Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

before i came to mysore i was warned that there would be a constant stream of people coming and going. it’s really easy to make friends, but going-away parties are pretty common and there’s often someone new at the shala in the mornings.

last week joey and jennifer both went back to la. there were actually four of us here from the same shala in la (laura is still here), but ironically we didn’t meet until coming to mysore. kinda funny coming half-way around the world to make friends with people who live right near you.

in other news, i’ve decided not to travel around india for two weeks before coming home. i had wanted to go up north to banaras (varanasi), but decided to go visit a friend in bangkok instead. it will probably end up being cheaper to go to thailand and i’m not going to have to worry about traveling north india alone, getting ripped off, and lugging my stuff all around in the increasingly hot weather.

jennifer’s going away at the green hotel. you can’t actually see jennifer, but that’s laura in the front

joey’s going-away was lunch at tina’s, followed by gorging ourselves on jackfruit (his favorite fruit)

yummy jackfruit

joey with his brother

i had it pointed out to me recently that i haven’t been writing much about yoga in this blog which i guess is pretty ironic since the purpose of this trip was to come and study. i have been practicing yoga asanas every morning for two hours, and studying sanskrit (3 classes a week and about 2 hours of studying a day). i guess i should start writing more about it tho, especially if the IRS decides to look at this when i submit my receipts for coming to study.

most sundays pattabhi jois (guruji) holds a conference, where we all get the opportunity to ask anything that has been eating away at us. usually this means a lot of silence, more flashbulbs going off than if madonna happened to be practicing and us struggling to understand him. he does make a lot of jokes tho and goes on in detail when answering questions. here’s a summary of what was said at the last two conferences, if anyone is reading this and sees an error, let me know.

• studying sanskrit (reading, writing and grammar) and ayurveda is as important as studying the yoga asanas.
• the final resting pose is shukasana NOT shavasana. sukasana is a rest, shavasana is an actual asana that involves stopping of the breath for an extended period of time. shavasana is very hard … it may be part of 4th series, i don’t know.
• during padamasana (final lotus position) it is very important to perform jahalandara bundha (the throat lock). this allows for control of the breath in and out of the body. it is equally important to be able to control the flow of air through all seven holes in the body, including the ones “downstairs”.
• bad thinking, bad habits and bad comany must be avoided (i’m not sure if he mentioned bad company too). keeping a daily yoga practice and thinking only of god must be followed.
• one must take marriage, especially if one is already 28. i wonder if he knows about my fortune reading in hyderabad where i was told that i would get married in my 28th year and have a very big dowry.
• one must be very careful what he eats. only eat vegetarian food, no eggs (liquid flesh), use lots of ghee (clarified butter), have milk every day (especially indian milk which i can somehow digest), and avoid fish. i think he made some comments about with vegetables to avoid and said that garlic was bad too, but i’m not sure about that.

guruji holding court

while everyone back in the states was celebrating martin luther king day, all of india was celebrating sankranti which is bit of a harvest / season change festival. in typical indian fashion it involves a mix of color, religion, cows and waterbuffalo. the weekend starts with pujas (religious celebrations) and food and then builds to decorating animals making them walk through fire.

unlike the states where bovine ownership seems to be restricted to farmers who have lots of them, it is very common in india for families to own some cows and water buffalo (even in the cities). they are used mostly for milk and transportation, but their dung is also dried for use in building and heat.

hindu priest performing the puja

the gay pride cow

i added a bunch of pics to the hyderabad and mysore sections, as always click on any image to see a full size version

so that rest of the weekend in hyderabad wasn’t near as action packed and you’d think that would get me detailing it sooner but apparently that’s not the case.

saturday
venky has a farm that he started about 60km outside of hyderabad and on saturday afternoon we all piled into his diesel truck and headed up there. all of my usual comments about indian traffic apply here too, except that things are different when you are in one of the bigger vehicles on the road. very often there would be a motorcycle or ox-driven cart in our way which meant leaning on the horn and getting them to move out of the way … of course when a bus would pull up to within inches of our bumper and lean on its horn, we’d get out of the way too. i think that it was a wise decision to decline venky’s offer to take a turn driving.

being on the farm was such a nice change from the madness of hyderabad, it was quiet, there were very few people there and nobody tried to sell me anything or beg for money.

the rice had already been harvested, but he had tomatoes, eggplant, chilis, ochre and a few other things all ready … and when it was time for chai they milked the water buffalo, boiled the milk and made it fresh. now i impress myself when i make a salad out of my backyard in la, but if i could head out back when it was time for ice cream that would be a whole new level of self-reliance. somehow i don’t think that my landlord would let me bring a water buffalo home tho.

the lone white person at the zoo

white tiger swimming at the zoo

i’m not sure that this needs a caption

sunday
on sunday we headed up to the zoo, which was full of animals in natural habitats and what appeared to be the main attraction … the only white person to be visiting. kids especially would run up to me, ask to get their picture taken and ask if i had any coins from the states. even people who didn’t want say hi would often stare as i walked past. none of it seemed to be bad natured, in fact most people were very friendly … i just think that while hyderabad is a big city, it is off the tourist track.

the highlight of the day for me tho was finding out that i could tip the zoo keeper 100 INS (~$2) and get into the lion cage during feeding time … it’s all captured on video but i don’t know if i’ll get it off until i get back to the states.

man working on the farm

tasting the milk before we make chai

well i guess i went and got lazy with this blog while i was in hyderabad, i was keeping notes tho and finally got all my pictures off my camera. i will be sending out links to photo albums soon (email me if i don’t send it to you and you want it) and also putting highlights on the blog. i might even get it all done today, we’ll see how i feel after writing this.

hyderabad is about 650 km from mysore but in india that means spending 10 hours in a rickshaw, train, taxi, plane and car to get to my destination. my friend venky who i worked with at my very first dotcom about eight years ago in san francisco grew up in hyderabad and moved back a few years ago to the indian office of a software company and also start a farm outside of the city. it was great getting to spend time with him, see his family, have his wife’s excellent cooking and manage to watch some of indian idol (and yes they even have an indian simon cowell who makes fun of everyone).

after traveling all day on wednesday, i went back to venky’s house to clean up and then he took me out to a local nightclub. the interior looked transplanted right out of los angeles (which the owner seemed absolutely tickled to hear), but the crowd was 95% indian males (mostly in ties), 4.9% indian females and the rest made up by myself. while hyderabad is a major city, it is off the main tourist track and for most of the time that i was there i had the starring role as the only white person in attendance.

thursday
venky had to work thr and fri but his brother-in-law (arun) was able to take off on thursday to show me around the city. i got to experience indian traffic from the back of a motorcycle which was quite the experience. unlike most indians i did wear a helmet but i had on standard indian footwear (flip-flops). india traffic is completely crazy and really defies explanation. fortunately it is congested enough that nobody can go to fast which seems to prevent accidents from being too bad. there are virtually no street signs in this country and people seem to find their way around by a combination of instinct and asking 10 different people for directions and averaging out the results. stop signs and lights do exist but they are more of a suggestion to drivers and not a rule to be followed all the time. the only traffic rule that everyone seems to follow is to have one hand on the wheel and one hand on the horn. if someone in front of you is going too slow, if there is a cow sleeping in the middle of the highway or if things seem too calm, drivers just lay on the horn and speed up.

thursdays tour started with a 72 foot buddha statue in the middle of a lake (hassain sugar). it is the world’s largest granite statue and was carved out of a single piece of white granite. apparently the statue was carved on the shores of the lake but on the initial attempt to transport it to the center of the lake, the boat capsized and the 450 ton statue sank to the bottom of the lake. a group of japanese engineers volunteered to raise it and placed it on it’s currently pedestal in the middle of the lake. although the buddha (nee siddhartha gautama) was born in india, the country is mostly hindu. hinduism seems to make room for just about every god and views the buddha to be an incarnation of their god vishnu (as was krishana and according to some texts christ).

following along with incarnations of vishnu, we moved next to the birla mandir temple which honors the most recent incarnation of vishnu, lord venkateswara. the temple was build out of white marble and seems to almost glow in the sunlight. like most temples in india, pictures (except from a distance) are not allowed.

hyderabad has a significant muslim population (20%-50% depending on the guide book) and the next stop was at two significant muslim landmarks. charminar is a massive square monument with four minarets used historically to watch for invaders. the landmark was beautiful but for some reason, like many other landmarks in india, it was covered in graffiti. i couldn’t read most of what was written but what i could didn’t seem to be political, mostly what we’d call tagging in the west. i have been pretty surprised at the amount of graffiti on monuments here. adjacent to charminar is the mecca masjid, a mosque built in 17th century which boasts bricks built from soil brought in from mecca and space for 10,000 people to pray together.

charminar

the mecca masjid (mosque) with room for 10,000 people to pray together

next on the itinerary was the salar jung museum which showcases massive collection of artifects accumulated by its nakesake during his life and also some that he inherited. all photographs are banned in the musum, they even go as far as having a mandatory camera check and using xray machines and a metal detector to make sure that nobody tries to sneak anything in.

normally my patience for dealing with horrible traffic, beggars and hawkers wears thin pretty fast, but perhaps the constant shock of how different this all was from anything i had seen before kept my interest. it probably helped matters that arun was a great tour guide and managed to evade most of the nastry traffic by weaving in and out of traffic on his motorcycle. we finished the day up at golkonda fort in the old part of town, which meant lots of very curvy streets and having to ask directions countless times. there an indian version of mapquest called mapmyindia.com but frankly i have no idea how it would work.

the majority of the city’s muslim population lives in the old city which means that most of the women i saw were covered head-to-toe in burkhas and there were actually stores selling meat (a rarity in this mostly vegetarian country). the fort is a long, sprawling complex and once we got past the initial beggers and hawkers it was a pretty quiet place. as we entered the initial complex, there was this odd noise that i eventually learned was a huge colony of bats that live within fort. i have no idea of they ever show themselves.

the old city outside golkonda fort

young kids at golkonda fort

ruins inside the fort

we finished the day with a famous hyderabad chicken biryani (the first meat i had eaten since arriving here).

cars, rickshaws and people outside the restaurant … pretty much every street looks like this

friday
friday i took off on my own to do some handicraft shopping, check out a botanical garden that was much in need of watering (monsoons aren’t until the fall) and check out india’s answer to a mall. the real excitement of the day tho was figuring out how to cross a busy hyderabad street. the main streets have at least 4 lanes of traffic going in each direction (depending on how many cars decide to squeeze in) and while there are traffic lights, drivers use descretion when deciding if they are going to stop. following venky’s suggestion, i realized that i was safest if i just waited for a local to cross the street and followed him across.

some of the few flowers in bloom at the botanical gardens

i now own the shirt on the left

… ok, my hands hurt … i’ll post details from the weekend tomorrow.

i realized this morning that i have been in mysore for four days now and have yet to write a single post about yoga. in some ways there is not a huge amount to say. we all practice in a big room with about 40-50 people at a time, guruji, sarath, manju and guruji’s daughter whose name i would totally mangle if i tried to write are all there assisting. guruji is almost 90 so he doesn’t adjust all that often. sometimes he adjusts other times he sits in the chair up front, reads the paper, naps … he always seems to be there tho and there is something about his energy that makes an impact on me every time i see him. he has a great smile and he knows this practice better than anyone. he believed in it long before yoga was trendy and found a way to bring the practice all over the world.

there are probably 100-150 students here now (i hear rumors that more are coming after the break on monday) and the community of yoga students is another thing that makes this place so special. the buddha talked of the importance of a sangha or like-minded community of people as being really important and i see that here with all these people coming from all over the world to practice yoga. a handful of people are teachers but it seems like most people have other careers but have had their lives impacted enough by yoga that they find ways to come here.

so the universe really works in mysterious ways. after writing that posting yesterday where i mentioned never seeing a bar in mysore i ended up seeing two yesterday. the first i happened across while exploring near my hotel, and i really wish that i had taken a pic of it. it was quite a site seeing the 11 year old bar tender taking care of the place. the bar was open to the street and it seemed that you had to buy a bottle of something and then they would use that bottle to make your cocktail. i may try to work up the nerve to ask if i can take a pic of the situation, it was really quite funny. the second bar was below the restaurant where i had dinner later that night, it was down the same street and packed fully of people at around 7pm.

i think that the restaurant upstairs was somehow associated with the bar as the staff really wouldn’t let go until i ordered a beer to have with my meal. the restaurant itself was pretty big and the staff to customer ratio was close to 5:1 … i literally had about 5 waiters surround me while i decided on my order. they brought a big jug of water to the table and after much gesturing and explaining i thought that i managed to tell them that i wanted bottled water … of course i realized i was wrong when after taking my order they said “ok, you take beer now”. i drank 1/2 of a taj mahal and felt exhausted. i have been managing to fall asleep around 8pm every night but find that i wake up ever 1-2 hours, i think my body just gets confused by being asleep at that time.

so when my mom saw the name of this blog she was a bit taken aback and then she posted a comment saying that she still didn’t get the joke.

the gin and tonic is the only classic cocktail to have been invented in asia. when the british were here, they had to drink tonic water due to the quinine in it fighting off the effects of malaria. my great uncle dick is probably the only person in the world who enjoys the taste of tonic water plain, so they decided to mix the tonic with gin … thus inventing a new cocktail.

i thought that naming my blog as i did was a bit ironic and hopefully funny. i am making a pilgrimage of sorts to study ashtanga with guruji and i found it sort of funny that perhaps someone would make a pilgrimage to the home of a cocktail. i guess many people plan vacations around wine tasting in napa but it seems more extreme to go half-way around the world for a cocktail. the ironic part is that i will likely have less than two (or none) gin and tonics the whole time that i am here. i get up between 4-5am each day and to tell the truth i don’t even know where i would go for one. the streets around here are lined with just about anything you can imagine excepting the stream of bars that line many western streets.

the clock struck midnight about 15 minutes before the plane landed in mumbai (bombay). everyone on the plane counted down together but i guess they held off on champage due to the tray tables being stowed and what not. i had been flying for 16 hours at that point and all i cared about was getting out of the plane so that i could figure out how i was going to get to mysore. i can’t think of a better way to have begun the new year tho, people often talk about resolutions and what not around new years but so often it seems to be more a passing thing that is often forgotten a few weeks later. since moving to la i have done a much better job keeping with my asana practice 5-6 days a week, studying more about yoga and trying to live a healthier life. i still have a very long way to go (many lifetimes i’m sure) but beginning the new year this way seems like an excellent way to help.

back to logistics …. after landing i cleared customs which went rather quickly, just a bunch of lines and stamps in my passport. i filled out some paperwork when i came and i think that i have to save the other half and turn it in when i leave, but nobody told me anything about it either way so who knows. after getting my bag and clearing customs i began the long and confusing process of finding my way to the domestic terminal and getting a flight to bangalore. there was a free shuttle that was supposed to run but the huge queue never seemed to go anywhere and my plane was scheduled to leave at 3am. i finally gave up and grabbed a cab which i shared with two indians who were taking the same flight. i don’t know if i would have pulled it off without them … even though there were about 75 cabs waiting around out front, one could not just go up to one and hire it. we had to prepay for a ticket inside, search the parking lot for the cab whose number was written on the ticket, then search for the driver of the cab.

buying a domestic ticket was no big deal but actually getting on the plane felt like a massive bureaucratic nightmare. i had to go through two metal detectors, have the magnetic-detector wand passed over me twice (in two locations) and each time i had my bags checked they had to stamp a tag attached to it. then there were people everywhere checking the tags on my luggage making sure that they were stamped. it seems that with 1.27 billion people here, it’s easier to build a process around lots of people instead of things like an airport that it’s not easy to sneak around in.

after flying another 2h45 to bangalore from mumbai, i grabbed a taxi to take me the next three hours to mysore. the cab driver assured me that he knew exactly how to get to my hotel, but what he really meant was that he knew where mysore was and would ask 15 different people for (often conflicting) directions to the hotel once we got here. apparently the streets all have names here, there are just no signs to indicate what they are …. look for all sorts of exciting stories once i get up the nerve to stop taking rickshaws around and rent a scooter.

ok, that’s all for now …. i think i found an apt and will be moving in there soon, pics of my current hotel (and shower / bathroom situation follow). click to see full sized versions.

traditional south indian breakfast of iddly

my indian style bathroom (the bucket is used instead of tp)

the shower head only supplies cold water, but if i squat i can shower under the hot water faucet

my hotel is the red sign on the right

elephants working at the mysore palace