Blog

We are currently on the first of our three flights as we make the journey from San Francisco to New Delhi via Washington D.C. and Zurich. We will be spending the next three and a half weeks traveling India, interviewing people for the projects first trip to South Asia. This trip will be intense because we're traveling a great deal in a short time in order to capture a diverse Indian perspective on oneness.

We touch down in Delhi Saturday night and will meet up with a photographer friend of mine named Diane Barker who will be traveling with us and taking pictures. Diane is not only a great photographer but she also runs a wonderful project called Heart of Asia that works in northern India and Tibet. Our first interview is on Sunday afternoon with member of parliament Dr. Nirmala Deshpande at the Gandhi Ashram where she lives and works. The remainder of our four day stay in Delhi will be packed as we meet with and interview prominent Gandhian and water rights activist Anupam Mishra, social activist Medha Patkar, film maker and artist Muzaffar Ali and Anshu Gupta the founder and director of Goonj, an organization that distributes recycled clothing to those in need throughout rural India.

Thursday we leave Delhi and make an over ten hour journey to Dharamsala where we will be spending five days interviewing several Rinpoches and nuns including Ani Tenzin Palmo, Tenzin Lhadron, Ven. Choegyal Rinpoche, Ven. Khamtrul Rinpoche and Geshe Kalsang Damdul la to get a Tibetan Buddhist perspective on oneness. After the return trip to Delhi we fly south to Chennai and on to Auroville and Pondicherry. We will spend several days talking with 'Aurovillians' and see a city that was created as a place to live the principles of oneness and unity. I am curious to see what life is like there, and how the these principles are incorporated into a city structure.

From Auroville we take the coast road down to Chennai where we will be meeting with Tsumani survivors and filming a street play about about how people worked together to help those in need in the aftermath of the disaster. We also have plans to meet with some Hindu leaders and community based NGOs. Next we head to Mysore, where we will be meeting Emmanuel Sumitran, the project manager for a small NGO called the Niligris-Wynaad Tribal Welfare Society. We will spend several days traveling with Emmanuel through rural villages, interviewing local tribal people to document the work of the welfare society.

Another day long drive will lead us to Bangalore, the new tech capital of India, where we will catch a plane to Ahmedabad where we will be spending the last four days of our trip. Here will be staying at Gandhi's ashram as the guests of Jayesh Patel and Manav Sadhna whose work is inspired by the Gandhian principles of truth, non-violence and working for the rights of the poor. Manav Sadhna has begun a movement to adapt these ideals to the current and complex issues facing not only India, but the world.

We will be blogging daily as well as posting photos and videos with clips with the places we go and people we will be interviewing so be sure to subscribe to the blog here and travel along with us.