Our Home
An expanse of 110 acres of hily land bordering the Thally reserve forest, 50 km south of Bangalore along the TN-Karnataka border, provides a serene and inspiring setting for pursuing the aims of the Trust. Thirty-five acres were bought with Trust funds and the remaining by individuals who share the Trust's vision and aims.
Directions & Map
Directions and a map to Navadarshanam may be found on the contact page.
Arrangements for visitors
Up to 30 people can be accommodated in Navadarshanam’s seven eco-friendly homes, each with a different design and ambience. Food, bedding, mosquito nets etc.are provided to visitors. Food is based on our health principles, yet quite tasty. Weather is fairly cool all through the year (somewhat like Bangalore, but a little cooler because of the natural surroundings). Visitors need to bring only their clothing, and a torch.
No, we don’t have internships. Visitors may watch the work going on and help in small ways if they wish to, but it is not practical to involve them in a big way in our ongoing programs.
We don’t have any fixed charges for visitors, but as Navadarshanam does not take any funding from any source, contributions from visitors are a major source of its quest for self-sufficiency. Rather than specify any fixed amount, we leave it to the pocket and inclination of those who stay to contribute as they deem fit. Our costs of hosting a person works out to approximately Rs.300/person/day (inclusive of food and building maintenance). We do not take anything from villagers, students etc., so our hope is that those coming from affluent backgrounds will contribute sufficiently to subsidize the stay of villagers, students etc.
Languages
Even though Navadarshanam falls in Tamilnadu, the region around it is Kannada-Telugu speaking, Hardly anyone with Tamil as mother tongue lives here. Within Navadarshanam itself, all languages are welcome. All the Trustees here know English and Hindi well, and most of the workers have picked up enough Hindi and English to be able to manage with visitors who don’t know the local languages. As we have discovered through experience, the language of love and fellow-feeling transcends all linguistic boundaries.
Advance Notice Regarding Visits
We refer to our guests as ‘a-thithi’, which means those who come without fixing a date. Until recently, we were not connected by phone or email, so hardly anyone gave us prior intimation of their coming. Now, most people do let us know, and that helps us in our planning, especially if it is a group rather than an individual.
Policies for Visitors
No meat, fish, eggs, or alcoholic drinks are allowed within the Navadarshanam campus. No littering of plastics, either. Nobody is allowed to tip any worker individually – all contributions are pooled and distributed among the workers according to an agreed formula. Everyone is enjoined upon to conserve water and electricity, not to pluck any fruit or flower, not to damage the environment in any way. No electrical gadgets other than those for recharging of batteries may be used by visitors.