Diary of a first time Eco builder Part 1 | The creation of my life’s dream, a totally off-grid self sufficient home - Earthship Karuna

I am so happy to finally be penning down what is for me, the most exciting, great and long lived achievement of my life. Anyone who has known me as a young adult will testify that I would talk about not much else except Earthships. I just couldn’t help myself! I got the bug back in the year 2001 after a lecture by Earthship inventor Michael Reynolds. That was the day that my life changed forever. After listening to Michael talk, I knew that this was my mission. Someday or other, I would build my own fully sustainable off-grid Earthship home. It really felt like an amazing idea, and one that I had no idea how I was going to pull off. I had no building experience, not much money, and no clue even what country I wanted to live in! There were a lot of question marks, but also a lot of passion and determination.

So this is a story of my great challenge, in total a 16 year mission! It is a story of soul searching, patience, passion, determination, and magic. It took me 5 years alone to find my spot, after extensive travelling, and living in several countries. The path took many twists and turns, but I never forgot the dream.

To all of you who also dream of one day taking the great journey of self-building, I hope this story and diary will provide you with a lot of good information, advice and hope. Perhaps I can inspire you to achieve the great accomplishment of becoming self-sufficient and off-grid. This is a diary of the milestones and details that I came across on this journey, and also a very humorous look at some of the unique challenges that I came across whilst trying to achieve something very challenging in an even more challenging location. All this and more you will discover as you read my story.

I will post at least once a week, and will have quite a few pictures of the build itself so you can see how I did it. There will be many parts to this, and so I hope you keep reading and discover the trials and tribulations of an inexperienced self-builder, a very ambitious design, and all done on the side of a mountain in the South of India with no road access, no power lines, and no skilled labour. The fact I managed to pull this off at all is a miracle. There was so much magic and divine timing on this project that I know I was supported by the great cosmic brotherhood in ways that even I will never fully know!

So that is my very simple and short introduction.

Please stay with me, and next time we will start this journey, meeting Mr Michael Reynolds for the first time! I was not looking for this, I was quite busy learning to make websites and make money. But then one day, totally out of the blue, my phone rang and an old friend randomly suggested I should go and see this lecture in Brighton UK. I had no idea what he was talking about, but for some reason I went! That is one of the crazy things about life, the smallest thing can take us on great detours!

Whilst you wait here is a great movie from the Valhalla Movement on Earthships