I write this on my return to England, following an amazingly fantastic, extremely memorable and special two weeks spent at Aranya; it was filled with physical work, fun, laughter and learning experiences, on many levels. I had three main reasons for wanting to go to Aranya as a volunteer. Two of these reasons were what I thought would be personal challenges; to live within a women’s community and to work as part of a team. These, I soon realised, were not to be challenges at all, I felt immediately welcome and it felt easy to fit into the work and day to day life. The challenges were yet to come… My other reason was to experience living completely out in the sticks. I had a small concern about what these women’s idea of remoteness would be; I’ve experienced the ‘travel ads’ claims of places being remote… I was not disappointed, believe me, Aranya is remote!
The nearest town is three quarters of an hour away; to leave the mountains you need a vehicle with four wheel drive. There are no domestic services, I now realise how much I take these things for granted. There is no rubbish collection. The electricity supply is solar powered, someone has to remember to turn the panels towards the sun throughout the day. There is a back up petrol generator for when there hasn’t been enough sun. There are no water mains so they have put in a septic tank and dug their own well for general water, and then drive to the nearest town to collect drinking water. The main heating is from a wood burning stove, for which wood needs to be chopped and dried. The hot water is run off five gas bottles, so you don’t want to be in the shower when the gas runs out and the bottles need changing over! There is no landline and only a tiny area where I could get a signal on my mobile, so phone calls and internet meant a trip to town.
I was living at the community house, which is gorgeous, simple and quaint. I didn’t see the retreat centre for the first couple of days, but I heard some of the stories of winter and the massive challenges they had faced and were due to face, I started to realise the scale of what these women have actually taken on… it’s phenomenal! There’s not only the actual building work but also the language barrier.
I, briefly, questioned their sanity, was it all really worth it? As soon as I visited the ruin that is to become the retreat centre, I knew exactly why they had chosen the place and that all their hard work was definitely worth it. Words cannot explain how incredibly beautiful the setting is, I felt so excited thinking of friends and people I know visiting and experiencing the same wow! High up, looking out across the tops of a range of mountains, seeing the infinite amount of space and sky, massive outcrops of rock; it was breathtakingly stunning! One of the things that really struck me was the silence; it was so quiet, I could hear the silence. It was impossible not to get caught up in nature; I saw so much whilst I was there. I saw spring flowers bursting with new life, fields filled with almond trees in blossom, so graceful and beautiful; I saw wild goats, hares, bats, huge ants and beetles, ticks, stick insects and long lines of prossessing caterpillars; I experienced outstanding sunsets, cloud formations, caves, and came across so many different colours of stones and rock, ranging from browns and greys to oranges and reds, even lilac; it was wonderful! I sat and watched about sixty vultures come together, circling in the sky, so graceful and effortless. I went to their feeding ground, bits of animal carcasses, skulls, rib cages and fluffy white paws lay scattered around, a stirring and thought provoking place. I felt very much in the realm of Padmasambhava and could sense his presence.
As a volunteer, my main job was to assist Bianca with building a huge wooden structure, with concrete footings, which was to become a platform upon which a yurt would be fixed; to provide a solitary retreat facility. 
My initial reaction was… no problem, that can easily be done in a fortnight! I then saw the hill we had to carry every thing up! Not only was it physically tiring carrying chunky wooden planks, about five metres in length, up the hill but, the weather also added complications. The wood needed to be preserved, we laid it all out on supports so that we could paint on the preservative and leave it to dry; we needed to use an electric saw on site so we carried the generator and extension leads up the hill… and then it would start raining! We would then dash up and down the hill restacking the wood and covering it all up again, reeling the extension leads in and covering up the generator. Then, it would stop raining so, we would start it all again, for it then to rain again… a definite practice in there! Another challenge was the fact that the structure was octagonal, this meant that when cutting the wood we were dealing with extremely complicated angles, which was mind boggling and took time to work it all out. Time seems to be very different at Aranya, everything takes so much longer. For example, we ran out of wood treatment which we hadn’t anticipated, so that meant ‘nipping’ to the shop, at least a two hour round trip. Because it’s such a trek, we would find other jobs that could be done on the outing to save time at other times, such as post, collect water, internet and phone calls, food shopping etc, so before I knew it half the day was taken up. We did make good headway though and got a good part of it done in the time that I was there.
I feel very honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to work at Aranya and to have been part of the team. It was great to have witnessed, and been part of, their enthusiasm, passion and commitment to such an amazing vision. I am in awe of these fantastic women and feel incredibly inspired by them. I feel I experienced a true sense of, Women Going Forth! Thanks ‘ladies’!