Voyage to India (part x)

I was going to be all introverted and philosophical today, but too many things have been happening in the last 24 hours, so the deep, wise thoughts are going to have to wait until the next letter.
 
This morning we went on a "silent walk" - getting up at 5:30 AM, walking through the jungle road down to the dam, walking along the canal, by the mud huts with the thatched roofs, and then straight up a mountain to see the sunrise from it's top (well, I didn't really make it all the way to the top, but the sunrise was pretty impressive from several yards down, too). Seeing the mist on the hills below us, slowly rising from the valleys; seeing the banana, coconut and rubber trees slowly coming out of the dark; seeing the clouds so low that they look like extensions of the mountains; and hearing the water rushing from the dam, the lions conversing, the birds (or whatever it is making those hoots) waking up. It just about made up for the total absence of air in my lungs, the sweat in my eyes, the fog on my glasses. Not to mention the philosophical talk I had with a fellow slowpoke, about the transient nature of life...
 
Yesterday I had a luxurious Ayurvedic massage... To start with, they pour some green oil on your head (remember the concerns about my hair turning green from the jungle pond?). Then you lie down on a wide wooden table, and they proceed to pour oil all over the rest of you (did I mention that you have to strip naked for this?) Now, the two masseuses take position, one on each side, and the proceed to give you a total work-over. Head to toe, you get pushed, pulled, rubbed, pressed and oiled (and in perfect balance, because everything is going on simultaneously on both sides) - until you are slipping and sliding all over the table, slippery as a fish that could fit onto any jumbo-sized frying pan. After about an hour of this, they start pouring some special kind of lotion on your forehead - which is supposed to be soothing, but I found it just to be strange...
 
After this, I went on a lion safari with a couple of friends from the ashram (you can see I finally had a really "touristy" day). We got on a rickety old bus that drove into the Lion Safari Park, and straight up to the enclosure where the lions were very sensibly resting in the shade (only humans run around in this sun). A mother and three cubs were separated from two other lionesses - so that the cubs wouldn't get eaten by rival, unfriendly Other Women. At some point, old Mr. Lion himself showed up, and had a conversation with one of the Other Women. So now I know how they make that strange, puffing sound. Evidently, they studied the same breathing exercises that we learned at the ashram, pulling their stomachs in with quick, sharp movements and inhaling on the relax. At this point, I realized that I had, once again, wisely left my camera at the dormitories (no point getting it all hot and exposed to the sun, right?) - so you're just going to have to believe me that I was within spitting distance...
 
After the lion safari, we went into town (Thiruvanandapuram - which, believe it or not - I can pronounce relatively quickly!!), went through the questionably complicated process of sending a parcel by mail (my friend did - I just watched, and believe me - you do need lots of patience) - and then we went shopping for saris. Sounds simple, huh? Only to the uninitiated. We went to the biggest department store in town - three whole stories of cloth - jeans and simple suchlike stuff on the ground floor, regular saris one floor above, and silk saris ("wedding saris") on the top. The salesmen bring out quantities upon quantities of cloth and throw them on the marble table tops, each one more elaborately decorated with gold embroidery than the next. My friend ended up buying 4 of them (did you know that these things can go up to over 15,000 Rupees? Covert one US dollar to about 46 Rupees) - I was quite happy with only one, and the cheapest one I could find at that (only 180 Rupees, just to give you an idea of the diversity)
 
I'm afraid that the daily power failure is going to hit soon, so I'm going to sign off now. More will come later, probably deep, meaningful thoughts (or not...)

Here I Am Again

So yesterday was the "jungle trip". Not really much of a jungle from the animal point of view, but LOTS of jungle from the plants, trees, creepers, vines and generally wet point of view. The only wildlife we really ran into (unless you count the small band of monkeys we saw on the bank of the river on the way home) were a couple of dogs that barked at us as we entered the jungle. Strangely enough, they appeared to belong to the family that lived in the hut, there in the jungle on the banks of the lake. Hard to grasp, seeing a whole family living there, literally in the middle of nowhere. Even funnier to see that they hang their laundry up to dry on a vine, in a jungle so wet that the air sometimes just drips.
 
We climbed off the little boat (that went "chug-chug-chug-chug" - loudly - all the way there and back), and spent the next hour-and-a-half panting up and down hillsides, ducking leaves and branches. The humidity was such that my sweat literally dripped into my eyes, and my glasses actually steamed up to the point that I couldn't see where I was going. Eventually we arrived at a beautiful waterfall, disrobed and jumped in. The more prepared among us had actually brought a swimsuit, but others such as myself, who do not plan more than five minutes into the future, simply took off our shoes & pants, and dived in. At some point, someone told me that the water would turn my hair green (to which I replied that I really didn't care) - but it didn't (sorry, no freak shows yet). We had our meals at the side of the waterfall, off of banana leaves. Would you believe that the ashram is so ecologically minded that we actually brought our own little plastic bucket for inorganic waste? I was so proud...
 
I'm getting used to life here, even beginning to accept the fact that THERE ARE NO HOT-WATER FAUCETS ANYWHERE - we shower in cold water! Interesting how your concept of luxury changes with the conditions - right now I can't think of any greater luxury than a hot shower, which I probably won't be seeing until well into February... Can't think of any more brilliant things to say at the moment, so I'll sign off.

Finally Made It !!

Hi Guys !! Here I am, at the Yoga camp in Southern India. Yes, I finally made it!! The trip here was really a long one, with four different planes, each one running just a little later than the one before, but the really exciting part was the taxi ride from the airport to the yoga camp. Everything you may hear about Indian drivers disregarding every law (including the laws of gravity) is true. You really do need nerves of steel and unbelievably good karma just to survive a ride in the back seat, let alone attempting to drive here (which I wouldn't dream of). Also, I discovered that Scotland isn't the only place where it is customary for men to wear skirts. The guys here have little sheets wrapped around their hips, and that's all they wear. Considering the heat, you can understand them.
 
Other than the hair-raising experience of the taxi, and accepting that things may (or may not) happen several hours behind schedule, I don't know if you can really say that I'm having the "India experience", considering that I've holed up here at the yoga camp, and I have no plans of going anywhere else for the next six weeks or so. Interesting that I feel perfectly at home here from the minute I arrived. We get up (well, some of them do...) at 5:30 AM, do some chanting and meditation, then some yoga, and have breakfast only at 10 AM. I keep thinking of my son Eyal during meal times, because we sit on mats on the floor, eating with our hands off of plates that are also on the floor (a couple of people brought their own spoons from home, but the standard silverware is fingers). Eyal would fit right in. After breakfast, we get little odd jobs to do to help around the ashram (as it's called), at 2 PM we have a lecture, at 4 - more yoga, at 6 another meal (yogic lifestyle only allows for 2 meals per day), and then another lecture or music/dance performance in the evening.
 
The morning yoga sessions are done by the lake, which is actually a water reservoir created by the Neyyar Dam, here at the southern tip of India. Across from the lake is the Lion's Safari Reserve, and yes, those are real lions. At first I thought that those weird sounds were some pump or some other kind of machine behind the trees, but no - that's what a lion's roar sounds like. They like to express themselves most in the early morning and evening, so you can hear them when you're lying in your bed at night. How comforting that there is a lake between us. On the other hand, we will be going for a jungle trip this Tuesday, so we'll be seeing the lions up close and personal then. In general, the climate here is tropical, so all day long we hear all the cheeps and croaks and caws and cries that accompany any TV jungle movie, only we can see the birds that are making the noise - eye to eye. And sometimes we share our food with them, or at least you can tell that they would really appreciate it if we would... That's all I have for now.