Varkala

Varkala is tiny and beautiful. The beaches are outstanding, the water is warm and salty enough to float me and the food is great! The days have gone something like this: wakeup to birds singing, meditate and do a little yoga, head to Cafe Del Mar for breakfast and then hit the beach until after sunset! Go back to Skylark Guesthouse and wash away the evils of the day :) and then head back out for an amazing supper! It is a terribly arduous schedule but I am managing to keep up! The main beach is the above picture and the actual town is perched on the clifftop. The stairs back up at the end of the day are very tiring!!!



Black beach is much more quiet and I spent a few days here until I found the little secluded beaches! They are so beautiful....



I could not resist taking this picture and have titled it 'An Indian Bathing Suit.' I have not seen one Indian women in a 'western' bathing suit. Needless to say there are many gawkers on the beach but the police quickly move them along....

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my family and friends!



New year's eve was wonderful! I hope all of yours was as well! I spent the day at a secluded beach with only a handful of people around and watched the final sunset of the year. It was beautiful. The evening was spent eating one of the best meals I have had since arriving in India- barracuda cooked in banana leaf, shrimps in a spicy curry, squid with loads of garlic and JUMBO tiger prawns! It was fab!!!! The only item missing was a medium rare steak!

The last couple of weeks...

The last couple of weeks have been very good to me. I have never experienced anything like ashram life and I am very grateful for the opportunity. The days really did consist of the schedule I posted earlier but what is missing from the schedule is the peace and solitude I felt as I went about the day. It is amazing to experience life without any sort of stimulation and just be. On my 'free' time I went to the lake and hung out, read, slept and day dreamed. It was a beautiful spot:


After the second yoga class of the day is when us girls caught up on the daily activities and then we went to dinner together (but ate in silence!) Emily on the left is from Washington and Jo is from London. This picture is taken at about 6:15am when we meditated as a very large group (140) by the lake and watched the sun come up.



For the most part the days were the exact same but a couple days before christmas they had a morning fire service which was performed by a priest from an outside community. It was incredible and the drawing on the floor was done with colored powder. This is also the room I did afternoon yoga in.

This room is where it all happened! They call it the main hall and morning meditation, morning yoga, the afternoon lecture and the evening meditation took place here. My butt and hips are finally starting to recover from sitting on the slate floor crossed legs for hours at a time!!!

I am now in Varkala and experiencing beach bliss with great coffee, food and conversations - loads of stimulation!

Another Upgrade!

I was given the option of a dorm bed or a shared double at the ashram and decided to upgrade to the dorm! My thoughts were if I was in a double with a winger I would be trapped but in a dorm there would be more 'space.' Besides sharing four bathrooms with about 36 women, the dorm option turned out to be okay! I shared my section with Jo who I met at reception and Emily was across from us. The three of us developed quite a nice friendship and it felt like I was back in university again except Jo talked me to sleep instead of Tracey T! Tracey, it took her two nights to realize she was talking to me and I was fast asleep!



The mosquitos were quite bad here so I quickly got used to sleeping under the dirty, blood stained net they gave me.... The only other down fall was cold water showers and when I say cold water, I mean cold water.... it goes like this; hold your breath, duck under the shower and get wet. Turn the water off and lather up from head to toe then suck in your breath, turn the water on and get under. After about 30 seconds you slowly let your breath out to get the remaining soap off! My head got really itchy after a couple of days so my guess is the shampoo did not quite get fully out!!!

Karma Yoga

Everyday from 10:30am - 11:30am I did Karma Yoga at the Health Hut. Everyone at the ashram does one hour of volunteer work and I was most grateful to get this job versus bathrooms! I spent the hour either taking orders or working back in the kitchen chopping fruit or making tea! The hut is open twice a day and it sells fruit salad, fruit juices, porridge, toast and tea. Needless to say, when you only get two meals a day it can get rather busy! I was a big fan of porridge and bananas or the banana milkshake!

The lady I am with in the picture is the only paid employee and she has been there for six years. She speaks very little english but told me that her husband died six years ago from bad spirits - the alcohol kind, and now she is working to support his mom and dad and her two children. She is such a hard worker and strong as an ox. I look like a giant next to her so you can imagine how little she is. When I left the ashram yesterday (more details to come) and said goodbye to her she gave me the warmest hug and a blessing which I did not understand, but I definately felt the meaning.

An Ashram Christmas!

A feast fit for a Queen! Here I am at 10am on Christmas day waiting to dig in to my veg Christmas brunch. Brunch is the main meal of the day at the ashram and there is nothing quite like having Christmas dinner in the morning! They went all out for this meal and it really was much more 'Martha' than the regular daily meals.

In the cup is Ayurvedic tea and next to that is glass noodle pudding, which is kind of like rice pudding but made with noodles. On the banana leaf from left to right is a banana, banana chips, some type of bean, beets, pineapple curd (similar to plain yogurt), poppadom, okra, dessert rice with nuts then plain rice with sambor on top. I stuffed myself to the gills and even ate my neighbours banana!

In the evening we went for a walk to the lake and did our 8pm meditation at lake side. On the way we saw this Christmas tree which Emily was much more enthused about than Jo!

It was a very different way to spend Christmas day but definately enjoyable!

Om

I have been freed for the day!!!! It seems like a long time since I posted and even longer since I have been at the ashram!


Where to even begin? Well, I arrived on Monday evening after a 5 hour train ride and 1.5 hr bus ride. It was only a 36 km bus trip but when there are approx 90 people on a 45 person limit bus many stops take place along the way.... I have to say I was a little apprehensive upon arriving as it was meal time and they told me to drop my bag and come get food before I checked in. I knew there were a few rules around eating so I was hoping to have a couple of hours to prepare myself but oh no! Off I went and entered the eating hall to see four rows of about 40 people each sitting cross legged on grass matts on the floor, eating a strict (no meat, eggs, onion, garlic, sweets..) veg meal with their right hand in silence................. When you have to eat with your hand you really begin to understand the entire bathroom situation in India. Let me put it this way, basically only non indians use toilet paper and those who don't use t.p. use their left hand and a water bucket to clean themselves.... At this point I can go on and on about cleanliness but really it gets me no where and I have to eat in India!


After the meal I went and checked in and met a lovely girl from London who also does Bikram's yoga so we decided to be 'roommates.' Off we went to the dorm and started to make up our home for the next two weeks. Well, before I knew it it was 7:50pm and the bell was dinging for evening Satsang (meditation and chanting) so we troopped off and it was then that I had my real first ashram experience. There were about 180 of us in a hall sitting on the floor and it begin with us all chanting/singing 'om' three times. The Swami then started us on the road to meditating and we continued in silence for about 30 min after which we sang some more and then had a brief lecture. At 9:30 we concluded and headed back to our dorms. It seemed okay at this point.


I had an alright sleep and at 5:20am the bell rang to get up and do the above procedure at 6am followed by a 90 min yoga class and then brunch. After brunch there was an introduction to ashram life, more yoga, and then we were given our karma yoga (volunteer work) for the time we are here. I have been assigned to the Health Hut which is where you can buy fruit, teas and fruit juices throughout the day as two meals are day are not enough... By this point in the day I was going bat shit crazy! I live a scheduled life and was feeling so constricted by this damn schedule. It felt like it was never ending and the last thing from peaceful... hmmm what is going on?


By the end of day two I was having full conversations with myself about why the hell am I putting myself through this and the other part of the conversation was wondering why I was going bat shit crazy. I even tried to book a hotel in Varkala for a week earlier then I was supposed to leave but the phones were not working... Well, the next morning in our lecture we were given a lovely talk on how the ashram is a retreat away from everyday life and all it's stimulations and the schedule is in place so we do not have to think about what to do next. Okay, this was making sense (apparently some don't know how to live on a schedule!) and then he continued and explained that our minds were probably going all over the place and to let them wander and within time in this peaceful environment they will settle down..... Okay, okay, okay.

The remainder of that day and yesterday were lovely, the yoga is great, the lectures are inspiring and thought provoking and the meditation in theory sounds wonderful but it is hard to stay in a meditative state for 30 minutes! None the less, I think I am going to like the next 10 days and hopefully I will learn how to stay in a meditation for the entire 30 minutes!!!!

Enjoy the holidays and catch up with you later!