Arriving in Mysore

Saturday (31) - travelling to Mysore
I got up at 5:30 to finish packing. It was still dark when I walked along the beach to meet Ayapam, the rickshaw driver I had arranged to meet at 6:30, but there were already people on the beach, some meditating, some appeared to be fishermen.
Ayapam was actually waiting for me, so I was quite pleased. The morning was fresh and the trip to the airport in the open rickshaw was quite windy and I was sick. I checked in at the airport to find out the flight was delayed by half an hour, so I sat down and watched the Indian version of CNN. There was nothing about a hijacking, just something about a student having been arrested on a flight to Mumbai for harassment of the cabin crew and endangering the lives of others.

I landed in Bangalore after the one and a half hour flight and was very surprised by the airport and terminal, which I later found out was only about 11 months old. It is a far cry from the airport I used two years ago. The new terminal is big, spacious, clean and organised. They even had Baskin and Robbins ice cream and Subway, so I got myself a subway sandwich for lunch and then went to the Airport Shuttle bus (something I have not seen anywhere in India before). I had earlier gone to the prepaid Taxi counter and asked them how much it would cost to the city bus station and they said around Rs 600. They did not bother to tell me that there was a shuttle terminating at the city bus station for only Rs 125. Anyway, it took an hour to drive into the city, so the new airport is obviously quite far out of the city, whereas the old airport was in the city.
I then searched for the bus to Mysore and passed an old rickety bus that I was told would take three hours for Rs 89. I found the 'deluxe' air conditioned "Volvo", as they refer to them here, for Rs 225, which was supposed to take two and a half hours but took about three and a half hours. I remember taking a 4*4 taxi at night two years ago with Michael Gannon and two others, which I described in my blog. The traffic is still the same with ox drawn carts being part of the traffic using the highway.

In Mysore I took the rickshaw to Gokulam, to the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, guruji's shala. Unfortunately I could not register as it was closed on Saturday, which meant I would not be able to practice the next morning. I then went to look for the room I had arranged with Jyothi, which was luckily only six houses up the street from the shala, but it is quite small. I then went to The Coconut Stand (capitalized because it is a landmark that everybody knows :-)). Guess who I saw, Iman from Egypt, who had been with me on the Purple Valley retreat in Goa two years ago. She has been in Mysore for 4 months already and she told me that Leena, who had been with me on my last trip to Mysore, had been here for 6 months and was then told to leave as that is the maximum time you can spend in Mysore. I also saw Kino McGregor, whose studio I practiced at in Miami in December 2007.
Then I went to Anu's Internet Cafe, a favourite hang out, had some supper and by coincidence got an email from Mel, one of the yogis I practice with at home, and I realised she was online with me, so I found out which internet cafe she was at. I knew her and Kerry were going to get to Mysore a week before I did. We walked to Nalpak restaurant and caught up.

Sunday (1 Feb) - getting settled in Mysore
Today was lead class in the shala. The first class is at 4:30 am and the next is at 6:15. The students that have been around for longer and are more advanced go to the first class. I was considering going to the shala at 6 and asking Sharath if I could practice, but decided to take the day off to recover from my cold. You are also not allowed to watch.
For breakfast I tried Tina's, who's cooking courses I had attended 2 years ago, but she had moved, so I had breakfast at Shakti house, which has changed ownership and is now called Alia Om Cafe, where I found out they were charging Rs 1 500 for one night. I met Miranda who was at Purple Valley with me a week ago and she said that Jason, Nancy's assistant, and Sylvia had also just arrived. Later I also went to Chakra House to look at the courses that were available. I am interested in a massage course, a Yoga Sutra course so that I am productive over this month.

The first thing I organised was to get a SIM card for my phone so I could make calls to the yogi's around here. I had not organised one in Goa or Kovalam (Kerala State), because making calls with a SIM card bought in one state will incur more costs when making calls in another state. Local is only considered local if it is within the same state. Getting a cell number from an Indian Telecommunications company was quite interesting to me because I work for MTN at home in South Africa, which is a telecommunications company that had been in talks last year with both Bharti and Reliance Communications for a merger or acquisition. The talks however failed with both operators.
I had the choice of four operators, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea (changed their name from Spice) and Reliance Communications, however, Reliance does not use the GSM technology and would have required the purchase of another phone. Idea is the cheapest of the 3 left and also has a yellow corporate branding like MTN, but its network is apparently not so good and because Vodafone is a direct competitor of MTN via Vodacom in SA, I decided to go with Bharti, which is also supposed to have a very good network. The cost of the SIM card was Rs 300, which included Rs 100 prepaid talk time. Calling cost will be Rs 1/min and Rs 5 per SMS (about ZAR 1) to South Africa. Apparently calling to SA will also be a lot cheaper if I make the call from India, than if calls are made from SA to me.

The next thing I did was to look for new accommodation, because the room I had was terribly small and not the cleanest, but I was thankful that I had it in case I did not find anything. I asked Shiva who organises self catering apartments and he showed me something with share kitchen and bathroom, which was also not that nice. Two years ago, Misa Finland showed me her room where she stayed and I was absolutely blown away with how nice the place was. This was actually right next door to where I had the room now, so I asked and yes, there was a room available... just as beautiful as I remember it. The house has marble floors throughout, beautiful wooden windows and doors, with gorgeous door handles that even have shutters for the keyholes so nobody can peep into the rooms. My room is on the first floor and is very very large about ten times as big as the one I stayed in the last night, it has an attached bathroom with bath, and the room has built in cupboards and a huge double bed. There is no kitchen but there is a fridge outside my room. It cost me Rs 9 000, which is more than double than what the room at Jyothi's would have cost me, but it is worth it!! I showed the room to Kerry and Mel, who were very envious and said to me that I am not living in India... so I said to them, "I am, I am just the Maharaj (king)" :-)

Then I had to organise some money to pay for registration at the shala. The cost of registration in the main shala with Sharath is Rs 27 530 for the first month, thereafter it becomes cheaper, but I unfortunately only have 1 month. If you go to the beginners classes, which start at nine with Saraswati, then you only pay around twenty thousand rupees. Since the maximum daily transaction limit at the ATM is twenty thousand rupees, I had to use two separate debit cards to get enough cash for registration.
Registration was at 15:30 and luckily I went early because the clock in the shala is 15 mins ahead... mental note to use this time from now on. By the time I had registered, there was a huge queue outside. Sharath actually remembered me, which I was pleased with. First thing of course he asked for was the money! He has a banknote counting machine in his office to speed the process of counting all the money. At registration he allocates you your practice time, newcomers get late times and people who reregister get earlier times starting at 4:30 until 8:45 at 15 minute intervals. 9am is when Saraswathi takes over. I got an 8:30 timeslot.

At 16:30 was conference. This happens every Sunday (two years ago, it happened once in the four weeks I was here). All the students registered at the shala can come into the shala and listen to Sharath talk about yoga and ask him questions. Sharath started saying that yoga cannot be learned from books and DVD's, but that one needs a guru who passes down the knowledge, then he talked about the Ashtanga Yoga (eight limbs) of Patanjali, describing the first four limbs as the external practice and the last four limbs being the internal practice. He then described pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), the fifth limb, by telling the story of a yogi walking into the palace of a maharaj who was in the pool with his harem and the maharaj was upset that this guy had just gone through all the security etc, so he called the yogi to stop, which he did not do, so he took out his sword and as the yogi carried on walking, the maharaj cut off his arm, but the yogi just kept on walking... he did not feel it. That is when the Maharaj realized that this was not a normal person, so he went up to him with the arm and asked him to forgive him.
Then people started asking questions such as when one cannot do a posture, how many times should one try to do the posture (here in India, you are stopped when you cannot do a posture and you are not allowed to carry on with the series, you do finishing sequence and end) to which Sharath said just once or twice. Then there were questions about which Upanishads we should start off reading, as there are about 110. I could not hear the answer, but Sharath continued that we should start by reading the Bhagavad Gita, which contains something from all the upanishads. Sharath will often quote the Sanskrit from memory from one of the sacred books and then explain it. I asked the last question, which was whether we should jump through with crossed legs or parallel legs. His answer was that it does not matter which way, it is something we can choose, however, the traditional way is with crossed legs. I like this answer!
I spoke to some yogi's later during my stay and they said that asking questions during the conference is not as good as aking him one on one, as he will spend more time explaining during one on one sessions.

After the conference I met Mel and Kerry for supper at Nalpak again and ended the evening by going to Anu's Internet Cafe.