It's slowly getting closer to Christmas, which means that accommodation in Auroville is scarce. Every day I'm debating wheter or not I should stay or go to Amma's ashram (The Huggin Saint as she is sometimes called). Both is appeling, and when I meet people every day that talks about her and find a book about her life in the Sharanga library (and read it), I decide to take the hint and go. Kim and Pam are also going to Kerela which is a state in the south west of India. They are booked in for some courses, and I book my stay at the ashram. Kerela is a communist state, and someone wrote that it is one of the few places in the world that it has actually worked. The litteracy rate is almost 100 % here, with the rest of India about half that. Because of all the people wanting to travel this time of year, it is difficult to get a seat on the train. Since we're all going, we have the insane idea to take a taxi there - it's a 12 hour drive if you do it non-stop. Just for fun we call the taxi service, and when the price ends up being not much more than a train ticket each, the decision is easy to make. We're going on a road trip!

We leave in the morning on a Saturday, and drive for a while - just enjoying the scenery and each other's company. We stop for lunch in Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) and decide to check out the view from atop the Rock Fort Temple. It is perched on a mountain and the view is great. To get there we walk through the streets of the town and find ourselves in a market street. So many wonderful things to see and people to be seen by. We climb the many stairs to the top and is rewarded with a vast sky and fresh air. We take our time taking pictures and talking to people and looking at everything, the whole thing ends up taking a lot of time, and when we start driving again the sun is on it's way down. We drive for many hours and only stop for a chai on the way. We're getting closer to the Kerela state border, and the taxi driver needs to pay for a permit. We're in the mountains now, and it is getting colder. In one place the road turns in hairneedle bends several times, and a caravan of cows with big heavy loads on their carts are being screamed at and pulled and pushed up the steep road. There's a que of cars driving slowly behind them, and in the black night the atmosphere is tense. What are they hiding in those big carts and why are they travelling at night? It's really quite exciting.

We need somewhere to stay the night and I fish out my Lonely Planet. The taxi driver suggests a place and before we know it he hands us the phone with the hotel on the other end. We know that most people want to take tourists to their friends and familiy's businesses, and that it sometimes isn't exactly what you're looking for. We give the phone to Pam, she is very good on the phone I've realized, and we tell her to ask if they have hot water. They do. We find it in a little village in the mountains, in Thakkady. When we arrive, after midnight (and have woken everybody up) we want to see the room before we decide, and again we ask if there is hot water. Yes there is. We have a good nights sleep - not long enough though, we're still a bit tired when we get up. After breakfast we climb to the roof, and find the view blocked by mist. It still looks great, and we take some pictures, careful not to get anything in the frame that can give us away - we're pretending we have climbed up a mountain top. We pay and they ask us if the water was hot enough. It was. When we get in the car again we all feel refreshed and happy, and the landscape is so very different from the state of Tamil Nadu where we have been. Here in the mountains we are surrounded by tea plants and the villages are small and further apart. It's stunning. What a treat to be travelling this way. We stop for chai again, and finally get to our destination. We say goodbye to Kim and it is sad to see her go. We wish her a great time in her course and a Merry Christmas.