Hello again from India, where we are having a "barrel" of fun! Seriously though, this picture was taken inside a barrel that was the doorway to one of the clubs we went to in Mysore.

When we first stepped off the plane almost two months ago it was easy to focus on the negative aspects of Indian society, but now that we've come to accept and understand these cultural differences it has allowed us to delve deeper into Indian culture and to appreciate its inner beauty. We have just over three weeks left in this country and already we are starting dread the thought of leaving.

Yes, the poverty and inequality are still difficult to witness, but in reality, what society doesn't deal with these issues? When traveling to faraway locations sometimes the biggest reward is being able to look back objectively on our home country and to question our own society. In India, when strangers meet, the pleasantries of Canadian society are all together skipped. Indians get straight down to business and will ask you more details about your life that you would not normally feel comfortable revealing. They have no qualms about asking you your age, your line of business, how much money you make, if and when you'll be getting married, your religion or in some extreme cases if you've ever been 'touched' (the jury is still out on what exactly that means???). These are considered the norms of everyday acquaintance making but would be considered in rude back home. At first these conversations were very off putting, but now I question if it's not a better way. When we meet people back home we're likely curious to know the answers to these questions but would never dare to ask. Instead we gossip about others when there not around and speculate at the true answers. Is it not better just to be forthcoming and truthful?

One thing that Indian can teach the rest of the world is patience and calm. Walking down any street in any Indian city will make you realize the necessity of finding a calm and peaceful place in daily life. Hindu philosophy is embedded with the importance of meditation and inner peace. The practice of yoga (of which there are eight different parts or 'limbs') is designed to lead to this inner peace and enlightenment. One of the eight limbs is the practice of what westerners call yoga but is actually the 'asana' limb which is a process of cleansing the body before you can move on to the more important limbs of yoga. We are now in Mysore in the southern India to study the asana postures with a young teacher by the name of Bharath Shetty (www.yoga-india.org). We've already taken one week's worth of classes with him and very happy with his teaching methods as he creates a specific asana practice for individual body types. We have three more weeks to go and although the classes are extremely strenuous we will be sad when our time is up as the rewards of the class more than make up for the challenges.

But before we go further into our current daily life, there were a few weeks of travel that led us to Mysore. Here's how we spent the last few weeks on the road leading up to today:

After our last stop on the beach in Varkala (from our previous blog) we headed to the nearby cardamon hills in the Western Ghats to search for elusive tigers and wild elephants.

Our first nature sighting: a 6 foot long rat snake...we approached it with extreme caution, a step at a time, taking pictures as we moved in. From 20 feet out, to 18, to 16, to 14........by the time we got within about 6 feet we realized that the snake was dead.

Along the foot trail with our guide in the lead.

Our first break of the morning in a beautiful clearing

Although there are about 14 tiger-pairs in the park we really didn't expect to see any as they are extremely shy until they pounce. So for the sake of our blog, Emily did her best tiger impression.
There also lots of wild elephants. Look at this great picture I took of them.....
Emily and I decided to take the nature hike which costs 100 rupees each (about $2.50 CDN). We were being cheap (actually I was being cheap). Our friends Eric, Elena and Annie splurged for a jeep safari (for a whopping 1500 rupees or $37.50 CDN). This was a picture from Eric's camera of their elephant sighting.....

One more time of our elephant sighting with my camera (elephant highlighted for your benefit):
lesson learnt: next time when you spent thousands of dollars for trip across the globe, spend the extra $35 CDN.

now, back to our nature trail. This is a real life tiger footprint....so cool!

Monkey in the tree. He's black and has a white head, I can't remember the name of this particular breed but lets just call him the bald-eagle monkey.

Water buffalo roaming in the tiger reserve...not a wise decision in the least.
The Western Ghats (ghats = mountains) are a great environment for growing spices. We visited a spice plant. This is a flower from the powder puff tree, so called because the flower is soft like a lady's powder puff...or so I'm told.

Here's Elena sniffing turmeric
Pineapple growing in a pineapple bushel
Cardamon
Vanilla beans. Our guides English accent was hard to understand but basically we came away with the knowledge that the high cost of vanilla beans is due to the processing procedure and not so much in the way that it grows.
This is yellow bamboo, it grows 9 inches per day. This particular stock was only 6 months old but it was massive. Emily is now certain that sustainable garment industries will require only bamboo.
Cocoa for chocolate....mmmm... there was also lots of homemade chocolate for sale in town.
Cinnamon tree. The bark is what we use.
Emily, Elena and Annie reviewing Annie's 'snaps' (as their commonly referred to here) from the spice garden.
Next up on the tour, the tea factory. Normally you're not allowed to take 'snaps' inside the factory, but this is India and the big boss wasn't around....enjoy
View of the surrounding tea gardens from inside the plant

Tea de-humidification process
Tea after grinding and fermentation
Tea sorting by leaf size
Tea fields, the tall trees are an Australian oak tree that is being used to stop soil erosion. Sometimes they also grow peppercorns around the oak tree.
This was our guide for the nature reserve, spice plantation and tea gardens. He also sold spices and drove a rickshaw. He was great, probably one of our favourite guides in the trip so far.
After spices and tea, we took a bbq cooking course and learnt how to make dosas (south Indian style rice pancakes...great for those with gluten allergies...which annie and I both have).
Here I am grating a coconut for coconut chutney. Indian is currently in a grip of a power shortage and so they have timed power outages several times a day. Part of the cooking course was instructed with candle illumination only
Eric grinding coconuts on a big stone and a stone 'rolling' pin. Our teachers were very impressed with his skills (he's a chef by trade).
Here's one of the teachers instructing us on how to make dosas, and also teaching us that ventilation is not necessary when cooking with gas indoors.

After the nature reserve and good times in the Western Ghats, we headed back to the coastal city of Cochin. Which is a beautiful Portuguese enclave on a protected peninsula. Here's Em and I taking our shadows for a walk.
Cochin is famous for their chinese fishing nets. They're basically a massive net on a cantilever that gets dipped into the water and then hoisted out with the days catch of boots, human feces and occasinally a prawn or two.
Em enjoying the last rays of the day.
graffitied wall.
This was one of the first churches in Indian. The architecture of this church was used as a guideline for most of the churches in the rest of Indian. Vasco da Gama body was also entombed in its catacombs for awhile before Portugal reclaimed him.
Another cathedral close by:
That evening we went to a kadakali performance. The particular play we saw was titled 'the Killing of Kichaka'. The makeup for the performance is extremely elaborate and guests are invited to arrive early to watch the procedure.
Like in Shakespearean time, all the performers are male...later on in our slides you'll see this guy's metamorphosis.
The first part of the performance is a demonstration of meaning of the play. The actors don't speak, but convey emotions mainly with their eyes and a little bit with their bodies...kinda like Charlie Chan. This guys control of the eyes and facial features were amazing.
The star of the evening was this demon named Kichaka.
In the story he seduces this lady named Draupadi-Malini
The tension mounts!
Kichaka the anti-hero is killed for his evil doings. Just like the title of the play had foreshadowed.
And then everyone is happy that he's dead...especially the killer himself Bhima-Chef Valala.
This is our last dinner as a group before annie and eric parted ways the next day for Goa and Emily, Elena and I moved on to mysore.
Here is an image of school kids playing cricket, I took this picture while emily was on the phone with her parents.
As as wedding gift (as if we haven't been spoiled enough already) Sarah, Jen, Peter, Jayden and Linda Holland bought us a night at the Vythiri Resort which was an amazing all-inclusive eco-resort in a secluded hill station that was conveniently located enroute from cochin to mysore. The food and accommodation was spectacular. Thank you very much to the Hollands for such a kind and thoughtful gift!!! In was a very welcome reprieve from backpacker squaller.

Our glorious, glorious bed, where we spent most of the time recovering from food commas...we don't know how to control our eating at all inclusive resorts...but we knew we were days away from a yoga retreat so we indulged to the max.
Em on our balcony. Each room had a view.
Walking between the cabins
included in our all inclusive package was a sight-seeing trip to a nearby lake. Turns out we were the sight to see.

Natural flowers in the lake. we got a little to close and almost paddle-boated over this one....oops

Nobody gets a free ride in India, ever the monkeys are doing double duty.
Here was the view from a nearby look out.
Pool table back at the resort
Part of the eco-resorts charms were making us feel guilty for consumer society
This tea plantation was next door to the resort. We took a guided hike up it for sunset. This wasn't the one, but it looks pretty much the same so you can get the idea.



some pictures are so cheesy and horrible that it would be an injustice not to share them. Here's me sniffin' tea.
My new thumb ring.
The sun doing what it does best
Here were our friends that we made at the resort. It was easy to meet them as we had set times for breaky, lunch and dinner and always met up in the restaurant. The little girl reminded us so much of our niece Cadence and made us miss her that much more. She was very excited with all the food-stealing monkeys. (From L-to-R Valaria, Frank, Em, me and Amai....down in front is the wee one, Nisha.

After a few days of all-inclusive bliss we were back on the chicken bus and headed to Mysore to meet back up with Elena. While we were staying at our upscale resort, Elena was staying in a single room at this hotel complete with a squatter toilet. But they brought her breakfast tea and paper every morning so it wasn't sooo bad.
A few days before we arrived was the 'paint-your'cow' festival. All the cows in town were still in their full glory when we arrived. Sadly, the paint has now faded from their skin and our memories :(

Billboards for the latest bollywood flick, this one has a picture of the director with his finger pointed in a 'director-like' fashion so you can be assured of it's quality.
Our first day in Mysore was spent hittin' the pavement searching for yoga guru's. The second day was spent hittin' the pavement searching for an apartment. This shot was taken towards the end of the second day. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
Emily and Elena have matching birkenstocks....can you say 'stereotype'
Before the baby bird fly from it's nest it bound to have a few nasty falls. Luckily the ingenious indians are more intelligent and have invented training wheels for scooters....that's right, training wheels for scooters...no joke.


This is our house for the next month.....or at least the top left corner of it. It's great and the family that owns the house is really sweet. In fact, they're in the process of immigrating to Canada.
Within hours of moving in we went to the supermarket and stocked our shelves with supplies including delicious fresh spices....after months of travel, it is really nice to be domesticated again.
I'm not sure why their milk slogan is funny to me, because really, shouldn't you expect 'quality excellence from cow to consumer' for your milk?
Sometimes living in a fully furnished apartment with modern conveniences makes us feel like we're not in India anymore, luckily this is the view from our back window and reminds us where we are (along with the 4 power outages per day).
This rickshaw full of coconuts just around the corner from our apartment also helps
Here is our sweet chai lady. She has a hot fresh pot on from morning to night.
Emily's Birthday... complete with birthday cake and nasty wine.
Em's best friend Sarah put some money in our account for Emily to celebrate. The bottle of wine was on her. Thanks sarah!!! (it tasted much better than the three bottles in the above picture)
Em had enough left over after the wine to get a pedicure from a nearby spa. Thanks again Sarah!!!
Kyla and Mark from our Goan and Backwater boat adventures are with us once again. Kyla is starting yoga with us tomorrow morning and Mark will probably start studying yoga here too. Kyla and Elena met three Turkish travelers in Thailand a few months ago and they have now come to India to finish their travels. Here's a pic of us all after a night on town. (From L-to-R: Ali, Yavuz, Elena, Ilhan, Emily, Kyla, Mark and Me). We might have to make a stop in Turkey now as Ali, Yavuz and Ilhan run restaurants during the high season on the Turkish Mediterranean coast.Who says you can't fit 5 + a driver in a single rickshaw??? This was when we still liked the rickshaw driver, a few minutes later we had a verbal 'discussion' about our previously agreed upon price.....just when you think you've got this country figured out????
Well if you'd made it this far, pat yourself on the back....that was a long one. For the next few weeks we'll be doing yoga and not a lot of travel so the blogs will probably going to take a bit of a dip on they ol' excitement-meter. But never fear, after Mysore we're off to Indonesia and the island of Bali to visit the disneyland of surf!!! needless to say I'm a little excited.

love to all, Emily & Chris