Trust Pravin to give you some interesting assignments. So here I am on a Tuesday morning, with an interesting young couple who will be cycling down to Vetale with me. My Trek was giving some gear trouble, so I had to take my electric cycle. On the phone I checked with Aire if he was using an electric cycle. Mamma mia, he felt supremely insulted!
Aire and Lili were staying near the Empress Garden – and we caught up at Dapodi around 0815 hrs. I suggested that we use the non highway route to avoid the Chakan traffic jam. We did get caught in a small jam near Talawade – but from then on traffic was light. We stopped for a chai at the Talegaon Chakan road. Then continued to another small MIDC area and then went down a small ghat to get to rural Pune. Came across some dumper traffic there – as there are a couple of stone crushers in the area. We reached Kadoos and joined the Rajgurunagar Vetale road over there. We reached Vetale at 1245 hrs.
Aire grew up in a small valley in North Italy. Did a plumbing technician course after high school, where he specialised in hot water piping. Did his first few internships with small firms located near his town, before moving on to Turin. Moving from a town of population 25,000 to a city with a population that was 100 times larger was difficult for him. A few years into his job, he decided it was time to change professions. On a lark, he decided that he wanted to build tree houses. He decided to apprentice with folks who were tree house makers. A google search led him to the small Indian community of Auroville. He got himself a volunteer visa in 2022 and landed up at Auroville.
Lili grew up in Auroville. Her mother is an architect who landed up at Auroville 30 years ago. There are special visas for foreign nationals who want to stay at Auroville. The visa allows you to stay at Auroville and work – the condition being that you can only work inside Auroville. The silver lining is that you can travel all over India. The visa condition means that most residents will travel back to their home countries to generate the funds required for the Auroville stay. Her mom did that too. Being a single parent to two daughters, she did not have too many choices. She also used her savings for making the family a lovely house in Auroville. A few years ago, Lili also built her own house – close to her mom’s house. The interesting part of Auroville is that you are only a custodian of your house – the ownership is with the community. After an Auroville resident leaves, the community takes a decision about who the owners of the new house should be.
Lili did her schooling at Auroville till the age of 14. She has a German passport but her mom decided to send her to the UK for her education. Lili studied at the University of Birmingham and graduated in art and theatre. She also volunteered with a center which looked after horses which had behaviour problems. A lot of children would visit the center – most kids coming from troubled families – with a history of violence and abuse. Lili went on to do her post graduation in theatre and philosophy. In 2020, she shifted back to Auroville. She started working with the youth center there – and also became a tree house builder. At Auroville, sustainable mobility is considered very important. Most folks over there cycle around. Quite a few travel back home by the land route, to reduce plane travel with its tons of CO2 emission. Aire was returning back to Italy – and Lili decided to join him. The plan was to cycle back.
But Lili was already committed to another relationship – with another Indian German – her dog Schnuck. No problem, a trailer was arranged for Schnuck – and starting Jan 24, the three of them set out from Auroville. The first part of the plan was simple – cycle across India and meet with sustainable communities in the country. They crossed over to Karnataka and headed to the West coast. Avoiding national highways, they took coastal roads and reached Mumbai after taking a nice break in Goa. From Mumbai they reached Pune and spent a week here. And that is how they came across 14 Trees.
Aire with Fraulein Schnuck
A typical cycling day starts at 0700 hrs. I realised that repacking the tent, feeding Schnuck and getting yourself ready does take time. The trailer gets attached alternately to Aire and Lili’s bikes. The exchange happens once or twice a day. Each of the German touring bikes has about 20 kg of luggage loaded into panniers. The trailer weighs in at around 15 kg – and Schnuck weighs another 15 kg herself. Pulling up a bike with 50 kg payload is a challenge – especially so on climbs. One trick to reduce some of the energy outlay is to get Schnuck to jog along on uphills. That way she gets her exercise – and the cyclist has that much less work to do against gravity. The typical daily run is around 60 to 70 km.
Cycle Coolie
In my own cycle yatras, I always stay in hotels. We usually start at sunrise and the target is to reach the destination, usually 100 km down the road, by lunch time, so that we can have lunch and siesta in the hotel for which we have already made a reservation in advance. I was curious about the need to carry a tent. One of the primary reasons is budgets. When you embark on a year-long journey, even the 10 Euros a day budget for basic hotels can add up. More so, when you enter Europe. In the two months of Indian travel, they have only stayed two days in a hotel. The tent sites are usually chosen to be neither too close to civilisation, nor too far away. Am reminded of the giraffes that migrate from a wildlife reserve every night to spend time near a village. The probability of a lion attack is much lower when you are closer to the more ferocious beasts. I have spent the afternoons at a temple, Aire tried that too. But too much curiosity by the locals dissuaded him from further experiments. The lack of melanin can cause a lot of problems, leave aside UV damage.
Lili is even carrying basic pots and pans for their cooking experiments in Europe. Food in India is relatively cheap, so the pots and pans remain unused in the Indian segment of the journey. Lunch at 14 Trees was excellent as usual. We washed our own plates – a practice that I think should become standard for all 14 T visitors. Was still quite hot, so the decision was made to have a short siesta. Around 1530 hrs we started on the trek. Took a new route this time – climbing directly to the hill behind the core campus and moving towards Thakarvasti. Spent some time at the cattle shed – and then moved on to the fruit tree area, where we could munch on a few guavas. Walked back via IIT faculty grove and Anant joined us for a much appreciated chai. Ended the tour with a visit to the nursery.
We discussed the planned route: Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and then two possible routes in Europe. One which takes them through Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and then Italy. The other which takes a longer, more northern route of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Germany, France and then Italy. The immediate problem was the Pakistan and Iran visa. The terms of the Pakistan visa are quite interesting. There is a police team that will escort you all the way. Aire and Lili plan to take the train from Lahore to the Iran border – so that they can spend as little time with the police.
Thankfully, they will not need to pay for the police escort. They can save more money if they stay the night at police stations, but that permission is rarely given. Interesting titbit: if Europeans travel in Tibet, then the Chinese government also forces a police escort on you – but a paid one. In Iran, head scarves are compulsory for female cyclists. I am sure they can’t be cycling in shorts too. The thumb rule is to not take panga with any of the police or paramilitary folks in Iran. Turkey does not represent too many problems – they have a visa on arrival for EU residents.
As we caught up on the after dinner chat, we discussed how the Auroville model can serve 14T. We will need to evolve how our forests would be maintained after the initial 10 years Stewardship of the forest is an interesting concept. What you need is to build housing – and ensure that there is some source of livelihood. We need to de-link stewardship from ownership – which means that once a family moves away from the forest, they have no rights over whatever they have helped build and maintain. Who would be the right kind of stewards? The best seem to be the local folks whose aspirations would be relatively easy to meet. But, one can also consider a floating population of families who are new empty nesters and who are keen to experience a closeness to nature – and some social work along with it. What I like is an Auroville model where there can be a population density of about one family per 5 acres. And a total community of 300. 300 is a number that is large enough to sustain shared facilities – but small enough so that everyone knows each other. Assuming an average family size of 3, we are looking at a hundred families on a 500 acre site. Another benefit of this size is that the community will be too small to attract government attention.
Administering the community will require some deep thought. Auroville has always been chaotic in how it administers itself. And in a way that is good. As part of the Auroville act, all major decisions are taken by the governing board which has 7 members of the Auroville community and two representatives of the central government. The government representatives are bureaucrats who don’t necessarily stay at Auroville. The secretary of the board has to issue recommendation letters to the non Indian community members to enable them to receive the special visa for extended stay at Auroville.
Off late, the central government has taken it on itself to develop Auroville as a spiritual tourism hub. The government, with its trademarked infrastructure mindset, is now talking of building a ring road at Auroville – and cutting down a few thousand trees in the process. The ring road is part of the long term plan – but at a time when population grows to 30,000. The current population is one tenth of that. The secretary of the board till now has been more of a titular position, with most decisions taken by the residents themselves. But off late, nudged by the central government, the secretary has taken on a more executive function. Residents who criticise the board’s plans are simply not given recommendation letters. Indian passport holding residents are got into line by getting the administration to register FIRs to harass them into submission. Having spent a week at Auroville in 2017, I do hope that the Auroville residents end up winning this battle. After all, every forest needs a guiding spirit!
