Pit Stop, New York City

Note to readers: I haven't slept in 40-something hours and I'm in a bit of shock due to all the cleaness and calmness that reigns in this outpost of western culture. So this post has the potential of being fairly incoherent. In fact, I can probably gurantee it.

So yeah, I'm back in the US, new york city to be precise. Everything went very smoothly, well in fact. No flights were cancelled, nothing was delayed and even though my 14-hour flight was just about packed full, the person next to me didn't show so I had a tad bit more room than normal.

Things seem very calm here. That could be the jet lag numbing my senses, but things here seem so orderly, restrained and... well... kinda tame (dare I say "boring?") It probably doesn't help that today is a very grey and rainy day - which I actually like and think is very pretty - but there seems to be absolutely no color here. I won't go into it now though, I need to get some rest before the next leg of my journey west.

Looking at a globe I have found that I'm going to CA in the wrong way. It would actually have been more direct to go eeeeeast across Asia and the Pacific. Unfortunately I left for India from the east coast (of the US) and so had to come back that way. The route we took from Dubai to NY today actually went by Moscow, Finland (hi Rina and Adam!), Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, Canadia. Yeah, the middle east to NY via Moscow... Wacky.

Here ends my incoherent attempts at typing... stay tuned for more adventures. ajhkbuyhtiusbkjksahkjoiu38bnjkjhshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

LAST day in India

SOB!

Well, let's not get too worked up here.

This is, however, my LAST day in India and it does make me a bit sad. Not sobbing sad (as my opening may have mislead you to believe) because my time here has been... well, just look at previous posts and you'll understand. And despite it being great here I'm also very excited to get back to my "home" country so I can see love-ed ones, eat salad and other non-Indian foods, watch the Wimbledon finals, take real showers and so on. Not to mention excitement concerning the next new and exciting adventures I have coming up! But I am a bit sad to be leaving. It is inevitable as a good thing comes to a close. And who knows when I'll be back??

I also have a bit of a frantic feel. What have I forgotten to do, eat, see, experience????!???!! I never got my henna tatoos (my brother is probably sighing with relief - wouldn't want me coming back toooo hippied out, eh?), didn't manage to see the ENTIRE series of West Wing, Season Three (though, to be honest, that probably shouldn't be listed in the "India" column of my to do list) and who knows what else I've not done that I should have done while here? But I'm being silly. I've done a whole pile of things.

And I have much of great excitment coming up.

Briefly, for those interested in the details of my movements in the next week or so, I will be back in the US of A circa Wednesday, 2:30pm EDT (making the great assumption that my travel plans go smoothly), so consider yourself warned. Following a brief period of repose on the west side at my friend Sarah's I will be hopping a plane bound for the westerly regions of mother America. Again assuming all goes smoothly, Thursday night will find me snuggled into my very own bed in the Grass Valley, CA vicinity. A few days of rest and errands will hopefully prepare me for my first day o' massage school next Monday. Next Monday?? Yikes, I'll be starting school in just a few days!

Time to flee to finish my pre-departure doings and dodge the monsoons (see photo!)

Treking!

I'm starting to feel like a broken record that keeps calling everything "amazing." But treking was really, really great. I think we were all starting to feel a little cooped up by the time the trek started. Here we were, outdoorsy type people nestled in the Indus Valley with humungoid, gorgeous mountains calling out to us. Instead of running out and scampering about the mountains, instead we were driven from place to place to look at one Buddhist monestary after another. This was for our own good as we were freshly arrived from the low-lands rich in oxygen, but it was still making us a bit stir crazy I think.

I can't possibly write down everything interesting, amusing, gorgeous, phenomenal, other-positive-adjectives about the trek so I'll just do random snippets of some of the highlights.

* We were utterly unprepared for the trek. Rather, we were utterly unprepared for the weather of the trek. Coming from 105 degree weather I think the warmest article of clothing I had with me was a thin, button-up wool-blend sweater and a 3/4 length long-sleeved shirt. I had packed these with Leh in mind thinking that it would be at least 20 degrees warmer than it actually was. Not exactly adequate for treking at 14,000 feet in the snow with night time temps below freezing. Luckily Leh is rampant with knock-off North Face and such. I got a great "North Face" fleece jacket for about $12 and an "Adidas" windbreaker for about $7. Then I also got wool socks and such, all handmade by Ladakhi folk.

* Day two we crossed a snowy pass at 4,700 meters (something close to 15,000 ft). As we were hiking up that morning it was snowing and the horsies carrying all of our stuff almost didn't make it. The snow was about two or three feet deep and very mushy with ice underneath. The horsies got about half-way up and then started sinking and couldn't go on. What ended up happening was our guide, the pony-man, and the cook unloaded the horses, helped them make it up to the top of the pass and then took several trips running down to get the offloaded material and lug it up themselves. Mind you, this is all at insane elevation where it feels like there is almost no oxygen. Despite the 3-days "acclimating" down in Leh (at a measly 3,500 meters) I had a headache the whole trek and generally felt like my heart was going to explode even though we plodded up the mountains quite slowly.

* Mountain yoga. I had what was one of the nicest yoga practices ever. The last day of the trek dawned sunny and gorgeous. I spent 20-30 minutes doing some easy, unstructured yoga while basking in the morning light with the Himalaya mountains towering around me and a stream dancing by. Technically I'm not sure if the exact mountains we were in and around were the official Himalayans, but you get the idea.

* The day we left for the trek was the same day the villagers left the village with their herds of donkeys, sheep, bulls, cows, goats, etc. They go up to the mountains during the summer so the animals can graze on something other than their crops. As we made our way up the mountain we were moving in and among the villagers and their herds. The donkeys are my favorite. In general, the donkeys and horsies are MUCH smaller than the creatures we see in the west. Even the full grown larger horsies aren't much more than 4 1/2 feet tall and the donkeys don't get much more than 3 feet tall. My favoritest of all are the little baby donkeys (aka "donklings.") They are soooo cute and little!

* Full moon while treking. I'm not sure if it was a full full moon, but it looked just about as full as it could get on our last night up in the mountains. We were so exhausted from the hike up to the pass (even before the snowy, icy part) that we didn't even make it all the way to the normal camp that evening. Instead we stopped a bit early in a lovely spot right next to a snow-melt stream. Damen passed out pretty early but Sweet Pea and I valiently struggled to stay away until after the sun set. When I emerged from the tent to pee before going to sleep (with the notion that I'd waited until "dark" so I wouldn't have to walk all the way to the big rock to get out of sight) it was amazing. The moon was just rising over one of the mountains and was insanely bright. There were no clouds and maybe the thin atmosphere made it seem even brighter, but it was hard to look directly at the moon. It cast so much light that the mountains in front of me seemed bathed in a sort of ghostly sun-light and when I looked behind me I had a sharp shadow. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

* River crossing! It is best to get as much of your day's trek done by around 2pm. This is because that is the time of the day when the snow really starts to melt and the snow-melt streams swell, sometimes quite sinificantly. This is relevant because as you trek you tend to go up and down by the easier routes, which are also the routes the water takes. You end up crossing these little streams a number of times each day. Often they are easy and you can just jump across or step on a rock or branch that is in the water, but the later in the day it is, the fuller the streams are. Our last day we got started a bit late as we were all pretty wiped out from the day before and hadn't really grasped the importance of starting early. That day the streams were rather vigorous and were a bit more challenging to cross. At one point it really looked impossible. We ended up jumping from the shore to a rock sticking up out of the stream, stepping to a near-by rock from there and then with the help of the guide (who pulled us as we jumped) leapt to a rock close to shore. Vaidya managed this pretty well and Damen quite easily (he might not have even had help from the guide.) I also did okay, but I nearly took our guide out in the process. In the final jump I leapt and sort of made it but our balance was thrown akilter and the guide was nearly flung into the stream. We had been joking about what could possibly knock our guide down to our level - he was running ahead and then back, stopping to smoke, lugging supplies up the mountain, etc. while we could barely plod up the mountain carrying a day-sack. I figured, enough with the piece meal stuff, just take him out altogether!

* Dystentary Mountain Climber Action Figure. Day one of the trek Delhi Belly caught up with Damen. It wasn't as extreme as my bout of it, but still I wasn't trekking at 11,000 - 15,000 ft elevation for three days when I was sick. We decided that we'll create a new action figure. We have just enough time to market it before Christmas. I'll let your imagination fill in the details as to what the figure does.

* Chung. Chung is the local alcohol. It is sort of beer-like and made of barley. It is a bad idea to drink alcohol when you first reach a high altitude, but when we finished the trek the guide had arranged for the driver to bring some Chung with him for us. We finally plodded up to the car around 3:30 in the afternoon and there was a bottle of moonshine-Chung waiting for us - being kept cool in the stream. I know Damen was still rather ill and I wasn't feeling so hot myself and home-brew moonshine was about the last thing I should have been trying. But how could we be so rude as to refuse??? Instead, we each took a big swig from the bottle (that had barley seed thingies floating around in it) and nearly vomitted. It wasn't really that bad, it just hits the stomach in a rather hard way. The idea was that we were supposed to drink the rest after dinner, but we never actually did that.

* Julley! Pronounced somewhat like the name "Julie" in French, Julley is a great, jolly phrase. It is Ladakhi for "hello" and "good bye" and "yeah" and about 5 other phrases. It takes you pretty far. It is also a very perky, friendly phrase. I plan to incorporate it into my day-to-day useage even when I get back home.

Julley!! That's about it for now.

Laziest Tourist in Leh

I think we were the laziest tourist in Leh. It seems like the thing to do in Leh is either "cultural tours" (driving to different "sites", often monestaries, and then looking at these sites) or "trekking tours" (hiking in the mountains and camping for some number of days) or some combination of the two. Each day everyone has a "program" and the chatter about the hotel tends to revolve around what your program for the day was or what your program for tomorrow will be. We arrived in Leh and spent most of the first day acclimating to the climate. The best part of "acclimating" was the lounging in the hammocks in the garden of our hotel. That afternoon we were whisked off by our guide to see some sites and do a bit of pre-trek shopping. The next day started early in the morning and was chock full of site seeing and day three was set to be the same. The sites were nice, but we had different ideas of what we wanted to do. Instead we cut day-two's site seeing down and chucked day three out the window completely.

So what did we do if we weren't doing "cultural tours" ??? We loafed. Except for a brief adventure into town to procure further trekking material we were permanent fixtures in the garden (most often in the hammocks, sometimes snuggling two in a hammock.) We read, napped, meditated, drank tea that the people at the hotel brought out to us. Somehow, despite having next to nothing to do, we still managed to be late for just about everything we were supposed to do (meeting with our guide about the trek, meals, etc.) The best part, probably, was Saturday evening (day three, right before leaving for the trek) when we were ambling from our rooms back to the hammocks for a little pre-dinner card playing to find that there was a "cultural program" in the garden. My theory is that Leh was is so bent on culturally programming us touristst that when they heard we ditched the "program" for the day they decided to send the program to us. It was basically traditional music, singing and dancing with nice little informational monologues before each dance so we knew what it was all about.

In general Leh was really... different and relaxing (to summarize.) It was such a contrast to the rest of India that I've been seeing. I sort of don't even really think of it as India. It was about 80 degrees cooler (from highs of 105+ in Delhi to below freezing at night on the trek), way quieter, much less oxygen, Buddhist, the people looked Tibetan or Nepalese (not Indian), and full of mountains and totally different vegetation. As for relaxing... despite having so much cultural programming foisted onto us, we really could do whatever we wanted and were so totally taken care of (like we have been this whole trip!) that it was still quite relaxing. Also, there is something about being up in the mountains that just gives off a "relaxing" vibe.

Leh & the Himalayas

We arrived in Leh, about 3,500 meters above sea level, the other day and it was like landing in another world. It looks like the moon, or maybe Tatuin (sp?) from Star Wars. It is like a desert, but really really high up and there are humungoid mountains everywhere. Leh (in the eastern part of Kashmir, snuggled in around the Himalayas) is the highest airport in the world they tell me. Due to the altitude it is really really dry and the sun is brutal. It also is exceptionally cold at night (and in our hotel room.) So we went from sleeping in 90 degree weather to sleeping in a room that was 56 degrees. They have space heaters, but they don't have fuel since it is "summer" now.

We’d been advised to take it very easy the first day due to the altitude. We didn’t have any hiking plans or anything but, even rising from the hammock in the garden, walking 15 paces to the room to pick up a book, and walking the 15 paces back was challenge enough. In general though, it is incredibly peaceful and relaxing here. Our guide probably thinks we are total lazy bums, but I'm not too concerned. We spent most of yesterday "site seeing" and were scheduled for the same today but asked if we could just relax instead. It is quite a lovely place in which to relax.

Tomorrow we start our three day trek!

Rock Stars at the Taj Mahal

I’m not super into “sight seeing” in general. They tend to not make much of an impression on me (as I generally don’t know the cultural, historical, etc. context that helps to make the site so great) and the strongest impressions I get are generally of the throngs of tourists and all the touristy stuff that rises up around the sites.

So I wasn’t all that revved up to see the Taj Mahal. Particularly since we’d just spent two days looking at “sites” in Hampi, would have to wake up at 4am to catch a train to Agra, spend all day in the truly blistering heat and then take a late train that wouldn’t get us home until midnightish. But how can you go to India and be in Delhi for several days without seeing the Taj Mahal??

So we went to see the Taj Mahal.

And it was friggin’ fantastic! I loved it. You know how a lot of things, such as sites, end up being a bit of a let down? The Taj Mahal was the opposite. It was stunning on so many levels. I think the part that was most amazing for me was the intricate details EVERYwhere. The whole joint is made of white marble and is intricately carved to an insane degree. And, so I’ve been told, Indian marble is the hardest marble around (much harder than that “soft” Italian marble.) Then there is also precious and semi-precious inlay allllll over the place in incredible detail. I won’t go into the process, but it is insanely delicate and time consuming. We actually got to go see a workshop where they are still doing marble inlay the way it has been done for hundreds of years. Then there are also the marble screens. They took one single slab of marble and carved it into a screen with intricate patterns. I won’t keep trying to describe it for you though – I can’t possibly even come close to convey some of how awesome it was.

And then there is the fact that Damen (our friend we had picked up in Delhi) and I were very exotic and our whole party was treated like rock stars.

So about being exotic – people wanted to take pictures with us. The first was a small group of guys who I thought were asking me to take a picture for them. Not exactly - they wanted to take a picture WITH me. Then we sat down in the shade to bask in the glory of the Taj for a few minutes and whole families (like 20 people) wanted to crowd around me and Damen to take a picture with us. One young girl asked if she could take the picture with her kissing me on the cheek! It was quite amusing but we ended up having to sort of flee because we couldn’t walk more than a few feet without someone else approaching us for a photo. They also really liked shaking hands (because that’s what us crazy, exotic white westerners do.)

And as for rock star status – I have decided that Sweet Pea’s family is connected with the Indian mafia. Now this could be because I’ve been reading the Godfather, but it all fits together. Everywhere we go there are “friends” who want to do us a kindness. This kindness in Agra was a car (with a cooler of drinks) and driver picking us up at the train station, guides for a morning at some sites outside Agra and then for the Taj Mahal in the afternoon, rooms at a 5-star hotel owned by this “friend” so we could rest during the heat of the day. We showed up at the hotel after our morning site seeing and were immediately greeted by a group of about 4 different people. One person gave us cool towels, another gave us each a rose, a third put a little red dot on our foreheads and the fourth had some juice for us. Then they took us up to a set of rooms (why one room when we could use two?) that were on the second to top floor and had a view of the Taj Mahal and Red Fort. Wowza. They also had lunch for us in an empty dining room with about 6 watiers and later (when we rested in the evening before our train) sent up mango lassi and samosas to snack on. Also, it seemed that everywhere we went there were about 5 people waiting to wait on us and each person we spoke to seemed to know the details of our day better than we did. We definitely felt like rock stars.

Hampi Ruins

The last two days have been spent exploring the ruins of Hampi. I won't try to go into great detail about the place itself, for the "facts" you can look at the website about it (I think there is a link in teh May post "India preview.") In short, Hampi was the metropolis of the 14th - 16th centuries. And not just for India. It was a world renowned city. Unfortunately the king got whomped while warring away from home and the place was subsequently looted for six months and then abandoned except for a few wayward peasants I suppose.

The main part of the city is a 25 sq km piece that is littered with ruins. There are more temples than you can shake a stick at, old roads, remnants of bizaars around the temples, statues, random engravings on rocks, pillars, palaces, houses, public baths, private baths, elephant stables, guard quarters, and so on everywhere. Our tour guide - a family friend of Vaidya's who is a conservationist architect (or something like that) and who used to work at Hampi doing preservation stuff - was telling me there are something like 30,000 catalogued items of historical interest. And supposedly there is tons more laying on private land or under farm fields.

Which brings me to the most interesting part of this for me. I'm not super into "seeing the sites" - that whole tourist scene is unappealing to me and the "sites" themselves don't really rev me up the way more cultural/real/day-to-day stuff does. It is a challenge to reconcile "preservation of an historical site" with the needs of the peasants who are living (or trying to live) here and have been doing that since it was abandoned 500 years ago. Part of me understands the idea behind preserving it, but a bigger part of me thinks "who cares if the banana plantations are destroying ruins buried beneath?" The people are starving and destitute and most of the money that comes in from tourism doesn't get to the people so.... Who cares if they set up a little shop amongst the ruins of the old bazaar? A lot of historians care I guess. Actually, it seems very fitting to me that the old bazaar is housing vendors today. It looks hideous and is probably very dangerous (the structures are totally falling apart) and is definitely contributing to a more swift demise for the structures but... They were built to house vendors to sell stuff, right?

Anyway, I don't have much time so I'll refrain from further pontification on a subject I know very little of and have next to no experience around.

Quick quick highlights:

* I got blessed by a hef-a-lump (spelled, incorrectly, by some as "elephant.") Inside one of the temples (several are "living" temples still) I gave 5 rupees to a hefalump, he took it in his snout and then blessed me with the same snout.

* I witnessed a gang of monkeys thieve some bananas. Several distracted the women selling nanners while another snuck up, snatched a small bunch of about 3 and then booked it up a tree onto a house. The women reacted by yelling at the monkeys and the monkeys reacted by yelling back - part in fear, part in victory and part in taunting over their victory.

* The place is crawling with cows, bulls, monkeys (multiple varieties), buffallo, pigs (yeah, pigs!), goats (and goatlings :):)), cats, dogs, and tons of lizards. Vaidya and the driver are probably very tired of my interest, but I still love looking at them and find them quite amusing (even when blocking the road.)

Status Report, Bangalore

My approach to internet and e-mail during my time scampering about the country has been that I would rather spend time having fun than spend time trying to get online and deal with e-mail/internet stuff. However, as we are now in Bangalore (India's high-tech hub) and we have about 5 hours before our train leaves for Hospet (near Hampi and some killer ruins) it seemed appropriate to explore one of the hundreds of internet cafes this metropolis has to offer.

Last night we drove from Bangalore to Rishi Valley - a small small place about 3 or 4 hours away where Sweet Pea went to high school. We stayed the night there and spent today exploring the Rishi Valley campus and it was all quite lovely. There was a lot of quiet and calm with trees and flowers everywhere. The accomodations were simple, but nice (and I think we paid a grand total of $6 for the room, showers, breakfast and lunch.) It was fun to see where Sweet Pea was and to see the rooms she lived, ate and went to school in. I think my favorite part, however, were the swarms of butterflies. The place was filthy with 'em. Black and white ones, black and white ones with bright orange spots, little paperwhite ones and more. And all in mass quantity. They also seemed inspired by the kamikazee fighters and had no shyness - which was great.

We also met up with a former classmates of Vaidya's and she talked to us about a rural education program she is working with. It was great - we got to hear all about innovations they are working on and even got to visit a classroom. I won't try to explain it all (the complexities of the problems with the education system in rural areas and the great ways of tackling these problems) but it was very thought provoking and inspiring. I feel a bit like I'm in a one-on-one six week cultural program where I get to intimately random bits of "India's culture." A week at Lok Satta, a day at the LV Prasad Eye Institute, a week at an ashram and yoga center, a day in a rural village looking at the schools, etc. And all with personal guides. Like a suped up version of the sort of programs universities often offer during the summer or in between terms - nothing too academic, more cultural. I'm so lucky to be getting this sort of experience here as opposed to just the normal touristy stuff.

The landscape around here is very dessert like and there are alllll sorts of animals. Loads of cows, bullocks and buffalo with tons of goats (and lil' goatlings too!) scattered everwhere. There are also a fair number of pigs, which I find surprising as Hindus don't eat 'em and Muslims don't eat 'em. It is somewhat mysterious what they are about for. Unless they are like the dogs and belong to no one, fending for themselves and such. Also monkeys abound. And they are mostly the very adorable small grey monkeys. I'm not about to cuddle with them, but they are quite snuggly looking. For those of you who don't know - growing up I had grey sock monkeys the way other little girls had teddy bears or dools. I was inseperable from Fatso, Suzy, Gutso and Bobby. Fatso was named such because one time I puked on him and when he was washed and dried he puffed up. Gutso was so named because he got so worn that he lost all his guts. In the end he was just the mouth (not even the head) safety pinned to the lower parts of his legs.

I guess that's about it for now. In general I am feeling quite well, both in body and in spirit. The "delhi belly" is gone and my normal appetite seems almost restore. Mentally I feel more like "my own self" than I have for quite a while and it is really really great.

Laughing in My Sleep

Some people talk in their sleep, some walk in their sleep. I've tried a bit of both, but I've also always been into laughing in my sleep. Some people find it spooky. A former flame was pretty creeped out by it and when my step-sister was in her vamp phase it totally freaked her out to hear a shadow on the other side of the room cackling in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.

I, however, find it delightful. Consider first what it is like to wake from a nightmare. The terror, distress, loneliness, adrenaline and general miserableness. Now consider waking yourself up with your own laughter and the pure joy that brings. Because it was a dream you can't even remember why you were laughing (or maybe you just remember glimmers that light you up again) which actually makes it even better as the amusement of the situtation doesn't fade. What you have is only the amusement and joy. It is really quite splendid and just the best way to start your day.

I haven't been laughing in my sleep so much in the recent past. It has often come and gone when I've been going through either particularly trying times or particularly enlivening times. I won't go into details of what has been going on, but I realized some time ago that it has been quite a while since my last bout of sleep laughing.

That said, yesterday I woke myself up laughing and had vague memories of laughing throughout the night!

I don't want to attribute it only to the wholeness program I've been doing here at the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore, India, but it is a piece of it for sure. I've created a lot of drastic changes in my life in the last three weeks (my goodness, it has only been just over three weeks since my last day of work and when my life was horribly intact!) The program here is only a piece, but it is a very wonderful piece I think - sort of like some really stellar fertilizer for a newly tilled and designed garden. It might even be some of the seeds or saplings - we'll see.

I really like yoga, natural foods, "harmonious living" and all that jazz. I think it can be phenomenal. Unfortunately it quite often gets distorted into very hippy-dippy, mumbo-jumbo, new agey crap (yes crap!) that is just plain silly at times. Not always, and maybe not even mostly, but often. Its essence, however, is great and my time here at Isha has been amazing. I don't want to even try to put 8 full (and I mean FULL) experiential days into words so I'll leave with a few words that will probably sound boarderline hippy dippy and then leave you with a list of some of the small details of being here that have been lovely.

Overall, I feel like being here has helped me refocus how I exist in my mind, in my body and on this planet. It has helped me reconnect with a sense of joy I've always had but somehow lost direct contact with (or maybe was getting pushed into a smaller and smaller place in me?) as time progressed along and I got distracted by challenging life experiences. The program has been incredibly challenging and the changes I'm making I'm sure will continue to be challenging, but I'm really looking forward to it.

So now some lovely details:

* Dinner Saturday night - we came out just after sunset to the garden around the main hall of the ashram. All over the grass, the out wall, in the tree, along benches, everywhere, were little candles. It was so beautiful and magical.

* The gronds of Isha itself. The buildings are beautiful, the gardens beautiful, the ponds with the lily pads, the temple, the housing. It is all simple, but elegant and in harmony with its surroundings (both geographical and people in the village wise.)

* Live music - Sounds of Isha - in the evenings after dinner before our evening sessions with Sadguru. I can't even describe it, but I bought a CD of it and if you send me a love note I'll burn a copy and mail it to you :)

* Games. We play games. Or rather, when I'm not crippled by naseau, diarrhea and fever I play. Grown-ed ups don't play enough games. They are fun.

* Dancing Tuesday evening. With a huge bonfire in the gardens and live music, people at the ashram (program participants, volunteers and permanent members, including families and children) danced like something from a surreal Bollywood film. There was such excitement and energy and joy in it all!

* FROGS! There are a lot of frogs around here. There is a little pond (little little, man-made) right outside my room and there are some frogs that kick-it there on a regular basis. Big ones and littler ones.

* Elephants. Supposedly elephants. There are supposed to be wild jungle elephants in the woods around here. Don't wear white, it makes them irrate.

* The nice doctor who gave me a shot in the butt to stop my vomitting saturday night (or sunday morning I should say as it was 3am or something.)

* The mountains! My goodness - how to describe.... Huge mountains that yogis have done all sorts of spiritual things up in. The clouds slither over them in the most beautiful way.

* The stars. No big cities near by so the stars are AMAZING.

* The lightening storm Sunday evening/night when I was still feverish and too sick to move.

* So much more, but I have already been an internet pig (there is one computer wtih internet here for alllllll the peoples.)

Poop envy & Delhi Belly

Warning: This post will be dealing primarily with the less pleasant parts of bodily functioning. For example: Diarrhea. Also: Constipation, menstration and vomitting. If you like to consider yourself delicate and abhor such icky discussion, then I must recommend you look through the links over on your right or read other postings. Or navigate away from Waywardprincess for a spell.

After arriving in Hyderabad I threw myself into all the spicy, new food with relish. (Not to mean I put the condiment known as relish on everything.) After a few days I started experiencing some unpleasantnesss in the bathroom. This could have been due to the long adventure getting to India, the heat, the different routine, the arrival of my period, the food or some combination. In any case, the diarrhea-ish (it wasn't full on) lasted a few days and then seemed to pass.

At first I was relieved that every trip to the can was uneventful. However, things started to be toooo uneventful. Meaning: I wasn't pooping. Nuthin'. Not a nugget. For the first two or three days I didn't even notice. The third or fourth day I started thinking, "hmm... isn't THAT interesting." By day five I was somewhat worried, but as I didn't FEEL bad in any way I wasn't all that concerned. I was, however, starting to get a bit envious of other people's successful bowl movements. Day seven dawned (Saturday) and I was starting to consider talking to someone about it. I was also starting to get some cramping in the lower tummy. That evening, however, a trip to the w/c proved successful and I thought my worries were over.

HA!

Something about dinner didn't settle right with me. Around 10pm I started to feel quite uneasy and rushed back to my room here at the yoga center. A great bought of diarrhea hit me. Not good, but considering the lack of "southern movement" the preceeding week I thought it was somewhat natural and went to sleep with a clear mind.

Until about 1am when I woke up feeling quite ill. This time, in addition to diarrhea I also puked. Puked a lot. I laid back down and thought, "I should speak with the doctor about this in the morning." Unfortunately I had another round at 2am. This time the vommitting and diarrhea happened simultaneously - necesitating the use of a handy trash can (aka "puke bucket.") Things were clearly not going well and I couldn't go out and find a doctor myself so I woke up my nice roommate, explained the difficulty and she went out in search of some help for me.

The doctor came about 2:45 (I had had two additional rounds of diarrhea and throwing up in the interim) and said I had some sort of bug (not a big surprise at that point.) She gave me a shot in the ass that was supposed to stop me from throwing up, gave me some medicine to take (anti nausea, antibiotic, something for the fever and aches and something else whose purpose I've forgotten) and sat with me for a while. The intention was that a half hour or so after I stopped throwing up I would eat a small something, take the antibiotic and go to sleep. Shot in the ass not withstanding, I continued to puke and/or have diarrhea for many hours. Around 4 she left with the recommendation that I sleep and in the morning with breakfast take the medicine. Finally around 8 or so I think my stomach finally settled and I was able to at least drink water.

Things are looking up though. All day yesterday I was so weak I could barely cling to my water and gatorade bottles and sitting vertical sent me staggering for the toilet where I would either have diarrhea or vomit. Today activity on the southern front has continued to a lesser degree, the fever and aches are gone, I'm feeling much stronger and despite a queasy stomach and inability to eat with much relish (again, I'm not referring to the condiment, though I'm certain I couldn't handle even the smallest amount of said condiment) have not spewed once.

Let's hope things continue to look up and that I don't get another round of "delhi belly."

Indian weddings

This morning I had the opportunity to attend both a real-deal Indian wedding as well as a pre-wedding thinger for the bride (the pre-wedding thinger was for a seperate wedding from the wedding we went to this morning.)


The first thing one should know is that Indian weddings happen at ALLLL sorts of bizarre times and days. Or rather, what seems to a foreigner as a bizarre time and day. For example, I was invited to a wedding that was last Sunday morning at 3am. 3am?! Yeah, 3am. This morning's wedding was at 8:19am. Yes, Wednesday morning at 8:19. The ceremony started before then and goes on and on both before and after that moment of 8:19am, but that auspicious moment is very carefully set. It has to do with astrological collusions and things like that.


There is a lot of loud singing/chanting by a priest through the whole thing (or at least the 40 or so minutes we stayed for.) There are also lots of people milling about in general. People come late, they leave early. It isn't really the sort of thing (as far as I can tell) where everyone shows up at a certain time, things start, things end, then people leave. It is much more fluid than that. In addition to people coming and leaving there are also people walking around, talking, etc. This includes many of the principle characters in the show as well. There are numerous people in the "wings" of the stage where the wedding is going down and they chat, they move around, they help the bride with this or that, they hold a sheet up to keep the bride and groom from seeing each other, etc. There are also sooooooo many colors, just on the ladies though. The bride wears redish/orange-ish colors (in the north it is more definitively "RED" - symbolic of fertility) and all her sisters/cousins and the women in the audience are wearing brilliant colors on vibrant and often shiny fabrice frequently embroidered with fantastic thread or designs. Before leaving the house I was feeling fairly garish in my tricked-out Indian fits (a lovely white dress with heavy gold and silver beadwork) and huge earings. When Sweet Pea's mom attempted to add a necklace to the whole thing I resisted strongly. At the wedding, however, I felt quite bare.

After a bit at the wedding we drove to another matrimonial event. Prior to a wedding both the bride and the groom have independent ceremonies. I didn't quite get the gist of it all but it seems the bride comes out dressed up right fancy amid flowers and incense and foods and such and goes through a series of prayers. Then everyone around blesses her and then we all ate breakfast. I have to admit that the lack of air conditioning, the heat and the clothing conspired to make me less than attentive. I felt positively wilted and wanted to tear my lovely vestiments to pieces at every point they made contact with my skin. Hours later my skin is still red from the heat.

But that's all for now, I must flee for the airport!

Bollywood Baby

As we were walking out of the theater I was trying really (I mean REALLY) hard not to be a total dork. What I wanted to do to was gibber about how ultra-super-fantastic I thought the movie was and how I loved loved loved loved loved it. Hyderabad's native viewers weren't all that worked up about it (just another Bollywood flick) and I really didn't want to embarass my lovely hosts.

So yeah, it was awesome. I don't know why people rag on Bollywood - I thought it was fantastic. Such costumes, such outrageous song and dance numbers. So utterly ridiculous and 800% over the top in every way. How can you NOT love it???? I can't even really do it justice with words so I won't try further.

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a "final" song and dance number, but I guess the 6 or 7 other major numbers will have to make up for it.

I asked Sweet Pea if she wanted to practice some Bollywood moves last night when we got home but it was about 11, we had to be getting up around 6am for a wedding (weddings here are at very odd hours and days) and there was still quite a bit of "trip preparing" to do. Maybe I can get her to practice with me sometime while we are travelling.

I kinda wanna see it again. Not just kinda. And maybe with subtitles as I didn't really get the full gist of what was happening (not that is was really necessary.)

Let's get digital, digital

Technology and I are butting heads. We were going along quite chirp-ily for a while. I figured out the digital camera, can take nicey photos and can even get them onto the computer no prob.

However, my time has been limited and I haven't even begun to get the low down on getting photos up onto this bloggeroonie. I figured that I would instead just send a few photos out to people, but my e-mail is being VERY difficult and, in addition to moving slower than sludge, doesn't want to play nice with attachments.

So, for now, while I have gone digital, unfortunately no one will be able to reap the rewards (or be subjected to my photographic attempts - however you want to look at it) until I bounce on back into Hot Town Hyderabad.

Additionally I don't know when/if I'll be able to get on line for the next few weeks after leaving today.

Stay tuned...