„I’m cleaning the sand“ said Ann while she was putting bigger pieces into a frisbee. The pace was clearly what I needed after weeks of indian hectic and being the center of attention.
Five beaches stretch south of a town and the further you walk, the emptier it gets until the last one where the few huts and a restaurant that used to be here have been taken down. Instead, some handful of western travelers lived in self built, basic shelters for some weeks and up to half a year. I was hooked by the dream, got myself a hammock and put it into a tree where I lived with five to ten others.
Without electricity, the sun tuned everybody in on a life closer to nature with water from the well and only the sound of insects and waves. Everything slows down and the thought of time as a number that indicates how long since or until, fades away. I began to watch all the little beings around me and started to feel as one little part of everything, rather than being a superior part of nature that is served by the rest of it.
Coming to Paradise was my first experience of living close with others, sharing a space and things. A tryout in an unreal place that left me with an idealistic vision based on a Utopia that only western people can live part time in a third world country. And even though the dream had to dissolve as a whole over the coming years, it was beautiful and important to visit Utopia. I believe that only if we dream of something that might be too big, we will get somewhere further away from where we are now.
2014 in India