Hampi, India

Hello all :) very big merry xmas

After an emotional wk of saying goodbyes to my mysore family after a month of mysore fun - i set off for my first solo adventure in India (i know i know - ive been here for nearly 2 months and i haven't done the solo thing yet -heheh).

Train ride to Hospes
So it was just your usual train ride from Mysore to Bangalore - packed train cart, coffeee cooffeee teeeaaaa teaaaa and trannies (transvestites) clapping their hands and asking for money - this went on a rotation for about 4 hrs then i hit bangalore and it was triple the amount of people instantly - welcome back to the city...after a lot of beggars, cold waiting, and delays we were off on the hampi express - now ive traveled sleeper class in China and thought to myself that hey it should be a little similar - but i was wrong - cockroaches, no blankets and strange smells coming out from mysterious places :P thank god i had my sleeping bag with me - after securing my things i jumped into my sleeping bag and zipped up - clearing my thoughts for the night and just relaxing in the comfort of my cocoon.

I was woken in the middle of the night to two shadows doing stuff to bags - i couldnt make out if they were thiefs or travellers or maybe even those trannies rammageing through peoples shit, after about 10mins of guess who these shadows were i fell back to sleep with the faith that what ever happens will happen.

The next morning i was woken by a strange sound - i looked up and at the end of my bed/chair thing was a man sliding on the floor with a monkey - i was like WTF - but hey this is India and its just the norm here..

After arriving to Hospes and fighting through the hordes of rickshaws that try and tell u the bus stand doesnt exist and that u need to catch a rickshaw to hampi, i managed to be pointed in the direction of the bus stand - walking down through hospes was surreal - slums, rubbish, people bathing in the river, babies out on the street by themselves, children paying with sticks and what ever they could find as toys, wow toto we aint in Candace anymore. After walking for about 15mins a rickshaw man pulled over and said hey i'll take u to hampi for 50rps, so i jumped in coz i knew that normally it would be about 80rps. After the initial dang did i do the right thing - i relaxed and started to enjoy the countryside as it passed me - amazing change as we entered Hampi - it was like god had a handful of boulders and scattered them throughout the countryside, there were old indian empire ruins all around - feelings of Greece and Italy came flooding back as we crused the countryside - and as we entered the town a great feeling that i was in the right place at the right time came about.

Guest house surrealness
After catching the little boat across the river i walked into the guest house expect there would be a room waiting for me, but i was wrong there is no such thing as reservation book its all done by memory, after about 20mins of explaining that i was anthony's friend who's friend anna stays here and that she booked a room for me then he called to confirm blah blah blah I was approached by a man in an orange robe who automatically locked onto my energy - he said follow me to this hut, so i did wearily follow keeping my guard up and totally ready to kick him in the head if he pulled anything, he invited me to sit down and relax - he looked at me for 5 mins and said ok you can stay with me for 2 nights in this hut on my bed - i was like right, yeah umm thanks for your kindness my friend but i will find something else. As i walked out of his hut i looked to my left and saw a foreign guy peeing - ah you know just your usual thing here people peeing in nature - it wasnt until i saw the dude reach down to take a handful of pee to slurp it that i was like WTF!! Ive heard of urine-therapy but never saw it so up close and person.....

After breakfast and an intense conversation about the world i finally got the HUT - the Hut looks like something out of an African safari - mud hut with straw roof, bed, and tiny window, but for 100 rps i cant complain - it was comfortable apart from the monkeys jumping on my roof at 7am :P

Hampi boulder fields
After 2hrs of chilling on the hammock reading i was blessed with a surprise visit from one of my mysore roomies who just happened to be in Hampi - great surprise to see Marty again and in true Marty nature he took me on a world wind tour of the boulders - 3 hrs of climbing through the mountains of boulders - so amazing, there were so many rock climbers getting their grove on climbing through the boulders and here we were in Flip flops doin it backpacker style.

Must be off the internet is a killer here - till next time - shanti shanti!!

Fist month in India oh my!

Sori for the delay in blogs, its been quite a ride - India the land of mystery, spirituality, and an infusion of new competing with old, with a hole lot of confusion in between.

Lets rewind to the first stop - Sivananda Ashram, Trivandrum
Ashram life was not what i expected, but still very enjoyable, especially the food - we had a very ridged schedule waking up at the crack of dawn for satsang (meditation and chanting), yoga, breakfast - Kerela Ayurveda vego style (yum yum), one hour of free time, yoga coaching, yoga lecture, yoga, dinner, karma yoga in the health hut (one of the biggest highlights - great friends made amongst the madness to feed starving yogis - all yogi principles fly out of the window when people are hungry), followed by satsang (yup yup more chanting - the chants were so ingrained in our minds you would hear people singing them all day long).

There was barely any time to really stop and absorb what was goin on - still trying to work out if that's good or bad. After the one wk itch a lot of the troopers were getting itchy feet and headed off, some of us stayed the full two wks - i stayed 13days :) and learned a lot about yoga which you would never get from doing yoga at a studio back home.

The Ashram stay was a nice introduction to India - but as the story goes the traveler needs to travel - so made tracks with a quick stop off to the backwaters and Varkela beach - this was quite an experience seeing the segregation between locals and foreigners - one side of the beach consisted of local families enjoying family day out, clothed head to toe, while the other side consisted of foreigners in Bikinis - the only thing that separated them was a police man with a stick and a whistle - the local men would loiter around - basically it was like a live porn show for them - the police man would blow his whistle and shooo them away, after 5 mins they would return and the scenario would restart.

Bus ride to Bangalore
I managed to meet two lovely UK men who escorted this lone female traveler on the 24 hour long bus trip from trivandrum to Bangalore - we headed off from the Ashram at the reasonable hour of 10am - 2 hrs bus ride into town - 1hr of searching for this bus company (i will never understand buses in India - if it is not government owned buses will leave from random places around the city not from the Bus terminal - so we spent 1 hr getting sent here and there - after the first 20mins we agreed that perhaps its best not to ask random people off the street for directions as there was something amusing about watching 3 backpackers wondering the streets lost and confused, finally a shop keeper who happened to work for the competing bus company gave us directions to a not so obvious place and we found the bus with 10mins to spare.

The bus trip was amazing - cruzing through the kerela country side, amazing sites, hills that rolled on for miles, and an abundance of wind-powered electric generators (yay sustainability) - it wasn't until we drifted off to sleep to awakened by a god awful smell coming from outside the bus - toto we're not in Candis anymore - we arrived in Karnataka - Kerela in comparison was so green, fresh and clean, people had described this state as being the exception in India - perhaps something to do with the state government being communist?? or perhaps the fact that the state has the highest % of educated people, an even split between religions, more women than men - what ever the reason Kerela was a slice of cake for what awaited us - we reached Bangalore a the bright and early hour of 5am - loud, noisy, polluted, and cows cows cows - i thought people were joking when they said there were cows in the city streets - it still amazes me to this day a month later. The boys so kindly chaperoned me to the bus stand and i was off on my way to Mysore for the next leg of my journey.

The last few wks have been spent in Mysore - with a house of fantastic people - who have turned into my family in such a short time. Mysore is the Ashtanga capital of the world - so there are a lot of ashtangis walking around and then there are the few of us who study with Bharat Shetty at Yoga India. From day one in Mysore i hit the ground running, taking to the city like a fish to water - yoga, friends, food, adventures, and more.

Over the last few wks i have learned a lot about India which keeps me captivated and intrigued:
Culture of right hand eating - dont dig your left hand in or else you will get strange looks.

The children - "hello miss" "pen miss" one rupee miss"

Being referred to as madam - fill like a middle aged lady.

Cultural things like:

Transvestite culture - where men dressed up as women and who have had there hhhmmmhhh cut off, extort money from businesses and families in return they bless the money givers.

Or

Why soil from sex workers’ doorstep is necessary for making Durga idols:

• To make otherwise ostracised members of society feel included
• Clients visiting ‘houses of vice’ leave their virtues outside the door, making the soil here virtuous
• To purge prostitutes of their “sins”
• As a fertility ritual
• To honour ‘courtesans’, traditionally famed for their proficiency in the arts

Or the state of religious affairs - as my friend refers to it as having a light coating schizophrenia - as there is such strong belief system yet people are doing the complete opposite when they step out on the street. The rickshaw driver who prays to the gods and then turns around and rips off his fellow follower - or the neighbor who one day clicks and kills his neighbor because of religious difference.

So much to say so little time to sit here and write it all...

I must push off now till next time...

India - so many sounds, colours, sights, and smells

I had the initial WTHelllll am i doing feeling as i stepped on to the plane, then was over came with a sense of this is how its meant to be. As i handed the boarding pass over to the flight attendant i looked around there were so many packages - pampers, Flat screen TVs, a man with a bag of cardboard boxes, I wondered to myself exactly where am i goin?

The flight from Singapore was bearable - but the wait for luggage at Chennai airport was ridiculously long, welcome to India!! As soon as I found my luggage a man approached me - mame i take u. HMMMM, ok wot can happen right he is wearing the airline T-shirt - it must be apart of the service. As soon as i stepped out of the international terminal to walk over to domestic - it was like a rush of india - people, smells, people, rustic colours mixed in with vibrant exotic colours. WOW i was in India...

After a long wait i was off to Trivandrum. I met a lovely Indian lady on the plane and we spoke the whole way about life and spirituality - a preview of things to come through me trip me thinks. At the airport i pre-paid a taxi and was off - the ashram a mere 35km from the airport took 1hr through tiny streets - cows, goats, buses, trucks, bikes, motocycles, you name it - it was on the road...amazing sights - the colours the sounds, it was everything and more......

Must make this a short one, till next time....OM SHANTI!

New Adventure begins.

Time for a new adventure...where the road will lead me only time will tell?!?!

First stop: Thiruvananthapuram - Kerela India

Sivananda Dhanwanthari Ashram