I'll start with the last two weeks, they followed a pattern quite literally of yoga, eat, sleep, yoga, eat, sleep. Can't complain.



Now for the last three days, I could write a book, but I'll try to give you an abridged edition. We're trying to head up north again since it's almost the end of our India trip and we have a flight out of Delhi. We left Kochi, our yoga home for weeks, for the tea hill station of Munnar via government bus, and the next day took another government bus down the mountain on the other to Madurai. Government buses are fabulously cheap-- they're how the locals travel. Those 11 hours we spent actually on the bus aside from the collective 6 hours of delays cost us a grand total of $6. And they really can be such a great way to get around. Honestly other Western travelers might call me plain crazy, maybe I am, but they're such an experience. You see so much, more than your greedy eyes could ever digest. You pass through city after city, you hear all the noise, watch people doing their business in the street. There's the people selling live chickens, the PVC tube seller, the watch seller, the fruit stands with their beautiful stands. They organize the fruit into geometric shapes and contrast the colors of the purple grapes, oranges, and limes. There's always attention to detail in India. The goods carrier trucks are truly the most beautiful vehicles I have ever seen. They are battered with years of use, are painted festively and don and wooden, hand carved, hand painted banner across the top, with gods, lotuses, and designs around the words "goods carrier." Though needless to say after hours of staring out the window at everything we can and absorbing the dust off the street into your every crevice and pore on our sweaty bodies we're pretty beat.

Munnar the tea hill station was lovely but really just a stopover to Madurai and this bus journey really takes the cake in ridiculousness. Though not for being unsafe, surprisingly enough. The scenery was some of the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life. The tea estates in the mist and the sheer rock face mountains were so gorgeous, only to be contrasted in equal measure by the absurdity of what was going on inside the bus. The bus driver was playing Indian music videos, and Bollywood films at full blast for the entire 6 plus hours. I had earplugs in my ears and they still hurt. Though I was entranced and now understand the formula for a successful Indian music video. Take of course a lovely young attractive girl, though not Western-thin, size 8 or 10 is great, add a middle aged, mustachioed, overweight male (moles on face?- no problem, horroble shirt?-great) and have them sing a love song. At least half of the scenes must involve bizarre choreography under waterfalls, in a river, and/or in front of waves crashing on rocks at the beach. And there you have your own Indian music video hit. I really don't know wny they are so averse to young attractive men playing leads in India. Honestly, in one film such a character was a villain, and he was beat by the fat middle aged man in a martial arts face off!! There must be something I'm missing.

Ok so Madurai, is mad. It's one of those huge, holy Indian cities where utter insanity is the name of the game. I could never describe it. I have however taken about 500 pictures (no exageration-- digital, baby!) in some frenzied attempt to document it. Visiually I can't get enough of the place, --listening to myself type I am a real visual junkie. Like to look and look and look, I guess-- but such places are exhausting and two days is enough. I'll probably drive myself mad filling up 64GB of memory card space before I can download it if I stay any longer. I promise to upload pictures when I have more time.

And right now what I am doing writing this dissertation on 3 days journey? Well Hernando and I have had our first big-- Oh Shit-- moment. We missed our train. The train we booked today because it only comes once a week and was the single most expensive journey we have booked yet, $100. Which may not sound like much to us lucky westerners, people take out loans so they can build houses with that much here, but Hernando and I are budgeting $300 a week for the 2 of us so 30% of our weekly budget hurts. But what can you do? Well as it turns another train is taking this less traveled route tonight at midnight, so we had to rebuy the tickets and get split up. I'm going ot be in first class! and Hernie in 2nd AC. I however am not looking forward to getting split up from him. I get enough unwanted male attention while I'm with him. And two crazy Aussie girls we befriended in Kochi said they had men touching their legs while they were trying to sleep on an overnight train once. Oh and did I mention that this is a 36 hour train journey?? Lots of re-reading books time. Well must be off, I don't fell like missing this one...

PS. Speaking of re-reading books everyone has to read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy if you haven't already. She is too amazing. That book is a novel but she also authors hardcore political essays about all types of Indian atrocities so I'm completely in love with her.

South India and a sigh of relief

We have finally reached South India and we had no idea what a relief it would be to come here. We're in Fort Kochi, in the state of Kerala. This region is famous for it's backwaters, there are just rivers everywhere. We've done the compulsory tourist boat tour on the back waters which was quite nice though I think I perhaps enjoyed the journey to the place even more. We took local buses, which when not overcrowded and time is not an issue can be quite fun. You just see so much. If you want a quick overlook at what a place is really all about get on some local buses. We passed village after town after village and when we had to change buses a friendly young guy obsessed with his cell phone walked us to the next bus and told us which one to get one since all the signs down here are in the local language, Malayalam. This is a bit of a dissapointment to Hernando because he has actually been learning some Hindi since we got here and now he can't use his skills.

Speaking of Hernando and his love of learning he is currently taking a class on an Indian instrument called the veena. It has 12 strings like a sitar-- see the photo. And this morning we took a yoga class that apparently turned out to be an advanced class though we hardly ever done any yoga before! We took two classes a week ago and liked it but we did not go in prepared for what was ahead of us this morning. A little way into the lesson we're doing these stretching poses on our backs with our knees bent and legs in the air and the guru decides I'm ready for the advanced pose. He literally folds me into a pretzel with my ankles crossed and my head sticking out in in front while on my back like a flexible but helpless beetle. And then halfway in we were both doing headstands-- gettingup and staying up independantly! Go us and this amazing yogi who I think in turn wants to turn me into a yogi before we leave India.

Two nights ago we watched a Kathakali performance. It's traditionally a dance or play performed in Hindu temples illustrating important stories about the gods but it seems that it is mostly preserved for tourists now. Indian people have little interest in it anymore, what with Bollywood, TV and the internet, and it's quite profittable to charge tourists $4 a piece and fill up an auditorium. Wow that was touristy. I honestly felt like I was at the zoo while I and all the other white tourists snapped their digital cameras away at the centerpiece. But I'm glad I went and got to see it still. Hernando had an amazing time to my left. I keep looking over at him silently dying of laughter in reaction to the very expressive acting/dancing. I mean VERY expressive. You have to be when you don't use words and just use your body to convey messages. They paint their faces beautifully and colorfully and wear amazing costumes. The best was the female demon, as is typical of female demons she (acted by a he) had a black painted face and exposed pointy breasts you come to understand that she is evil by her mischeivous eyes and maniacal screams.

I think Hernando and I have found a place we really like and will want to take it easy in for the next week or maybe longer. The people are so nice and friendly, they are so much more pleasant than people in the north. Life is more laid back and though you get used to constantly being on the offesive up there it's a huge sign of relief to be friendly again to strangers and not have to shoo them away like flies because you are constantly being hounded.

One more thing that surprises me that I'm sure you're all curious about is that Hernando and I turn out to be great travel buddies. Honestly before we left we weren't sure how long we'd have before we wanted to kill each other. But even though we've spent every moment of every day together for the last two months we have managed to remain not just civil to each other but enjoy being together. We each become annoying and a pain in the butt at times but it blows over easily. We were having a good laugh yesterday with 2 Australian girls who have been traveling together about how good it feels to have a fight when you need to and get over it.

I have finally uploaded more pictures to flickr! The address is:http://www.flickr.com/photos/37516374@N02/ enjoy!