy from Chennai .. a lovely place, better to visit this in the evenings. This fort in Mahabalipuram is the epitome. Any movie or album saying Mamallapuram will have this fort. The colours came out beautiful.


The roads in pondy are damn good that you can never ever compare to Bangalore or any other metros. The beauty is you dont need to struggle in Pondy as in other places. For instance, keep moving towards East and you will end up in Beach, no one ways, deadends. Most of the roads are straight and beautiful. Especially the area around Aurobindo Ashram is much cleaner that you will find easy to walk bare foot.

Students doing Palming exercise inside the School for Perfect Eyesight

The famous "School for perfect Eyesight is a part of Auribindo ashram. Personally too my Eyesight has comedown from 1.5 to .5 and has become stable over the years I had been practising eye exercises which i learned from here back 6 years. Frankly i no more exercise consitently, but the sight has become constant. I have captured the excerpts from the "Better eyesight without glasses" - Dr.Bates Method which is posted in the Aurobindo Eye School. Please give a read, itwvery helpful and do pass it on to others. You have to take the free progam in this Eye School at least for a week continuously. Many people dont have time to really visit and take eye exercises.
Am giving a very abstract picture of Eye Exercies. Please REMEMBER the exercises can vary according to one's eye problem. Am just giving the exercise which i followed. (I could read books without problem, but had problem otherwise)
1. Sun Treatment
2. Eye Wash
3. Palming
4. Fine Print
5. Game of Ball vertical
6. Game of Ball Horizontal
7. Bar Swinging
8. Snell's Chart
9. Vapour
10. Cold Pack
Probably when I get some time off from work i would give detailed explanations on each and, or link to external sites.

Below are some excerpts from R.S.Agarwal's eye sight book and Dr.Bates Method.









There is a spritual book shop in the adjacent street to Ashram, VAK. An excellent bookshop where you can find all kinds of Spiritual, Mind, Body books. There are a range of Yoga books to select from. If you are to Pondy do make a visit to this bookshop. You can find Adyar Ananda Bavan Restaurant (good quality as of today!)opposite to VAK.



Auroville: Its a beautiful place to visit and is a part of Ashram. You can take a shuttle paying Rs.60/- per head for sightseeing Auroville and MahaPrathyangaradevi temple.





MahaPrathyangaradevi

A beautiful, massively tall idol, which symbolises power and strength.


Manakulavinayagar Temple is an ancient and powerful Ganesha Temple. A must see for toursits. During New Year people come from various states to worship here and take a Ganesha pictured Daily Calendar.

And some tips to visit Pondy in less time. Its a nice place to shop and there are plenty of places in and around Pondy and there are Crocodile Park, Boating Spot and much more on the way to Chennai, the scenic ECR toll road.

1. Keep luggages light weight and as simple as possible. If possible one bag. (read my previous blog entry which features Travelling Light Weight - http://7times7.blogspot.com/2007/01/art-of-traveling-lightweight.html)
2. You can rent a bike, or cycle or car. There are lot of shops on Mission Street near Ashram which rent Bikes for cheap. (Bikes from Rs.100 to Rs.200 per day and Cycles for Rs.15). Night roaming in Pondy is fun fun fun, then hire a cycle :-)
>Krishna Two Wheeler Rent
106, Mission Stret, Pondy-1 cell: 94437 68740
> Gopi Two Wheeler Rent (Propreiter:Gopi.B)
Sri Manonmani Amman Cycle Store.
106, Mission Stret, Pondy-1 cell: 98941 72244

Real place of meditation

TOILET !!!

Speed Reading

As suggested by many people, speed reading along with good comprehension and vocabulary skills is sure to distinguish from the excellent readers from the mediocre.
I know many who complete reading big volume books in a week or less. Am a poor reader, it takes a month or more to complete a single interesting book. There are many books I buy before I even think if I got (read “make” :-) time to read them.

This site is an excellent resource for Speed Reading. http://pianoer.wordpress.com/2006/02/05/speed-reading-techniques/

I understand that the problem I read slow is mainly due to sub-vocalising. (reading in the mind) and difficulty in comprehension (enough is not enough).

I give the whole article from the site as a mind map.

Social Networking for Books - Shelfari

Not a great idea! Social Networking has been an important ingredient of Web2.0, and everyone is cashing on it. Everyone wants to have a finger on the pie.
Shelfari http://www.shelfari.com from Amazon is a Social Networking Site for Books. One good feature is, you can generate code from Shelfari and copy paste into your blog to display the list of your Books.
I had registered mine, hope to place the code onto my blog as I get time.

Online Diary

Want an online diary - Try http://www.my-diary.org. I registered and posted my first Journal entry yesterday.
There are no big star features, just basics. And the look and feel needs a lot of improvement.

The Art of Traveling Lightweight

I love traveling, (of course, Travel & Living is my favorite Channel). But every time I travel I lug a lot of stuffs into my bag, and finally end up carrying 3 bags. Somehow I feel am lugging only the minimum but never it halted to one bag.
There are a lot of advantages of going up with a single bag.

1. You have the freedom to travel as you wish.
2. If it’s a backpack then both your hands are free, allowing you to do lot of maneuver.
3. Security is much great. You don’t have to toil down not sleeping to keep an eye on all the bags. Just put it below foot or use it as a headrest.

There are many more too.

On my R&D to avoid lugging more baggage, I searched over and found really wonderful sites which are dedicated to travel.

http://travelindependent.info/ is a wonderful site which gives a lot of info like “what to pack http://travelindependent.info/whattopack.htm” , “where to go”, “before you go http://travelindependent.info/b4yougo.htm” and many more tips.

http://www.onebag.com/ speaks on “The Art and Science of Travel light”, is also a wonderful site. The pros of traveling with single bag are manifold as I had said before. A list of things to carry is on this page http://www.onebag.com/list.html. You can download http://www.onebag.com/popups/what2pack.pdf
a pdf file to save it to your PC/MAC/ print out it to check at your convenience.
http://www.onebag.com/popups/what2pack.pdf

Want to know on budget travel
http://www.fabuloustravel.com/tips/tips.html
http://www.fabuloustravel.com/tips/cheapeats.html
http://www.fabuloustravel.com/tips/frugalsiteseeing.html