Expedition aims

What will we actually do? We're targeting 3 different areas: large city of Chennai (former Madras), rural areas between Thanjavur and Madurai and finally, the great pilgrimage site of Rameswaran - during Krishna Janmastami, one of the biggest holiday in hinduism!

(Krishna Janmastami: the birthday of Krishna)

What are we going to do there? We want to discover and bring back a record of the religiosity of Hindu people and find how much it has changed over the last 20 years.

How? We want to interview people in different setting to obtain current data and elicit general approach to religion in XXI century, fast-developing India. We will compare it with historic data from the temples and earlier studies to get a benchmark values from two decades ago.

And something extra: we will try to find and interview a true Sanyasi, one who would renounce the world and set off for the spiritual journey at the end of his life, to finally achieve enlightment and liberation. Even thinking about the fact that such people still exits is mind boggling for us, Westerners, so used to life abundant in material possessions. How inspiring would it be to actually meet and talk to him or her!

Sanyasi: old photo (from Wikipedia)

Sanyasi: modern example (by calamur)