Halfway

Thursday morning we had a led class at 6:15, because Friday was a holiday "Shivarathri". This time it was not Sharath, but guruji who led us through the primary series. It seemed a lot easier than when Sharath led us through, but there was one occasion, in Bujapidasana, where guruji nodded off sitting in his chair while counting. Some of the yogi's started clearing their throats to get guruji to snap out of his little nap. Luckily Saraswati was also on the stage and she gave him a nudge... I was actually practicing right next to him on the stage, but I like all the others was stuck in the pose waiting for him to finish counting the five breaths, which became like 15 breaths :-).

Michael had left the day before, and I had arranged with him to take over his scooter once he left and paid half the rental, Rs 1,200. It is a really new scooter that runs very well and has warning bells when you leave the stand up and switch the engine on WOW... Lots of people are jealous of "Pep+", the name given to the bike (the model).


So Thursday I set myself the task of finally getting to town and finding my way around and I wanted to visit the Ashok bookstore. During breakfast at Tina's I chatted to Misa and she decided to come along for the ride. Town was easy to find but traffic is so hair-raising... I almost hit a cow at one stage, so we parked the bike and walked.

We eventually found the Ashok bookstore after walking through the most amazing market, the Devaraja Fruit & Veg market... more pictures in my album!!!

I found a lot of books on Yoga and India. I have added some books to the books section on the right. Most books are a lot cheaper here in India. I also found bible story comic books for my son. There are also comic books for children of the Panchatantra and the Mahabharata to teach Indian children all about their gods.

Yesterday, Saturday, I found another bookstore, I think it was called Saudhary, that has a lot of computer books at like a quarter of the price of the books you can order on Amazon. These prices are actually printed on the back cover... so they are sold at these prices all over India!
I also found some computer CD's for kids to improve their vocabulary, spelling and other skills. I also bought two books written by the current President of India, Abul Karam. "Wings of fire" is his autobiography and "Mission India - A vision for Indian Youth" that is inspiring the youth of India to become a developed country by 2050.

Misa and I then visited the bookstore at the Rama Krishna Ashram, but this was closed until 4pm, so we went and had lunch and then came back. The book store was interesting and it did have books on other religions. Lica had bought a book here "Jesus lived in India", which I unfortunately did not find.
Then it was sanskrit class because there would be no class on Friday. Afterwards I went to the Internet Cafe to compare the prices of the books I had found with prices on Amazon.com.

Friday was a holiday as mentioned earlier and there was no practice in the morning. Jay, Myra and I had organised a rickshaw driver to come pick us up at 6 am in the morning (still pitch dark) and drive us to the base of Chamunde Hill from where we climbed the 1000 steps to the top. Many Hindu's do this on Sunday's, but today would be a particularly busy day too because of the religious holiday. We started at around 6:30 and got to the top just after 7. On the way we met lots of Indians (I don't recall any women - they seem to prefer driving to the top :-)) We got asked all the time where we were from etc.

The sun was already up when we got to the top. We visited the temple and walked around watching the pilgrims do puja (offering) to their gods, and then we walked the 300 steps back down to the statue of Nandi where the swami had his cave. (This is the swami we had had lunch with the previous week). From there Raju picked us up and we drove to town to a very popular dosa restaurant. Dosa's are made from lentils and rice batter and when done looks like a pancake almost. The restaurant filled up and the Indian people seemed to have idli and then the dosa for breakfast, but we just had the dosa and kept on ordering more :-).

After I got home, I took the scooter to try and find my way to a silk store. On the way I met Misa and Quyen at the coconut store and they decided to come along. I took them both on the scooter, which turned out to be a traffic offense according to policeman on the way. Luckily I did not get fined. I left Misa and Quyen at Fab-India (the silk store) as I had an appointment to have a massage at home. Afterwards I went to find the silk factory. I found it and had a look at the showroom, but the factory was closed because of the holiday.

In the evening we had a Kirtan / Bajan (singing and chanting in Hindi). This time the musicians were playing the Sitar and the Harmonium and drums. Afterwards (8pm), 5 of us decided to visit the temple at the Maharaja's Palace were a lot of the Hindu's were flocking to do Puja. Again we met a lot of people trying to befriend us and children running up to us wanting to have their pictures taken.
At 10pm we then went to the Hotel RRR, which is famous for its Thali's (rice, dhal, curd, raita and a vegetable dish) served on a banana leaf. Dylan entertained us all with his recollections of the naughty adventures he had in Mexico.

On Saturday morning I had breadfast at Tina's where I met Myra. I told Myra my plans for today and she decided to join me on the back of the bike for my excursions for the day. We went to the Silk factory, which was very interesting. Unfortunately however, there was no tourguide or anything and we were not allowed to take our camera's in. When I was in Thailand I visited a silk factory there too and I remember everything was done by hand there. Here they had Japanese machines doing the weaving of the sari's. It was a deafening noise. I noticed that the Indian's were walking around barefeet and no protective gear at all. They were all very proud of what they were doing and as we walked through, somebody would always call us over to show us what exactly they were doing.
Unfortunately they did not show us how they took the silk from the cacoon, as they had in Thailand, we started from the raw silk having been rolled up and washed, from where it was wound onto pins, then the silk strands were doubled and then twisted. They had two colours, one representing left twisted, the other right twisted. Then 438 strands were rolled onto a big roller from where it was used on the sari weaving machines. They also used gold thread in the sari's and the price of the sari's basically just varied on how much gold thread was in the sari. Then the Sari's were dyed, washed and ironed.

Afterwards we went to the Maharaja's Palace as I wanted to have seen it by day before I see the palace lit up on Sunday night. Like most tourist attractions in India, there are no signs explaining the attraction, you basically need to hire a tourguide at a relatively expensive price Rs 450 (we paid 200) and after you have seen everything, then they have books etc on sale.
The palace is beautiful, but needs to be maintained better. The stained glass windows that are breaking are just being replaced by normal glass for instance.

After that we went and had lunch at Sixth Main, as most of the other restaurants were closed around 3pm. I then dropped Myra off and went to Coffee Day as I felt like having some Ice Cream. I was constantly hungry. Coffee Day was interesting because their menu was covered with Logo's from Microsoft Windows and advertisement for the new Windows Vista... "The WOW starts now". There was even a Coffee Day magazine with a Microsoft front and back page and one of the meny items was something like a WOW coffee.

At six in the evening I went to the talent show that Lica had invited us all to. She had bought herself a harmonium and was taking music lessons to learn to play it. The music school was putting on a talent show, which was called "East meets West" and the 'western' (including asian foreigners) were doing two performances.
The started 45 minutes late. The first performance was an indian dance by four young girls. This was very cute and nice. The second performance was the westerners singing amazing grace. This did not seem completely rehearsed. The talent show went on, but was very slow and it was obvious that there had been no dress rehearsal. It was a bit chaotic and eventually I left to go to bed. Lica said she got home around 11:30.

Sunday morning Leena and I got to the led class very late. They were already doing Surya Namaskara B when we arrived after running to the Shala... not very good!!! My practice was quite good and enjoyable today.
Afterwards I sat and watched the intermediate series being performed by the led class after us. Guruji was leading the class and he was wearing a T-shirt that had two words on the front "Bad Man", which we thought was quite funny :-).

I went to the organic market at the Green Hotel again and bought some date & flaxseed and ginger and almond cake and some other things. I met Lori and Myra, who told me about a portuguese family that made lunch on Sundays and Wednesdays and Dinners on Fridays. The food was apparently excellent and they were going today, so I decided to phone and reserve a space for myself too. It is served at their house, which they call India.Song. The food was absolutely delicous. Starters was cold potatoe and leek soup, the main course was a greek salad and desert was vanilla ice cream on chocolate sauce... mmmm. It was very expensive though at Rs 230.

After that I went to the Yoga Shala. There was no conference this Sunday, but I bought the Ashtanga Yoga book written by Lino Miele and had Lino, Sharath and guruji sign the book. Then I went home and started reading until 6:30 when I went to pick up Lori.

Lori had asked me if she could come with me on my scooter to see the palace lit up, which happens on Sundays between 7 pm and 8 pm. The Lonely Planet guide said that there are 97 000 light bulbs all over the facade of the palace and the palace walls. Lori had spent the previous day on Jay's bike, which she said was not very comfortable on the bumps, so now she wanted to be on my bike. Myra went on Jay's bike.
The palace was very beautiful lit up, but the band playing english and american fanfare music just seemed totally out of place.

It is Lori's birthday tomorrow and we have made plans to eat lunch at the Lalitha Mahal Palace, which should be a grand experience.