As anyone knows who follows this blog, traveling never goes quite as planned. Specifically for us, travel NEVER goes as planned.
Half way through Chris' month of yoga he had to have an abscess removed. Meaning his yoga practice was over. Luckily for him, he was still able to play his new beloved tablas and took lessons almost every day. I finished my amazing month of twice daily yoga classes every Mon-Fri and was incredibly sad to leave. I only hope I can find another time to work on my practice in India again. I would recommend the Yoga India studio in Mysore, Gokolum to anyone looking for an attentive yoga practice.
From Mysore, we went to Bangalore, the Indian tech city. We had hoped to go to Hampi, but had ended up in the hospital looking after Chris' recovering wound and decided Hampi would wait another trip. Bangalore was actually pretty fun for a couple days! We were actually just there yesterday morning, which I can't even believe. We woke up early, took a train to Chennai, caught a Bollywood film and then jumped on an overnight plane to Singapore. I left Chris in Singapore. As Sarah Holland says, Singapore is a city which should market itself on its wound healing cleanliness. I carried on to Jakarta and now Medan where I am now. It was a long two days without a lot of sleep, but I made it. I'm here checking out Ethical Bean's beloved Sumatra coffee and then I will meet up with Chris in Singapore before we head to Australia. This is the first time we have been apart since our trip started and yet we are still managing to create this blog together. The wonders of technology.
Although we have left India, India has not left our minds. We have obviously been hugely impacted by the things we have seen and done.
There are some vital things that we just never got around to, and are totally worth coming back for. Much to our dismay we DID NOT:
1) act in a bollywood movie
2) eat vegetarian french fries at the veg kitchen McDonalds
3) pet a cow (ok, just Chris on that one - I'm an avid cow petter)
4) make it to Hampi
5) get a hindu blessing
6) make it through a city without stubbing our toes on the uneven pavement
7) get a great picture of the colorful trucks that line the road
Some road signs I never got good pictures of were:
Some signs you might see on the road:
1) Speed Thrills but Kills
2) Stay Sane, Drive in the Lanes
3) Sound Horn - OK! (this is actually on the back of all trucks and seems strange since everyone just honks constantly)
And some inspiring things our yoga instructor Bharath would say:
1) Fold front and surrender yourself to mother earth
2) Work with mind, body and breath
3) Feel and proceed
4) Listen to your heart beats
5) So beauuuuuuutifully relaxing
I am seriously going to miss him!!
(that was emily's intro that she wrote in Indonesia....the following our my captions from singapore)
Back in Mysore
This kid was all painted up, after we asked to his picture he told it was for a political rally or something like that.
Underneath this sheet a statue of Gandhi that the city of Mysore planned to unveil. I had the intention of taking a before and after picture but the ceremony never took place, even though the papers and locals told me it was going to happen a few weeks ago??? I'm still not sure what the delay was about.
Dye from the Mysore Market
Coconut Vendor
The in-crowd informed us that this place goes off after dark.
Auto-Rickshaws behind bars...
Here's our Turkish friend Ilhan showing us how to twirl like a whirling dervish. Ilhan, Ali and Yavus were very proud of their Turkish culture and taught us a lot.
While were studying yoga in mysore I also decided to take tabla lessons. Tabla's are a traditional indian percussion instrument that is played differently depending on the region. I studied the Carnatic style with local teacher. He comes from a long line of musicians and his family had performed for the local mughal kings for generations before their reign came to an end. I decided to by a set....here they are:
Here's me practicing to play them
Yavus, Elena, Emily and I decided to play poker one night. I insisted that there's no point in playing poker if betting isn't involved (or at the very least fake-betting). We didn't have poker chips and didn't want to use our rupees so we had to make due with dried lentils.
Every morning on our walk to yoga practice we came across this rickshaw packed full of school kids off to class.
Here's Kyla and I at the bar after a hard week of yoga.
Sam and SJ. SJ studied yoga with us at bharath's yoga studio and Sam had just arrived in India a few hours before. It was fun to hang out with him as were totally jaded by India at this stage. He was still fresh and reminded us what it was like when we first arrived especially when he'd ask questions like 'why are they burning garbage in the streets'.
Our morning routine before yoga practice....check facebook.
About a 2 hr drive from mysore was the village of bylakuppe. Bylakuppe is the largest tibetan refuge village in southern india. When you make the turn off the road it feels like you've crossed the border into a new country. It is a very bizarre place, the buddhist temples are in prestine condition. I was left wondering how the refugees were able to afford the upkeep, I can only imagine that there is substantial foreign money coming into the village. Here are some pics of temples and the surrounding town.
images on the inside of the walls depiciting a buddhist version of 'hell on earth'
Temple roof
Inside the main temple
The seat reserved for the dalai lama
buddha
buddha and his two deciplies that were responsible for the spread of buddism throughout asia.
Tibetan prayers being blown in the wind.
Drying monks robes.
One of the numerous temples.
lotus flower on the pavement in front of the temple
SJ and sam
Another beautiful temple.
Tibetan Flag
More drying robes
HIV/Aids educational campaign inside the village.
Tibetan propaganda
Back in our apartment now. Fly on the wall:
Our apartment had a kitchen. It took us a little while to get back into the swing of cooking but after a couple weeks of practice we were able to cook of beautiful food such as the following dish. I'd love to take credit but as you can see, i clearly had nothing to do with it....it was all kyle and emily.
Kyla and I enjoying their dinner
Valentines day....who says threes a crowd?
The green hotel. It has some excellent initiatives to employee women from the untouchable caste.
We thought eating out was cheap at restaurants in India, that was until we had our own kitchen....all these vegetables were bought for the equivalent of One Canadian dollar.
Em took a day trip to bangalore to get a chest x-ray for her australian work visa and took the camera with her for the ride. Here's a pic of cardboard recycling, india style.
Scaffolding...india style
Back in mysore now. This is a hindu temple inside the palace grounds.
Mysore palace from the outside, no pics allowed from the inside. On Sunday nights they light the palace up like a christmas tree. After being in mysore for a month we still never managed to see it lit up.
Princess Em in front of the palace
more palace.
last palace shot, i swear.
This is wear emily and I studied yoga
The room where we practiced
The front of the building
The new yoga shala which will be ready in two months. Students will practice on the top floor and our teacher will live in the rest of the house. We asked him if he's excited about it, he was indifferent. He was just happy not to pay rent to someone else and to own his own place. As for the yoga studio he was just as happy at the old place.
Here is our teacher Bharath....he's fantastic....we miss him.
Jack fruit growing in the garden of the yogashala
This little boy in the red was also part of our daily routine, every day when we walked by his house he would come running out to greet us and say 'hello' with his arm raised in a 'hitler'esk fashion. We decided to teach him more greetings and by the end of our stay he was saying 'hello, how are you?'
Em and Kyla on our last night in mysore
Emily's friend, jessica, who she hasn't seen since elementary and her boyfriend Sean happened to be traveling in India too. We managed to meet up with them through the beauty of facebook. Good ol' facebook....is there anything she can't do?
Our last breakfast in mysore from our favourite eatery. The food was fantastic and so was the proprietor Tina.
Next stop, Bangalore. We had four nights in the city before heading to chennai for our departure from india. Bangalore is at the forefront of India's race towards the future, although it still retains its indian charms. Here's one of hundreds of hindu temples in the city.
We had to check out the indian coffee house on MG road, it has been a local institution since the 50's but we read in the newspaper the day after we ate there that it will be closing its doors once and for all at the end of the month. So sad.
Blazin' colours in our rickshaw
6-month anniversary - The following pics were taken on our 6-month anniversary
Here's em in her new Punjabi suit. It was very colourful. All the kids in the street stared at her like she was a Bollywood star.
We had a great celebratory dinner from a restaurant appropriately named the 13th floor. We went early to catch the sunset over the city
Back down on level ground the next day:Construction of Bangalore's new metro....slated for completion in 2011.
signboard outside the Indian coffee co-operative
After a day of souvenir shopping
All over india there are men and women pushing carts through the residential areas selling their services. Most sell fruit and veg but there are tons of services and things being sold.... here's an iron-wallah:
Sikh Gurudwara in Bangalore. Bangalore has tons of military institutions and is one of the reasons why Bangalore has such a strong IT industry. Sikh people are regarded for being warriors and that is probably why it seems like there is a disproportionate amount of Sikhs in the military and hence why we saw so many in Bangalore.
Free range cows. It still amazes me that in a metropolitan city of 8 million peolpe that so many cows still roam free through the streets.
Emily was keen to see a bollywood movie in the theatres. We went to see one at this theatre called the 'Elgin Talkies' which has likely been around before movies even existed. Bangalore is a very western city so emily and I relaxed our dress code a little while we were there...but this theatre was in the heart of the old city which is much more conservative than the rest of the city. Emily was hardly scandly clad but we still felt a little uncomfortable, plus there were only men lining up for the theatre. My gut gave me the 'no' feeling, which might have been irrational, but in a foreign country sometimes the only thing you can rely on is your gut instinct. So we made a quick exit and didn't get to see the film. However the next day in Chennai we indulged in a 'Tollywood' film (It's called tollywood because it's in Tamil, not Hindi)
Outside the theatre these kids were curious to know what we were doing, when they found out we had a camera, they begged us to take a picture...which eventually turned into many more pictures.
These older ladies wanted to know what the big deal was and insisted on us taking their picture too.
As emily mentioned in the intro I had to have a small surgery in Mysore to have an abscess removed. The surgery was small, but it will take a long time to heal. I have to go to clinics every couple days to ensure the healing process is still underway.
Bangalore. IT capital of India:
Bangalore streets at night.
We've now left india and are in limbo at the moment waiting for emily's Australian visa application to go through. We're supposed to be flying to Perth on the 4th of March but this will likely be delayed for a week or so because emily's x-ray for her visa application (to proof that she didn't contract TB during our stint in asia) is currently lost-in-transit. As I've been writing this blog, i've also been on skype talking to people in India trying to find her x-ray.
Even though at times we found India to be a challenge, the rewards more than made up for it and we are so glad that we were fortunate to spend so much time there. Although there is still so much more to see on the sub-continent so we will likely be back in the not so distant future.
Emily and Chris
