Don't cry for me, Delhi...

Last day in India! My flight departs at 2:45am tonight, which is tomorrow for the States. Today is a whirlwind trip to visit the Lotus Temple, the Raj Gatt where Gandhi was cremated, and to buy a harmonium!!! This is the third time I'm in Delhi this trip, and it's starting to feel like...home? No, it still feels like India, in which I am quite alien! We still have men and children approaching us wanting pictures with "the white people," we still can't communicate more than five words with our rickshaw driver. But still, even after only two weeks, I feel like I have come to the river and gotten my legs wet. Not totally submerged (even though I did half-drown myself in at the source of the Ganga, but this is a story for another time), but definitely a good splash. At the very least, I've been covered with enough Indian dirt and digested enough Indian food (and bacteria) to change my physiology forever! Will I return to India?? I'm keeping enough rupees just in case :)

Ganga Aarti

Last night on the Ganga. We bathed our feet and hands and malas in the river and sat to chant with Swami ji and the rest of the ashram devotees. The ashram is swaddled between the first great hills of the Himalayas, right on the banks of the Ganga, which is fierce and white here. As the sun goes down, there are barely any lights dotting the bank across the river. Our ceremonial fire illuminates the giant white marble statue of Shiva just a few feet beyond the bank, who seems to rise up from the depths of the river shining and clean. The smoke of the fire billows as more rice and ghee are tossed in, each chant of "svaha" puffing up a new cloud. My travel companions and I are looking more and more India each day; some tattooed with henna, some adorned with gold jewelry and heavy mala beads, all of us wrapped in bolts and bolts of colorful cloth. All of us sway and clap with the chanting, some of our voices rising in called recognition. After the final call, we linger. Not quite ready to dry off, not quite ready to go back to sleep.

Delhi Belly

Last night I suffered an attack of the "Delhi Belly." Apparently some little bacterial frenemy has been stowed away in my system only to be discovered by an afternoon round of pakora and dosa. I was a little green and a little white, then more white, more green, and now I'm roughly orange again. Much like the India "Tricolour" (above). Now, exhausted. Sleeping most of the day, aside from this escape to the air conditioned internet cafe.

Akbar, Babar, and the Mogol Empire

This is a quicky - I'm getting in as much blogging while I have a computer!! I am reading the new Salman Rushdi novel "The Enchantress of Florence," which is so prophetic because every time I get off a bus or out of a rickshaw, I'm in the novel! One of the main characters is the emperor Akbar the Great (which literally means The Great Great). Agra and the Taj area are littered with his tombs and palaces, all so lovely and intricate - hopefully pictures to come - but if you're in a dry spell for good literature, get this book!!

Maha Svaha

I could have uploaded a picture of the Taj, but to me, this is closer to the point.

What's wrong with India?

"What's wrong with India?" my travel companion is found of asking. What is wrong with India? This is a big question.

India is all at once the most beautiful and most ugly of places. It's flooded with billions of people traveling about every day, but has no roads whatsoever. There are thousand year old layers of dirty and filth surrounding the whitest, purest marble palaces, which are topped off with an extra layer of dirt for good measure. Shoeless, naked men in dodies (loin clothes) dig trenches along the street with pick axes all to lay high-speed fiber optic cables for internet. You are required to take your shoes off everywhere in reverence - temples, palaces, tombs, ashrams - but the country is fraught with hook worm and God knows what else. The monkeys want your sunglasses more than your bananas. What's wrong with India? This is a big question.

Indians have cultivated an enormous capacity to sit with discomfort. Here, this may be my biggest lesson. This is a country of too much and never enough. What to do? Sit with it. There is nothing to do. I didn't sign on for a trip to the Bahamas. I came to India. Not the India in "Eat, Pray, Barf" - this not a quaint, spiritual place. As Jill likes to say, India pushes and pulls. It is a drill sergeant whipping you into shape. Time to discover what you're really made of.

What to do? You don't come to the ocean to stay dry.

She lives!

I'M ALIVE!!! For those of you who heard about the bombings in Delhi and worried and fretted and called the embassy, I am well and safe!

All the Gods and Goddesses are on my side, apparently... if it wasn't for the horrendous India traffic, I would have been standing in the very square where the bombs when off. Instead, I was trapped on a bus cursing my luck, and am delightedly reminded that everything happens for a reason. I'm now swaddled in the moutains in Rishikesh, where my only danger is falling so in love with India that I don't return :)

This is India!

Today I experienced India FULL ON! I'm talking barefoot in the street, dirt in my eyes (ears, nose, fingernails...), holding my bladder desperately because there is no way that I'll experience the bathroom that my male friend just told me was "really intense!" And I still love it! I must be a little mad, but everyone who is truly in love really is :)

Here are the highlights:

• Car-sick mania on the petrol/diesel bus...BUT, God delivers, and I got to ride in the high-style (for India) White Ambassador car instead
• First barefoot India tourist experience at the Kerala Palace...there is nothing so beautiful as walking around on thousand year old limestone in your bare piggies
• I lost my favorite sunglasses in my first "squatter" experience. Right down the hole! But rejoice, I remained quit clean and unscathed! All that malasana practice was so key...
• Boat ride to Swami Vivikananda temple... first person to bring yoga to the west. I meditated in his meditation room, and walked around the rest of the day with my eyes half open in bliss.
• Submerged at the Point! What is the point?? The Most Holy, Very Auspicious place where the Bay of Bengal meets the Arabian Sea meets the Indian Ocean. The southern most point of India. Holy, holy, holy. Ladies, unfortunately, cannot "disrobe and submerge," but gents are invited too. I wasn't missing out for anything, so I waded up to my knickers and baptized my hands and face. Holy seas never felt so refreshing!!

Looky, looky!

This is the ayurvedic resort were I'm staying... if God isn't here, then India has been abandoned! We're looking out over the Arabian Sea (swimming in the Arabian sea is... salty and awesome). Here is me and fellow yoga teacher, Jill-ji, and the lovely elephant that came to visit us for the Ganesha festival. Jai!

Usha and Ganga

I arrive for my ayurveda treatment today and am greeted by my practitioner, who bobbles her head at me and says "you come!" She is a dark Indian woman barely as tall as my shoulder. Yesterday she just held my hand, but today she wraps her arm around my hip in a big hug as she escorts me to the treatment room. It's sort of like walking hip and hip with a hobbit. But since she's seen me as naked and oily as I get, her affection is appreciated!

Her name is Usha. Yesterday, I didn't notice. But today, I remember - Usha... Usha and Ganga!

When I was about 10 years old, our family got our first pets - two siames cats. Everyone gets to suggest names, and then we'll vote. Yin and Yang, Lucy and Ethel, Sugar and Spice - we're all going for famous duos. It takes many hours. Then, my father suggests "Usha and Ganga," two Vedic goddesses and Hindu princesses. No one says anything. And then Patrick, who is five, begins to cry! "I'll...never...remember....their...names...!!!"

Hello, Good-bye, Hello!

I have arrived! To be more specific, I have arrived three times to India: first, to the airport in Bangalore, which I may have arrived at on Friday or Saturday, depending on where in the world you're standing; second, to Trivandrum, which was at 4 am and 10 pm at the same time; third, to the Ayurvedic retreat center, which happened during breakfast this morning.

This, of course, was confusing, because I had been served breakfast at both of my previous arrivals and felt that after two breakfasts it was certainly time for lunch! But no lunch at 9 am. Which was also 1:40 am, according to the 30 second phone call I made to my parents so that they would not suffer believing that I had been human trafficked or crashed among the Himalayas!

In short, I have arrived! Things I did today (which also includes yesterday and the day before, depending on when I landed) include: swimming in the Arabian sea, gorging on pakoras and bananas, ayurvedic massage, yin yoga (which I fell blissfully asleep during practice), more gorging, more falling asleep. Now today feels like tonight, and it is certainly time for bed!

Up, Up, and Away!

Physio-biological words I like (and was tested on today): synaptogenesis, endoplasmic reticulum, phospholipids.

These words remind me Sanskrit. Try saying them out loud. Your tongue flaps around the inside of your mouth like a fish out of water.

This is how I feel practicing Sanskrit. I can't wait to get to India where everyone talks with their tongue flapping around their whole mouth! This is why, I'm told, Indians who speak English have the accent that they do. In English, we speak with our tongue squashed up against our teeth. In Sanskrit (and Hindi), it's an oral free-for-all!

My flight leaves in 6 hours or less (fingers crossed). I checked and rechecked (and rechecked) all the post-it notes wallpapering my condo with "don't forget this and that" lists. I may lose my mind, but not my passport OR disinfecting wipes! I'm so excited I might dance through airport security (I will surely be strip-searched), following which I will hopefully pass out into a Dramamine-induced coma for 20 hours. Rejoice!

This is only a test...

Ok... everybody in the boat? Off we go! Good bye, Atlantic Ocean...

This is the official launch of my new blog (yeah, technology!) which will help me relay the exciting, enlightening, and exhausting details of my pilgrimage into the Vedic Heartland (India!).

I'm sorry to all of you with whom I have not connected before leaving - what a whirlwind it has been! I am spending my final days taking midterms for school early (yes, classes began 2 weeks ago... the title "mid-term" just doesn't seem appropriate...). Anthony has an important surf rule: you can't paddle out unless you get your head wet first. Otherwise, you fight the water the whole way. This is how I feel about the last 3 weeks: all of the chaos and stress and planning hiccups are just the dunk that prepares me for the Pipeline of Chaos, India.

Tonight is the final "packing push." The collective advice I've received has been "pack light...really, really light," so I may wind up with just 3 shirts, a pair of yoga pants, and a pair of jeans for 3 weeks. And my sister in Manhattan just gasped in horror and disgust. I like to think of it as very European...

Much love, be well, and don't forget to meditate!