Searchings of a Kiwi lass

Varkala has a magic.. perhaps it's simply the magic that all beaches have, how powerful the sunset is as it falls over crashing foam and white waves, but I feel a flowing in my being that resonates so much with this sea, sun and sand business. Tonight I made it to the beach for sunset - I am usually doing my yoga asanas at this point, or maybe resting, but after tonight I realise how powerful this time of the day is and vow to myself to WORSHIP it in a sense. Although doing my yoga on the rooftop with Ambika at sunset the other day was pretty powerful as well... so much prana at these times, how powerful it is...

I love this life... as I walked to refill my waterbottle (they have a natural springs which flows down near the sea here, which is totally purified and safe, and saves so many plastic bottles of water) I got almost a mantra ino my head that went 'everything is here... everything is here...'. Lately (the past few months) there's something in me that has almost been searching in a way for something, I don't know what... I think it is just a case of losing my mind, really.. he he, but so true... everything is here, it's just a matter of being open enough to it, of dying to every moment and really feeling ALIVE and fresh at all times...

I'm so inspired by the people that have come into my life recently. For my entire first week at this beach I was spending most of my waking hours with Levik, Ambika and Sam from the Sivananda Ashram in Neyyar Dam near Trivandrum. We all arrived here seperately and just had the most amazing times ever... Such beautiful people... Levik of the many dreads, such a bright sprite full of eccentricity and energy, Sam with his openness and wonderful welcoming nature, and amazing playfulness! Ambika with her beauty and grace... so much surfing and frolicking at the beach, extended two hour breakfasts and dinners, music nights at 'Johnny Cool's', this great cafe I play two informal gigs at, and gatherings around the OM flag that we hand sewed before we left the ashram... there aer otehr characters in this play as well... Ange, from the ashram also, who hung out for a few days before heading off with her man Michael, Angel the brother of Levik, Brad from Texas who knew all the words to 'Patience' by Guns n Roses when I played it for him, and the 'Shiva Moon' crew - a two room guesthouse / restaurant where my guitar was always welcome and a liquor fondly known as 'XXX Rum' was often doing the rounds... (not passing by my lips though.. two nights of this at 'Johnny Cool's' was enough alcomohol for me...)

I haven't updated this blog thing for about a month so have yet to write about the whole ashram experience, hopefully I'm gonna get back into the writing swing and it's gonna follow soon... as for now I've just come from the beach with a smooth swing in my gait and words in my head, and there's beautiful music playing in this shanti little email cafe and a papaya, apple, lime, ginger and spirulina smoothie at my lips when I take the time to pause between sentences, so I'm happy to say the very very least.

I have decided that I'm gonna try to make it to Varanasi for the next full moon... this gives me about two weeks to
a) leave Varkala!! ahhh.. not such an easy task!
b)visit Munnar, a beautiful place in the mountanis
c) train it to Tamil Nadu, to Pondicherry and Auroville
d) train up to Kolkatta, possibly breaking the journey in Puri on the way.. perhaps Darjeeling too...

oh well.. so many options... It's gonna take years to enjoy all of India... I love her more with every day. Yesterday in Varkala township there was an elephant festival - like everything in India the elephants were about four hours delayed so I didn't stay for them although did see a great parade with big floats of various scenes from the Ramayana - you had the huge head of a demon, laughing hysterically (don't know how they did it, but it was awesome!) with a tiny Hanuman that they had rigged to fly into the demon's mouth and out of his ear victoriuosly brandishing his trumpet or something... they had Durga equipped with five lions roaring ferociously... Ganeasha with flapping ears and his mouse, and a lion I dont know the name of, ripping out some prince's stomach... not a religion for the weakhearted, is Hinduism...

I will have to tear myself from this computer I think... emails to write, mosquitoes to dodge... I am trying to write more now that I am pretty much alone again (the others all left yesterday morning, the beach ain't quite the same without them but I have also been loving getting into my meditation fully again so all is good...) so I should be back soon.. still have to write down the ashram experience and just generally ramble on descriptively about this country I love so much... Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya
xxxxoooo

Hampi at sundown; a time for frogs to let their cacophonous croaks loose over rice paddies that are greener than green. Everywhere is nature so beautiful here, such blue blue skies, green green fields, golden rocks everywhere in the background and temples in every nook and cranny...
Today was unexpected. Waking up with a dodgy stomach (Hampi ain't known for it's culinary hygiene...) I decided to take it easy... but somehow found myself walking the three kilometres to the lake in the mid afternoon 30 degree sun... breezes make it not so hot though, the air so clean and fresh and definitely bearable - it disnae burn like the NZ sun anyway, and coming from a Scottish winter I'm not about to complain. Birds and insects are twittering in grasses near my feet and everywhere the gentle wind rustles through the breeze, bringing scents of these grasses nearer to me. As I pass a small stone house, six women are taking a break from a hard days work in the fields. They call me over, all shake my hand, try on my sunglasses and make me take photos of them. I leave with one of their bindi's stickered firmly on my third eye point - these moments, so little and so precious, they make my day...
At the river finally, I take a coracle (a circular cane boat) to the other side after a short rest and conversation with a small boy who after a while, as per usual, asks me the same questions ' eschool pen?' 'one rupee?'.
Hampi is a climbers dream I think, as I clambour over huge boulders not so suited to my plastic flip flops or my inconveniently placed shoulder bag. I meet two Germans, both called Sven, and one of them - the good looking one with no shirt on - pulls me up to their litle perch where they have been sitting Zen like for some time. We walk back together, take a juice in a little river side cafe and then part. Seems this is a day for Germans however as immediately I meet another one! A girl with bright blue eyes and red hair that matches her sun baked face who I meet at the foot of some ruins. We climb together to a temple upon a hill, passing gods and goddesses carved into rocks everywhere. When I realise it's a quarter to six, and the last boat back is supposed to leave in fifteen minutes (not a problem for my German friend as she is staying on this side of the river) I run down a mountain for the first time in my life... scramble pantingly all through the market much to the suprise of at least three locals who all ask 'hey, hey, slow down, what happened?' in that particular way of theirs that can either make me smile inside or just infuriate me. I have no time today to decide how I feel about that however as I am running, running for my boat.. as I make my way down the ghats it seems I needn't have worried though - sometimes I forget that this is India, with time so subjective... because as the sun sets closer to seven these days, the boats are still running. Lucky for me and the dozen or so other travllers who have also forgotten themselves in the drifting day...

So showered and content I write, here in this restaurant overlooking rice paddies that are now darkened to mine eye... There's just the frogs chorusing away, and the occasional firefly, as well as the ever present canopy of stars, so clear to the eye and so inviting to sit beneath and dream the rest of the evening away...

So much is happening in the market below.

A truck, sent by an old baba said to be over 100 and living in a temple upon a hill outside of Pushkar, drives slowly through the streets offering prasad (blessed food) to passers by. Two young girls in salwar kameez run after the vehicle, grocery bags outstretched, hoping to please their mother with the free carrots and grapes it is offering today. The other day I received an apple from a similar truck, its constant delivery making sure no-one in Pushkar goes hungry.
On the lakeside, a Brahmin priest is taking a Pushkar newcomer through the holy ceremony, anointing their forehead with sandalwood paste and rice, garlanding their neck with flowers and offering blessings for their family upon the holy Lotus lake. Perhaps demanding an exhorbitant price for this, perhaps not - not all priests seem to live by the same values it seems. A family of monkeys, 20 strong, sit looking down as I am, from another rooftop. They are munching carrots, acquired no doubt from the Baba Prasad truck. Some of the babies are teaching themselves to swing from powerlines nearby, others merely terrorise innocent passers by for food. The infernal tooting of motorcycle horns echoes up to me as always - seems I cannot escape from this ever present madness. Sometimse I shout back 'shanti!' at them, as if they would listen to me. All the while the sugarcane wallah churns his machine, over and over again - so much manual labour for one glass of sweet health giving juice! The sun is setting on the pigeons on the lake - they congregate in hundreds to eat the remains of a recent puja ceremony - the small white sweets offered as prasad, the flowers, the rice. I look over these Pushkar hills, all green and brown and golden in the setting sun and realise I am still in love with this town. Although I have been here twice before- three times actually - and have this time been feeling almost a little bored with all the same scenarios, the magic of this place still calls to me.

There is a party in the air tonight. Beside me at the chai stand are seated a group of scruffly travllers. I say seated, but mostly they just can't keep still, although none of them has` fallen off their chairs just yet so I suppose the word is valid. I think that they are Spanish; I'm sure that they are crazy. Three of the boys have matted rasta hair, tied for some reason in bunches at the tops of their foreheads and at other random angles. They are barefoot in these Indian streets, full of loose long-legged energy and monkey movement and unfortunately for the eye even a little bit of butt-crack, as clothes are obviously just a social necessity for at least one of them. His trousers just hang as they do, and in the few times I've seen these boys I don't think they've changed their clothes once. They make me smile, for their unconventionality is not hurting anyone and is actually quite entertaining to watch! Usually it's enough just to watch the cows eyeing up the vegetable stalls, or each other, or laugh at the local boys on their bikes speeding down the road in such a peaceful place. All the while beautiful Indian / Western music by Prem Joshua is playing, and the market teems with twilight noise.

It's getting harder and harder to tell the travellers from the locals here... more and more prevalent, at certain times of the night or early morning, are those wispy western ghosts who've stretched their love affair with drugs too long... their hair turbanned or a mass of matted locks, I see them occasionally staring from corners, brandishing big sticks reminiscent of Shiva's trident and staring with big hollow eys...
All over town a certain graffiti is scrawled in English 'Jews! The comforter has come! AIDS is cured! www. the-comforter.com' I have yet to look this website up, but it seems in Pushkar it is easy to go off the rails a little - for a holy town with an apparent ban of meat, eggs, alcohol and drugs there sure are a lot of junkies... But then again, it is easy to miss this... I only know cause I was told and happened to stumble across a couple of staggering souls last year at 6 a.m when I went for an early breakfast...

Two years ago when I first came I swear this place rang with more innocence.. then again, perhaps it was just me as I'm told this change in tourism has been happening for more than five years now. That what was once a nice shanti town with a few clothing boutiques and jewellery stalls has now exploded into a mass of haggling, colour and sensory overload... so much that I am sure this is why I got sick as soon as I came here this year. I have spent the last two days pretty much in bed with a cough that has hacked at my chest, a cloudy head and no appetite. This has meant very little chance of spending time with Verma-ji, or Chandra (Chanu) and his family and I hope they will understand. After all, I have time to spend, I am easing slowly slowly into this India journey. Venturing out for my first proper, full meal in a few days I have just eaten to the sight of half a dozen Western ragamuffin children skip around in the sand and do yoga - so perhaps there is still innocence here after all...