Brazil

When last I left you, I was headed for Brazil, where we spent just 4 and 1/2 short days. 3 of them in Rio de Janeiro, where they were gearing up for Carnaval, and 1 1/2 in Sao Paolo.

To be honest, Rio was a bit of a disappointment. It was pouring rain the entire time we were there, so maybe that colored my view of it, but it was just a city. There were beaches, but they were just beaches. There were people, but they didn’t seem particularly good-looking to me. And then there was a dirty downtown that made you feel the need to keep checking to make sure your wallet was still there.

Sorry, but that was basically it. Maybe I was expecting too much.

Sao Paolo was more exciting, but perhaps that’s because we spent our last night there (last night on the continent) drinking beer and Smirnoff Ices (flashback to college!) and singing Portuguese karaoke with some local teenagers (who couldn’t seem to stop making out with each other) until 8:45 in the morning when we stumbled outside in search of anything resembling a hamburger and wondered when the sun had risen.

London

One 14-hour flight later, I found myself in England for the first time. It’s just like in the movies isn’t it? We ran around for 3 short days with friends we had made on the Incan Trail. I hit up all the obvious tourist destinations, including The Globe where one of our Incan Trail friends works, and we went out on the town a bit, and sampled Stoke Newington’s finest vegetarian kebabs early one morning.

It was all fun and games until I tried to leave the “flat” by myself to explore on my last morning there, having assured my Globe friend (who had had to leave earlier to make it to work) that I would be fine, and found myself locked on my kind hostess’s gated street. I couldn’t find the out button and finally had to scale the stone wall with the aid of the kebab man from the night before.

I somehow managed to keep my promise to my mother and not die while crossing the street, but I almost broke that promise about 17 times. In which direction you look before crossing the street is a HARD habit to break.

Bahrain

Bahrain is indeed a country in case you didn’t know. It’s in the Middle East and is officially called “The Kingdom of Bahrain”. I didn’t actually look it up like I normally do when I go to a country, because we were only there for 16 hours, and only in the airport. But I do know that they speak Arabic and they must have a lot of freaking (oil?) money because there were MERCEDES IN THE DUTY FREE SHOP.

Also, it was really interesting to visit even an airport in the Middle East because we saw in person the men in long, white dresses with red and white checkered scarves over their heads, with the black crowns holding them in place and women in burkhas that covered everything except for their eye slits. Surprisingly, the women didn’t seem at all meek, as I would have thought they would. Not that that means anything. And, clearly, I still resent the way that burkhas force women to be responsible for men’s sexuality (you cover yourself up so I don’t get whipped into a frenzy by your elbow, you creature who should feel evil for being sexual).

In Bahrain we ate… at Chili’s!

India – the ashram

On our flight from Bahrain to Trivandrum, we had the vegetarian meal. (I’m a vegetarian now. Since London. I’m going to keep it up at least until the end of the trip, to see how I go.) It was fruit as a side to… fruit.

Landing in India, it was immediately BOILING HOT and visiting the toilet I was immediately surprised by how clean it was. Expecting the very worst of the toilets means that, so far, none of the ones I have visited has phased me at all. I mean, I wouldn’t actually touch anything in any of them (my squatting muscles are getting quite a workout), but it’s surviveable. (Dare I say not that bad, or am I asking for it if I do?)

I got a WELCOME TO INDIA PRESENT. Know what it was? It was the DIRTY DIAPER that was zipped INSIDE my backpack when it came off the baggage carousel. Somewhere between London, Bahrain and India, there is a wise guy bag man who has some bad karma coming to him.

We immediately got a taxi to Neyyar Dam, which is where the ashram we were staying at – Sivananda Ashram – is located. Jillian fell asleep, but I stayed up to watch as our cabbie toyed with all our lives (called “driving” in India) and to see the cows go by.

We passed the first 2 weeks of February in the ashram. Here was our daily schedule:

5.20 am – Morning gong which interrupts your happy dreams of food with refined sugar and meat

5.32 am – You consider killing the lady who turns on your light because you aren’t up yet

6.00 am – Morning satsang (1/2 hour of meditation, 45 minutes of chanting Hindu gods’ names and a short ‘homily’ from the either the skinny South African swami, or the rotund Italian swami)

7.30 am – Morning tea

8.00 am – First yoga class

10.00 am – Vegetarian meal # 1

11.00 am – Karma yoga time (AKA chores)

12.30 pm – Optional yoga tutoring

1.30 pm – Afternoon tea

2.00 pm – Lecture on topic related to yoga

3.30 pm – Yoga class # 2

6.00 pm – Vegetarian meal # 2

8.00 pm – Evening satsang (same exact chants)

10.30 pm – Lights out as you curl up your poor, sore body inside your (pink in my case!) mosquito-netted corner of the world

Loved the yoga, meditation was nice, chanting was kind of fun for like 3 days…. HATED THE GOD TALK. We had one particular gem of a ‘homily’ (don’t know what else to call them), where swami said that sex takes away all the energy you need to be successful. He said successful people are successful because they stopped having sex and concentrated on other things.

So who all these loaded people who keep getting busted for sex scandals are is beyond me…

But, mostly, it was emphasized that the ashram was a place of peace and that yoga was something you could take and do whatever you liked with. You can do it as much or as little as you want and, they said, you would still see benefits because they are confident that it is a healthy and helpful way of life.

At the end of lectures we were even asked for “questions, comments and [here, coming from a Christian background, I almost choked] criticisms” about the teachings that we might possibly have to share. Amazing.

I’d say the swamis, all things considered, seem very open and, to the extent that yoga is related to Hinduism and we were taught about it, Hinduism seems to be a very open and accepting religion. “All paths lead to god,” we were told over and again (i.e. any religion you want to follow will get you there, you don’t have to do it our way), and the things they told us about their ideas on how a person should live life seemed much less like commands and much more like suggestions for things they personally believed in.

Though it seems that Hinduism, too, is a religion which feels the need to make you deny that you are human. Get rid of all anger, lust, and jealousy! Shove all your feelings and emotions deep down (“transcend” is the word used, though) as if they won’t come bursting out one day when you can’t take it anymore! Ignore the outside world and focus on the simple tasks of your day and your own enlightenment! No worries about all the crises going on in the outside world!

It does seem a bit selfish to retreat into yourself and focus only on breaking yourself free from the cycle of human re-birth, but hey, that’s just one person’s opinion.

The retreat from the outside world (no email, no phone calls, no reading news) was actually quite lovely. The more time that had passed since I had checked my email, the less I wanted to. And the improvement we made in yoga was quick, since we were taking class 4 hours a day. I feel bendier and stronger.

I also loved that, all day long, you could hear lions roaring from the lion park that was about a mile and a half away, and that you could go swimming in the lake during free hours, but, as swami said, the ashram could not be responsible if you got eaten by one of the alligators.

The coolest thing was when morning satsang was cancelled for a sunrise walk to the lake instead. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed in my entire life.

India after the liberation

The ashram was one of the most interesting things I think I’ve ever done, but it was also a bit like attending boarding school. Single-sex dorms, attendance taken at assemblies – oops, I mean satsang. Even, would you believe, an ashram talent show. (PAINFUL.) Out passes if you wanted to leave. Being held late after class if you arrived late.

Let me put it this way: we were ready to leave after 13 days. Really glad I did it and feel that it did help me re-prioritize a bit, but I was ready to get a move on when it ended…

Outside the ashram walls, southern India is ridiculously hot. Everyday Jillian and I get afternoon tea so that we have an excuse to go sit somewhere with air conditioning or at least some fans and take a break from watching the make-up melt off each other’s faces.

The air is spiced when it doesn’t smell like vomit or rotting trash and the food is (chemically) hot again – yay! Haven’t had a good cry from ridiculously yummy spicy food since North America. Until now.

I love all the colorful things for sale and was taken by all the meandering dogs, cats, cows and, in particular, the free-running goats who look up at you with sweet eyes while they munch on someone’s thrown-out lettuce. That is, UNTIL it finally occurred to me that they are probably the reason I have EIGHTY ONE FLEA BITES ON MY FEET.

81. 81 in two days of freedom.

No matter. We have just attended our first evening out at a Bollywood flick which might be one of the funnest things I have ever done. Not only are the movies grand, epic and wonderfully over-acted stories, but in every battle scene there is at least one elephant stomping on some poor foot soldier and you get to see his guts go flying out his mouth, and the costumes are a show in and of themselves, as is the audience which A) never turns off their cell phones and never bothers whispering and B) hollers and hoots like a bunch of 12-year-old boys watching a sex ed video.

But, no worries, the movie people anticipate this and have the volume turned up so loud that I think my hearing will be completely gone by the next time I blog.

(Note: the couples are never actually shown kissing each other on the mouth – I think there might actually be a law or something – and the result is that, during these 5-minute romance scenes, the couple are touching each other suggestively and leaning their faces in very slowly until there couldn’t be more than one atom of air between them, but there is never any satisfaction, they never just freaking kiss already… it’s actually about 10 times more erotic than any other love scene I’ve ever seen at home. They just tease the audience endlessly…)

But, the best part is… they give you a bag lunch (dinner, linner, whatever) which has a veggie sandwich and a juicebox about halfway through the movie. I could live in an Indian movie theatre.

Well. Am going to be here for a few months, so I will have plenty of time to discuss more impressions of India later…