Goin to an ashram...?!

I don't believe this. I was almost done with my blog, and then it all disappeared and they couldn't retrieve it and it saved itself as a deleted file... in short, i lost it. ok i'll start over, basically Ican't believe its been a whole week since I've last written a blog. Between frequent power outages, literally a daily thing, and me being in the "jungle" and all, it hasn't been easy. I am writing right now from Varkala, a touristy beach town thats really laid back and plays a lot of bob marley. Lots of dreadlocked backpacker types, some people seem to come here and stay for quite a while and i can see why. big sweeping cliffs, and a beach set at the bottom. the town and strip is basically on the cliffside. the beach is clean though the chairs and umbrellas are ridiculously expensive, because of all of the foreigners, but you don't feel weird in a bikini which is kind of amazing and nice but it certainly feels like bizarro-india.  no honking horns or even rickshaws, and it is funny to me to think about people who make whole trips to india about the beaches like this and must never really see the country at all. Yesterday i was in kovalum, another beach town, but i twas told over and over that varkala was better anyway, so i left after one day. a lot of old retirees on bus tours came through there, and i was starting to feel like i was in florida. ill save that fora few weeks from now, thanks. In any case there are lots of cute handicrafts and souveneirs, i of course want them all but am bursting out of my newly bought extra backpack already! of course i couldn't make it through these whole 3 months with only one little bag! i really had every intention... but its impossible there is too much good stuff and im going to decorate my whole apartment with it all im so excited!   Today I had a huge suprise... Camille, my friend ive been travelling with for the last 2 weeks until yesterday when we bid a sad goodbye, she went off to a yoga ashram for a  few days and we didn't think we'd see each other again, and so here i come to varkala, where i wasn't even supposed to be yet, and im walking down the beach when she yells out my name and there she is swimming in the ocean! with our other friend brit from pondicherry, who apparently is at the same ashram! total coincidence, and it was the ashrams day off, so they all came to varkala for the day. absolutely crazy. so i spent the day with them both and a bunch of people from the ashram, who were a lot less weird than i would have thought they would be i gotta say, except for the odd but amazing 7 year old japanese girl there with her mom who is apparently better at yoga than everyone combined, chants out the mantras, and did "magic" on my soup and my drink by waving her hands over it, actually totally seriously and deeply focused... it was odd but quite amazing. she is also very wise beyond her years... interesting to think about a 7 year old in that atmosphere but she seemed totally at home.   sooo... after talking to all these people about what they are doing there, a full program of daily yoga and meditation, meals included, dorm housing in the ashram, 5 am wakeups, and classes all day, they all told me i should come out there tomorrow and stay for the minimum of 3 days... and i agreed!!! unbelievable, tomorrow i am going to this ashram! i can't even believe it, i thought that kind of thing just wasn't going to happen this time, but now that this chance is here just for a couple of days i don't think i can pass up the experience, and i already have 2 friends there! so tomorrow afternoon i will take an autorickshaw an hour into the countryside and we'll see what happens! im pretty eager to see it all in action, a swami (teacher, guru type thing) leads it all, i really have no idea what to expect. so next up, arjana goes to an ashram after all. ha. i'll have to scoot through goa a bit faster to make it to mumbai by the 25th though!   This last week has been a whirlwind. after i last wrote, camille and i (wow this russian girl talking on video skype to her family is suuuupppper loud and obnoxious, jsut couldn't figure out the video and actually yelled "hey you! indian boy! get over here you told me this video is working and you liedto me!" and she couldn't turn it on. and shes really really loud. anyway.) camille and I took off for madurai on the train. we were unbelievably lucky and landed in the woman's compartment! the train guys even got on and kicked all the guys out, there were guys hiding under the seats, probably to stay with their girlfriends or something, i really don't know. but it was dramatic as they screamed for them to get out. We had a 7 hour ride through the countryside of tamil nadu, a truly scenic place, and the women were very curious about us. we did have prime seating though, we sat in the doorway of the compartment, looking out at the open scenery, no window. it was the best... apparently you can be fined for it but we didn't know it at the time.   Madurai was good. It is a big city but it wasn't as intrusive as chennai. Camille and I walked around, saw the main temple thats the main attraction, all wooden and colorful, and of course it was being remodeled and was under scaffolding! so dissapointing! but we walked around the inside, though most of it was for hindus only, which i understand but really cuts down on what we can see. We also ducked into some little stores, picking up ceramic tiles printed with hindi gods! yes, so practical, im now carting around ceramics in this new huge backpack. At night we sat on the rooftop restaurant, and we met a british guy who lived in bali and was on vacation... so many peoples stories here its unreal. worked in algeria too.   anyway from Madurai, we headed to Kumily, because we decided we'd go try our luck in the jungle! there is a place called periyar wildlife preserve, and there are 40 tigers there, as well as a couple hundred elephants, and some other stuff. we took a morning safari trek for 3 hours, and it was great! the funniest part of it was the guide, who took his job ultra seriously, and when we actually heard some noises in the forest, he darted across the field very spry and nimble, shushing everyone and saying "this here is not safety. we must move!" and acting like our lives were on the line... we were quite far away btw. i don't know if the drama was an act for us to feel more involved, or if he was really that insane. but it was pretty funny. we saw an elephant far away walking around, and heard a tiger! which i guess is rare, and we were up to our knees in mud and my shoes are just black, and we wore these handy leech socks, thankfully, cuz i got a few of them on them, luckily not on my flesh! it was great to be in nature, totally removed from the rest of india, and we even got to stay in a treehouse! that was our actual accomodation, a little hut in a tree you had to climb a ladder to with a bed and a mosquito net in it, it was kind of like camping, we'd just spit out the window into the forest when brushing our teeth! they also had a little lookout hut where you could see into the sanctuary, and we spent a couple hours just sitting up there. it was awesome. we also hit up a spice plantation to see how things work, where our spices come from , the original plants, it was so cool! we got a guided tour and sampled raw cocoa plants, coffee plants, all sorts of herbs and spices, you never really think where these things you eat all the time are coming from, and you don't even recognize them when they aren't prepared the way we are used to! We tried to take a boat ride that day but unbelievably everything was full/sold out, a recurring theme here at this time of year. it is all the indian tourists from the north who have holidays now and are flooding into the south, a popular destination... and you can see why. kerala is beyond lush and gorgeous, it is a greeen palm laden heaven. the scenery is maybe the most picturesque ive ever laid eyes on and its just amazing that people live here full time. anyway the boat ride was sold out so of course an enterpeneurial rickshaw driver talked us into an elephant ride! which was actaully pretty fun! a total tourist trap, mostly indian tourists though, and we got good pics of an elephant getting a bath, and some cute ones of a baby one, and a ride through the jungle for half an hour on the top of this absolutely mammoth animal! pretty fun.   when we left periyar, we started probably the most frightening day i've had in india. i mean seriously physically scary! the bus ride was absolutely out of control, i mean literally whipping around corners at breakneck speed, and we were on windy roads in the teahills! it reminded me of the rickety cliffside roads i drove on in puerto rico, only at 60 mph... you could feel the centrifugal motion of the bus, camille and i were kind of freaking out and also having a laugh, not much else you could do! of course next to us were peaceful indians, taking a nap! And that very same day we had to take a train to trivandrum, capital of kerala, which we had to wait for for a couple of hours, we killed the time by eating a less than steller cool pea curry... meaning not heated in quite a while but we didn't get sick... and we asked the guy to tell us which side the ladies compartment would be on so we could get the same deal worked out as last time. well he said all the way to the left so thats where we went, and then the train pulled up and of course it was at the total other side of the train, now these trains are really really long and we knew we only had a couple of minutes before it started, but we ran down the platform, couldn't just get on cuz the cars dont all have doors between them, and we were not in AC class, just general, which is insane and packed, but way cheaper, and so we didn't make it in time. The train started to move. Camille jumped on the nearest car, and i tried but my bag was pulling me back, so in one terrifying series of events, i ripped my bags off me and threw them to the guy on board, and then lost my magazine in the huge gap between the moving train and platform, thankfullynot my leg, though i had started to lose my footing. i knew i had to get on that train, all my stuff and camille were on that train, and so i screamed to the guy "help me!" and he held out his hand and i grabbed his arm, and with my other hand grabbed the rail on the side, and he hauled me up, as it sped up underneath me. once i got onboard i felt like crying, my hands were shaking so badly for an hour after! it was soooo scary! now i feel a bit scared from trains, but i have to take one in a few days so oh well...   Trivandrum to me now is remembered as the city where i got to watch a truly historical moment in America that I am finally proud of! Soooo proud of us, of Obama!!!  I demanded we have cnn where we stayed and we worked it out! i woke up at 5 am on the 5th and watched live streaming cbs coverage until his speech! i was thrilled, camille was even thrilled! we were totally into it. still would have loved to be in the country for that, but it was still pretty awesome from the other side of the world. We wrapped up our days together with a special dinner, the fish curries here are fabulous! And now, i saw her again and im going to join them tomorrow!you just never know whats around the corner around here.   there are just tons of backpackers in this part of india, and i see how differently they all react to it here. from the rude girl here in the net cafe to the totally well adjusted, to the old guy i met last night who moved to sri lanka after deciding to go there for a  week,and then ending his 25 year problematic marraiage cuz his wife wouldn't come out of england to live in sri lanka... wow. started a whole new life... as controversial as i think his move was, it really shows you how some people know they have to change something, and they just up and change their entire life in one move. on less of a drastic scale, it is nice to know that life is what you make it, that you have control over it, that it is up to you. i have no plans to relocate to sri lanka, but it is nice to know that you are only trapped in one place and one life if you make that choice, at least for us privileged sorts in these western countries we live in.   today an indian woman selling fruits and carrying them around in a basket on her head came up to me while i sat looking at the ocean in a restaurant for breakfast, and wanted me to buy her little red bananas. "how much?" i asked... "150 rupees!" (they should be about 15).... i laughed. but today i just felt like giving it to her anyway. i said, its not about the money. you just tell me how much they are really worth... and she smiled sheepishly and replied "about 20! heheh" and i just tossed her the 150... and then she started throwing mangos and bananas into my hands, no doubt now feeling bad she'd tried to dupe me! i told her to keep all of it, and i just took my 3 red bananas, she walked away with a giant smile on her face. and the boy this morning trying to sell me a plastic cobra or a political map of india (those were his two specialties, naturally) made a kissy face at me after i had smiled and politely said no... when he came back my way i summoned him over and just said, quite relaxed "you know, don't do that anymore to women. foreign or indian or whatever. ok? its really horrible and rude" and he looked at me and kinda smiled and said "yeah you are right, sorry madam" and you konw he's probably not going to stop but it made me feel good that id finally voiced my complaint to an indian guy about this! and it hadn't even made me angry.   i feel a familiarity with the people i didn't have before, an entertainment rather than an annoyance sometimes, and of course other times it is really an annoyance, but there is so much cool subtlety going on sometimes and you dont really "get it" for a good long time. and i think itll take another visit or two to really get it, but so far i haven't been so turned off to it that i'll never come back, and i think that is what is special about india.  it is so completely indescribable, just like everyone always says, you just have to see it for yourself.   ill let you know how the ashram goes!!! love arj