Simplicity.

The man standing by the truck is wearing all white – pants and a long tunic. He is slender and soft-spoken at first. We introduce ourselves and our bags are packed into the rear of the truck as we join a young man in the back seat. As the truck is steered assertively along a bouncy country road, we begin to know the driver and head of the ashram to which we are headed, Ramchandra.

The grass is blanketed with children as we pull into the yard. The headlights of the truck pierce the thick darkness of power-less, tropical night and cause the children to pick up their plates and scatter. We have just driven through their outdoor dining room and I feel a little anxiety in leaving the security of our vehicle. Though I’m sure they knew we were coming, I’m not sure what they’ll think about us being here.

We are shown to our room and told to come down for dinner as soon as we want. It’s a large room with windows on two sides, two short single beds with mosquito nets, a table, and simple wardrobe. There is an attached bathroom with Western toilet and shower – though it smells as if the toilet has never been flushed. There are toothbrushes and soap and long black hair in the drain – stoic images of elderly relatives line the wall above the table. We wonder whose beds we’ll be sleeping in.

Ramchandra’s mother is one of the first women we meet – and though she doesn’t speak much English, she tries to communicate with a huge, warm smile on her face. We are handed stainless steel plates and stand in queue for rice, dhal, potatoes, and chapatti. Ramchandra’s diet requires more simply prepared food and as guests, we are offered some of his steamed greens, as well. The food is deliciously straightforward and we will eat it twice a day for the duration of our stay.

We learn there are about fifteen adults and thirty-five children that live at this ashram. Ramchandra ran away to India and lived an extremely difficult street life as a child. He eventually educated himself and began studying the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, a teacher who believes strongly in the discipline of hard and selfless work. Ramchandra began an ashram just outside of Kathmandu about 17 years ago that is now producing its own goods to sell and purchase the materials it needs to operate a meditation/yoga centre, school, and guest house. This land on the Terai plain in southern Nepal was purchased a few years ago and he has envisioned building a self-sustaining community here, as well.

The people that live and work here do so free of charge – and everyone contributes. The land is farmed, animals tended, and meals cooked in seemingly perfect harmony. The children have all come from difficult circumstances – some with their mothers/families. For many, this is the first time they’ve had consistent nourishment and any sort of formal education in their lives.

The main building is less than two years old – and money ran out before the third floor could be finished. The first floor is communal – with space for cooking and serving, food storage, and dining in the rainy season. The second floor is lined with rooms for the children and ‘suites’ for the adults – including hallway bathrooms for the children to use at night, but which are locked during the day so that they have to use the composting toilets outside. The third floor is half completed – it lacks windows, doors, furnishings – and this is where the children attend school. A chalkboard leans in the corner of a large room with thin carpet fragments covering the cement floor; notebooks are piled in the corner next to the chalkboard. There are no other books, pencils, or papers of any kind – no chairs or desks – no glass to keep the weather out.

Everyone is up by five o’clock in the morning. Breakfast is prepared (the same rice, dhal, chapatti combination as dinner with slight vegetable variation) and ‘chores’ are completed. By the time we make it downstairs, the children have eaten and begun working. A young French man has been living here for a few months and he is helping to physically build Ramchandra’s vision, also studying the natural environment and its medicinal properties. While looking through the jungle a couple days ago, he discovered the seed pod of a certain tree that contains a really sticky, clear substance. Everyone thinks they might be able to use this substance as a form of glue – so today they are harvesting it. These particular trees on their property have been climbed by some of the older (eleven year old) boys wielding sickles and they are hacking off the branches while younger children drag and carry the fallen ones across the fields to the barn. A large pile is forming and being sorted through by the older girls and adults – the pods being pulled and thrown into buckets – the branches being broken down to compost. The children think it’s funny when Dan and I try to help and I sense uneasiness from the adults. We want to help - they want us to feel honored as guests.

Ramchandra takes us for a walk and shows us the property, sharing his ideas for development. A meditation center was the first thing completed – indicating the central strength and importance of faith. It is a circular building surrounded by gardens of trees and flowers and grass. Tonight, we will practice meditation with them – hear readings from Sri Aurobindo’s writings and songs/chants created by fifty harmonious voices. He will lead tonight’s practice in English, Nepali, and French so that everyone has the opportunity to hear the passage’s message. We will sit quietly in the darkness of nightfall with incense wafting through the open air and understand a little bit of these people’s lives.

The property is primarily farmland – rotating between corn, rice, and wheat – also gardens of other vegetables and trees of mango, banana, plum and lychee. (If you have never eaten a ripe, juicy lychee directly off the tree and warm from the afternoon sun – I highly recommend it!) There are about ten cows and a bull or two – the milk and curd we eat couldn’t be fresher. Their dung is collected and processed into compost with human waste and other natural materials. Ramchandra has purchased a couple pieces of machinery to help with the farming and harvest – so a garage is being constructed to shelter them from the upcoming rain. There is a building across the yard from the main house that accommodates the wood fire kitchen – and I will enjoy watching the production of tonight’s chapatti there later this afternoon.
There is no other word to describe this place than ‘organic’. Life here is about as basic as it gets – no phone, intermittent electricity, simple furnishing and methods of preparing the food that was produced on this land and by the hands of the people who are consuming it. The process of living is repeated in cycles that coincide very naturally with the cycles of days and seasons in the year. The quiet, simple serenity is refreshing for our battered psyches.

We decide to stay only two nights. We don’t feel like now is the time for us to be here – though we will consider spending more time here in the future. There is a lot of work to be done and the more people to contribute, the better. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to visit this place and will take many elements of this existence with me – the reality of people living harmoniously with each other and with nature. It’s interesting to think that we are in one of the ‘underdeveloped’ countries of the world – learning and witnessing a far greater understanding of meaningful life than we find in ‘developed’ places.

A raucous bus rolls through the early morning and jolts us back into the reality of this traveling life. We have many days to live through on the road to ‘recovering’ from India – and this might have been a swing too far in the other direction for us at the moment. Dan is anxious about his camera and we're so close to the Himalaya we can feel their presence looming in the distance. We will ride into the Kathmandu valley feeling much better about life and our place in it, ready to do some laundry, and eager to get into the colossal mountains that surround us.

** For more information about this ashram and Ramchandra’s work, go to www.auronepal.net – and if you’re traveling through Nepal or looking for a place to spend some time restoring balance in your life or contributing directly to something meaningful, feel free to contact him by email – they’d be happy to have you! **

Oh - and it's right next to a national park and sometimes they have wild rhinos run through the property!