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...