Kapil Varma, Chinmaya Haridwar Alum
As we landed in Trinidad, we first went to the ashram. Even at the airport, Swamiji was known across the country. When we told the border agents we were going to the ashram, they immediately said, “Oh, you’re going to see Swamiji?” Right away, I could see the impact Chinmaya Mission had made.
Our first day was spent exploring the west side of Trinidad. Despite its relatively small size, the country is quite mountainous, so most people live in this region. The first stop I remember was the Temple in the Sea. Like many places in the Caribbean, Trinidad’s history begins with colonization. After establishing an overseas colony, the British Empire needed labor. To achieve this, they brought both enslaved people from the west coast of Africa and indentured laborers from India.
Indian migrants wanted a place to worship but were denied land on which to construct a temple. To get around this, Siewdass Sadhu essentially became a one-man construction crew, carrying rocks and dirt on his bicycle to a spot offshore until there was eventually enough land to build a temple. This was just one of the temples we visited on the first day, but it was the one that stuck with me the most. It perfectly embodied determination and faith –
if you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen.
During our downtime, we were able to explore Trinidad properly and get a real feel for the culture. It was amazing to see how Indo- and Afro-Caribbean cultures come together through food and music. From doubles (two pieces of flatbread filled with chickpea curry) to aloo pies (fried pastry filled with potato curry), the impact of Indian culture was impossible to miss. While we only visited Hindu temples, I saw places of worship for nearly every faith, including one for Zoroastrianism!
While we did many things each day, the event that made the biggest impact on me was our trip to the meditation retreat. This center was far, to put it mildly. We took a bus for two hours, then sat in the backs of various trucks and vans for another two hours, and then had to walk for another two hours!
The “roads” (if you can call them that) that the trucks drove on weren’t exactly paved either. As someone who had to sit in the back of the truck (I was unfortunately the youngest adult on the trip, so I got put there by default), I felt every bump and turn on the way up. Almost all of Trinidad and Tobago is rainforest, and we happened to be visiting during a rainstorm. I’d never walked through a rain-swollen river at chest depth before this trip, but now I have!
While getting there was an ordeal, the experience and the view more than made up for it. Swami Prakashanandaji led us in preparing traditional Trinidadian food using local ingredients. He even took us on a tour to show us cacao and coffee plants growing naturally in the rainforest and made some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had. Though it was difficult to get there, the shared experience—making traditional Trinidadian food together, spending our nights in sleep sacks spread across the retreat, and simply being disconnected from the outside world—really cemented the trip in my memory.
Though we did many other activities and visited several other places during the camp, I wanted to highlight the experiences that left the deepest impression on me. I was (and still am) a master’s student at the time of the trip. Because of the timing, I had to miss some of the events in order to complete coursework, and looking back, that’s the one thing I’d change.
Trinidad has a way of getting under your skin. Its history, people, and culture are layered in ways that reveal themselves slowly, and the camp gave us the perfect lens through which to experience all of it. A Chinmaya camp, at its core, lets you meet people from across the world and connect with something you didn’t know you were looking for. Whether that’s a renewed sense of purpose, a richer understanding of the world, or simply an example of the indomitable human spirit, I can confidently say that if you attend with an open mind, you won’t regret it.
