Going back to India

Well, I am finally going back to India (my third, but second time for yoga). I have been thinking about coming back since at least May last year and had hoped to be able to make it a 6 month adventure fulfilling a lot of my dreams all in one go, such as completing a Yoga Teacher Trainer course, studying with Iyengar in Pune, doing some volunteer work in a foreign country, doing a vipassana (sitting and meditating for 10 days), learning to do Thai Yoga massage and more. I knew that my priorities were to practice with Lino Miele, to go back to study in Mysore and to attend the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh. Negotiating with my boss, he did allow me to take 2 months off and I am very thankful for this. I guess having a clear goal in my consciousness helped me manifest it.

My company did ask that I take a laptop with, check my mail regularly and that I be available to assist. As it turned out I was getting a brand new light and small laptop, whjich I am looking forward to travelling with. I have been working very hard for the last few weeks designing the IT architecture roadmap for MTN for the next 3 to 5 years, and I needed to complete the first draft of the document before I left the country. So as usual I had neglected a lot of my personal things I needed to do. I only started packing the night before I left at about 10pm and I have forgotten to pack a number of things. I also never had time to organise an International drivers license, which ended up costing me on my very first day in India... see later.

My laptop was delayed, but it was finally delivered around 10 am on Thursday morning (15th Jan). I had planned on leaving the office at 1pm to go get a massage and then go home to finish packing and get to the airport before rush hour traffic as my flight was at 19:30. Setting up the laptop and copying all my files across was not complete, so I left work, got a half hour quick massage and had to drive back to work. Then home to finish packing and rush off to the airport. I was so stressed about missing my flight I even phoned Emirates Airlines to see if they could put me on the 22:30 flight. They were extremely helpful, but I made it on time for my scheduled flight.

I arrived in Dubai at 5:15 after a very good flight on Emirates Airlines... The crew even seemed to give up one of their vegetarian meals for me as I had not known that I needed to order vegetarian more than 24 hours before check-in. I did not have very much sleep on the flight as the flight is only 8 hours long. There is a two hour time difference between SA and the UAE. The airport terminal is absolutely huge and extravagant. I considered finding a secluded seating area to get some shuteye, but could not find anything, so I sat down, I opened my new laptop and enjoyed the wi-fi access. After about 2 hours I started reading my Lonely Planet on Dubai. At 10am I decided to phone Kavita, my friend, whom I met in Singapore in 2005. I woke her up... nothing unusual :-) She is a hostess on Emirates. She was very sweet and invited me to get a few hours sleep at her place, which I jumped at. The bus system is really difficult to figure out, which I tried for about half an hour and eventually I just took the taxi, which cost me 45 Dirhams. The exchange rate is about 2.74 ZAR to 1 AED.

It was really good to see Kavita again as we had not seen in each other in at least a year, the last time she came to SA on one of her flights. I had 2 hours nap and a shower and by then I was starving, so we walked to the Dubai Mall, which I learnt had just been completed a month or so ago and is the largest mall in the world with 12 million square feet of retail space and is in the shadow of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. My Lonely Planet mentions though that the Mall of Arabia, which will open this year, will be even bigger than the Dubai Mall.
Even with all of this, I could not find a store that was able to open my Guess watch to replace the battery. Anyway, after having some food , we went back home to her place and had some tea before I headed back to the airport to catch my 22:00 flight on Jet Airways. Terminal 3 that I had arrived at in the morning was exclusively for Emirates Airlines, so I had to go to the much smaller and older Terminal 2 this time.

Jet Airlines is an Emirates partner and is a very good Indian Airline. I was already impressed by them the last time I had travelled in India. We landed on time at about half past two in the morning. Now the time difference between me and SA was three and a half hours, i.e.: it was a three hour flight to Mumbai. In Mumbai I immediately went to the ticketing counter and enquired about flights to Goa, another thing I had lacked the time to accomplish in SA. I was also not certain if I was going to be able to change terminals and make the 5 am flight to Goa, so I did not purchase it on the net in SA.
The 5 am flight on Kingfisher Airlines was the cheapest and the guy at the counter said I could make it in time and if the terminal shuttle bus was not there that I should not wait for it but take a taxi. I paid for the ticket and started running. Fortunately the bus was just being loaded with baggage and was almost full with passengers so it was going to depart soon, as I did not want to start haggling with rickshaw drivers, nor had I exchanged any currency yet.

I landed at the Dabolim airport in Goa around 6am completely exhausted and sat down and started planning how I would get to the Purple Valley Yoga retreat centre. Check-in was only at 15:00 but I knew they would try to assist if I arrived earlier. To my surprise there were absolutely no rickshaws at the airport, only taxi's which cost a lot more. A taxi would cost 780 Rupees to Assagao where the retreat is, about an hours drive. The exchange rate currently is about 4.8 INR to 1 ZAR. Eventually I got a motor cyclist to take me for 350 Rs. My backpack placed over his handle bar we set off and we also found a store on the way that sold me an adapter for my laptop plug on the way. Riding on a motor cycle is more pleasant than a taxi, but a lot more dangerous!!! For the first 15 or 20 mins I was holding on to the baggage rack for dear life, but eventually I let go and used bandha's :-) so I got a good core workout at the same time hehehe.

At the retreat, I checked-in, while the people who had attended the previous course were still having breakfast and getting ready to leave. My room was not ready, but I ended up sleeping in the shade outside until my room was ready. The price I paid for the retreat, 450 pounds, includes the yoga, the food and shared accommodation. I was lucky that there are only 3 guys on course, the 2 others came together from Turkey, so I got a room with two beds to myself.
Harmony and Jeff are Ashtanga Yoga teachers who have done the last 3 courses here, and Zephyr is the manager currently. Zephyr used to be called Sarah and was Michael Gannon's assistant when I came to the retreat two years ago. Unfortunately I won't see her, as she had to leave the country on a visa run. So Harmony and Jeff are doing the management for the next couple of weeks.

In the afternoon I organized a scooter. Rent is Rs 200 per day, but at least then I am not relying on taxi's. I found out where the internet cafe's are and took a ride out. Guess what! 5 mins into my journey I get stopped by 2 traffic cops because my number plate has white writing reserved for locals, whereas all foreigners are supposed to be riding on vehicles registered with yellow writing... and I did not have an international driver's license. So I told him it was my first day in India etc etc and he asked me for a bribe, so I gave him R 20. I actually turned around after I left to go find him and try and demand my money back, but they were gone. I am very angry with myself for having given him the money, I guess at the time I was not thinking objectively.
Then I got to the internet cafe and found out it was closed for the day, every Saturday. Pretty unsuccessful.

Back at the retreat at 6 was a briefing on what the schedule was for the next two weeks (I am only staying 1 week). I am not allowed to work on my laptop outside... Harmony introduced us to Nancy and her assistants, Jayson and Shayla, as well as the cooks, Sayumi from Japan is doing the lunches, usually raw food, and in the evenings there is an indian cook who makes traditional Indian food.
The evening was spent getting to know the rest of the people on the retreat. There are 35 people on the retreat and I am still meeting new people 3 days into the retreat. Aoibheana (Irish and it is pronounced like Yvan) was at the retreat with me back in Jan 2007. She was also here last year when she was pregnant. Oni, her little 6 month old is with her and she has brought a friend to mind the child while she is doing yoga. There is Hiromi from Tokyo, Seyda and her boyfriend Can (pronounced Jan) and two others from Istanbul, Turkey. Can owns 3 yoga studios in Istanbul and Ankara. There are a number of ladies from the UK, Vibeke and Aletta are from Oslo, Norway. I found out later that Vibeke is actually a TV presenter in Norway and is quite famous. She is busy going through a divorce which is being publicized in all the media back home at the moment. Sylvia from New York is an art consultant, so she travels a lot and knows so much about all the Ashtanga Yoga teachers etc. I am definitely going to pick her brain a bit and I get on very well with her. She charges 10% on sales and right now with the Credit Crunch is taking a holiday. She is married to a french man who does not do any yoga. They have been together for about 10 years and lived in different cities for 9 of those years. Now she is in India for about 3 months without him.

I actually asked Nancy one evening, what she thinks about relationships where one partner does not do yoga and she said, "They don't work, unless the partner is extremely understanding!" She also said that when she was still together with David Williams (Nancy is the first western woman to have studied Ashtanga Yoga with guruji, and she came to India with her boyfriend David Williams when she was 24 (she is 60 now)), and a new person would come to David to be taught Yoga, he would make them watch once and then say, "Next time you bring your partner". He would tell the partner that if they did not start yoga with their spouse, that they would not be together anymore in 2 years, because with yoga you grow in a new direction. David did this because he did not want to have the karma of splitting up relationships.

Nancy now lives on Maui in Hawaii and has recently made a movie of Ashtangi's over 50 doing the practice... She said it was a led class and she was very worried that they would not listen to (follow) her as most of them were the generation of yogi's who brought Ashtanga to the west, the pioneers who studied with guruji right at the beginning. It would be so interesting to see that.

Arrival in India, Mumbai

I left Johannesburg just before noon, and arrived in Mumbai just after midnight, after an 8,5 hour flight on SAA (and a 3,5 hour timezone change). I now have 1 day to do some sight seeing before I go to the Purple Valley Yoga retreat in Goa and start the Yoga.

The first order of the day was to get some Indian Rupees (INR). The exchange rate is 43.4 rupees to a USD, which works out to about INR 5,80 for one ZAR. I got a bit of a fright when the cashier pointed out to me that my new SA passport does not contain my signature so he needed something else to verify my signature... Good thing I took my credit card with!!!

Because I had booked my SAA flight using voyager miles, I was not able to book any connecting flights. Air India does not fly to Goa, Jet Airways does not sell tickets via its website to the general public, and Indian Airlines does not accept international credit cards, so I have been trying to find an open Airline office to book my flight. After walking the International terminal flat, I could not find an office that was either open or that would sell me a ticket.
I then found a bookstore and finally armed myself with an invaluable lonely planet travel guide (I had not had enough time to buy one back home). I sat down and started looking up accomodation options and how to get there best.
I also became aware that today was a public holiday in India, celebrating India's independance from Britain since 1950. I also found out that South Africa is not the only country with over 10 languages recognised in its constitution. India has 23.

Six am I finally decided I better move so miss rush hour. It was still dark (only starts getting light around 7am). I could have taken a taxi for almost INR 400, which would have been fine if I was not travelling alone. But since I prefer to do it like the locals do whenever I travel (and also keep it cheap), I decided to take a rickshaw to the train station and catch a train to town. I had to haggle with the rickshaw drivers and when I still got no joy (The rate in the guide suggested 25 rupees and they wanted to charge me 150), I finally sought the help of a police officer. I landed up paying 50, which I was happy with.
At the train station, I could either get an ordinary ticket for 8 rupees or first class for 78. Since 2nd class is extremely overcrowded and I was carrying all my luggage, 1st class was fine. In town I looked at 2 hotels found in my guide under budget accomodation and the prices for rooms ranged from 700 rupees to 1200 rupees. Again, travelling with company is cheaper because these are always double rooms and there are no single rooms. While walking the streets I met an australian girl who told me she was staying at The Salvation Army for 150 rupees including breakfast (dormitory rooms with bunk beds). This was great and that is where I am staying. As always in a place like this, it is very friendly and hospitable. My room has no glass where the windows are but hey... its hot!!!

Travelling by rickshaw through the dirty streets of Mumbai... yes, the pungent smells, the noise, the queues... I know I am back in India... but I think I will enjoy this time a lot more than last time. I was in India in 1996 for 6 weeks, during which time I travelled further north in Rajastan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and then went on to Nepal. I remember that this was the country in which I had the worst culture shock out of all the countries I have travelled so far.
This time I am more prepared, and hopefully also more patient and more tolerant :-)

Businesses here only open around 10 am and after having a 2 hour power nap, I found a very helpful travel agent just around the corner, whom I booked my flight to Goa with for tomorrow. So now the rest of the day can be dedicated to looking at the sights. I am in the Colaba district, which is the far south of Mumbai. My "hotel" is very central which is great.