Community Stay - Solitude Farm

I’m finally getting around to finishing this. I’m back in the good ol’ US of A and had a good Christmas and New Year, but more on the later. 

Krishna, in the front right, who owns the farm, and Khaled in the middle, who lives there permanently

 After we got back from traveling, I did a community stay at Solitude Farm for 10 days. (check out their blog - solitudefarm.blogspot.com)  I was the only one from my group that chose to go there, which was a little hard at first. I stayed in the dormitory with three other women, and the cow below us.

It was also still monsoon season, which meant the fields kept flooding. We tried to do some planting and prepare beds, but mostly our work was useless because it would be ruined as soon as it rained. So we spent a lot of time in the community kitchen reading, making friendship bracelets, sleeping, playing music, and being bored. We also made several trips to the closest cafe for coffee and ice cream, of course.

the capsule I stayed in with 3 other women

Four people from my group were staying and a large forest community called Sadhana Forrest.  Short-term quests stay in large dorms, and they get really muddy in the rainy season. The combination of close living quarters, never getting dry and questionable hygiene led to about half of the 80 people there getting sick. Two of them were from my group, so they decided it was time to leave and ended up coming to Solitude (the other 2 didn’t get sick, but they also left and went to another community).  Halfway through our stay, we got together with the group and made pizza from scratch - dough, sauce, everything. We sand songs and ate and had a good time. Now that we didn’t have to be around each other, we wanted to! 

working in the fields

The rest of my stay at Solitude was fun - swimming in the well, climbing up the windmill, and getting to know some awesome people! Oh, and they’re putting on a music festival January 29th, so if you happen to be in the Auroville area, you should check it out!

swimming in the well our first week during orientation

other people in the well