Kodaikenal and Kaliwood

We arrived at the Kodai train station at 3 in the morning. It's a hill station in the Western Ghats, a 3 hour bus ride from the town that lends it its name, Kodaikenal. We waited in a chai shop until the bus left a few hours later. Although a taxi driver, willing to drive us to the town for a lot of money, assured us that the bus ride would be uncomfortable and full of fruit vendors with large baskets of fruit, the bus was one of the better ones we have been on. Of course, like all government buses, it's path was broken up by many road-side stops where people would jump on and off, but we were so engrossed by the movie being shown that we barely noticed the delays. It was a kaliwood movie, which is the film industry in the state of tamil nadu. As far as I could interpret, it was about a woman who had become possessed by an evil spirit haunting a mansion that was a business venture for her father and her father's friend but her father's friend was also a plucky rebel who played by his own rules and ended up defeating the spirit and freeing the daughter. There was also a lot of song and dance.

Immediately after arriving in Kodaikenal, we followed the advice of someone we had met at Sadhana and took a taxi to another village a few km's away where we heard you could rent bungalows for incredibly cheap. When we got to the village, or the road that the village was on, the taxi driver told us to just walk around and ask if there are places to rent, which we did. It took us a while to find a place, but we finally did. Like every bungalow, it was situated high in hills of a mountain. Unlike every bungalow, it hadn't been rented out for a year because it was about 20 minutes higher in those hills, leaving us winded every time we went up and down the mountain, and making the decision easier to stay in lawn chairs on the grass outside our door and just stare into the valleys and the clouds rolling over them. As far as meals were concerned this would have been a problem if it were not for the rastafarian french baker that came down the mountain every day. His name was Cyrille, he had dreads to his ankles, and he made the most delicious baked goods I have ever tasted, especially in India. If the rest of India is organized chaos, this place was a fairy tale, with bakers, waterfalls, Sarah's Palace (a restaurant where we ate outside and watched movies with the workers), monkeys, and a missionary landlord who bounced up and down those hills for half the year and ran a school for underprivileged youth in argentina for the other half. It was an amazing place to spend ten days.

Now, a week later, Taryn and I find ourselves working as extras in that same movie industry that left us so enraptured on our bus ride - Kaliwood. A friend told us about the opportunity, which includes accomodation, food, and 1,300 rupees a day for our five days of work. We were picked up by a taxi at five in the morning and transported to the epicenter of high art. I don't know what we expected, but so far the experience has been far from glamorous. My costume includes a suit that is too large for me and a pink shirt. We are playing audience members at an international robotic conference. Essentially, we sit around and read a lot. When we are not sitting around, we are being hurried from one position to another by about thirty different people, each with there own idea of where the white people should be. Being a Westerner in a film where every other person is Indian makes it hard to escape attention, try as we might. I think the group of Russian extras has the right idea - they just smoke cigarettes outside and ignore everything. However, I guess we should be happy to see Indian movie stars we have never heard of before. We might need to drop those names in a future situation.

This is a late first post. Sorry

We got to Sadhana Forest about a week ago - after a tiring mini-tourof South India. Fortunately for us, we missed the attacks in Mumbai bya week. We stayed far away from the now famed Taj Hotel in a smallguesthouse called Hotel New Bengal. Apparently it is a popular spotfor Bengali businessmen, who spoke very loudly and watched a lot oftelevision, which we could here through the thin walls. It's a shame Mumbai is bedeviled by this whole tragedy now. It's a hectic city, buta nice one. The bazaars are especially interesting. Both in Mumbai andBangalore, we made a point of staying close to them. In Bangalore, wewere in the hardware district. In Mumbai, the fabric and clotheshangers district. In India, the best food is in these pockets of the cities, but they are generally avoided by Westerners, which makes thesight of us all the more a spectacle. However, we did get two free cucumbers and a lot of assistance at the wash basins in the cafeterias.

It's true that trains are the best way to get around India. We had an interesting train ride from Mumbai to Goa. We sat in a compartmentwith a very quiet old British couple who were extremely reserved except when talking about Las Vegas, which seems to have excited them greatly. Goa itself was awash with tourists, which is to be expected for a state that is known especially for its party scene - a leftover from the hippy days. Apparently, there are still a lot of aging hippies there, but we didn't see any - not that we were especially looking for them, but we did meet a rather sketchy Scottish guy and anative Goan who sat next to me one day at an outdoor table and started talking to us. He was a little man who seemed very sedated, but he was a talkative little guy, primarily interested in the American tax system and our flight routes. The conversation ended with him asking if we had any stamps. Since we didn't, he gave me his address so that we can send him some American stamps in 6 months when we return. If any of you want to take the initiative, I can send you the address.

As I said, we are at Sadhana Forest now. Before we got here we spent a couple of days in Pondicherry, a town a few km's down the road. Interestingly enough, we arrived there a day after the attacks in Mumbai, but were completely unaware that it even happened until we got the concerned e-mails. At the time, we were much more concerned by the raging cyclone that was hovering over us. I don't think I've ever been more nervous than when we were walking towards the beach when we first got into Pondicherry, looking for a cheap guesthouse by the water. When we got to the beach though, we saw a crowd of people staring atthe sea and a police official authoritatively ushering them away. When we asked what was going on, all the man said was "Tsunami". We immediately got in an auto-rickshaw, drove west, and went to the highest room of a cheap hostel. Then we found out about the war in Mumbai, and everything settled into perspective.

For the past week we've been living in a completely different world. Sadhana Forest is like nothing I've ever experienced. It's part commune, part non-profit. We plant trees in the morning and do work around the compound in the afternoon. My afternoon work today was compost, which involved the toilets and their contents. Generally this isn't such a bad task, but the cyclone damaged the tank, so the water made this a messy experience. Aside from that, I'm loving it here. The work cuts off at 11:30 so we have ample free time to relax. A lot of time is spent in the community hut either reading or chatting with people. At any one time there are about 40 people here, from many different places. Right now there are a lot of Israelis though and they play a lot of music and sing Hebrew songs. It's awesome. Everyone is really interesting and has fascinating stories. It's amazing how quickly a community can be created when space and responsibilites are shared as closely as they are here. So far, this has been an amazing journey and living"sustainably" is enriching as it is challenging.

(If there's anything you should know about India, it's that everyonebobbles their head. This is a very vague gesture - incredibly hard toread, but we've adopted it to our benefit. If a price is too high, webobble our head. If we don't understand, we bobble our head. Accordingto the Babu, the guy living next to me in my hut, the bobble is avague gesture for Indians too.)

full moon tripping

for july's full moon we decided to take a trip over to tiruvanamalai, where they have a massive pilgrimage walk around a holy mountain. the town has a temple complex that cuts across the town and is punctuated by huuuuge pyramidy things.



it was drizzling at night and the round moon collaborated with the rushing clouds to make an eerie light/dark sky above. flickering flames for the gods projected dancing statue shadows on the walls and our ash-smeared faces.

the walk was nice, but we kept thinking we heard rattlesnakes very close by. maybe they were just some rattling bug that evolved to sound scary. also came across a praying mantis, i think, and it was sooooo far-out-looking that it made me think of how inexplicable, varied and strange this thing called "life" is... Ean: "and that shit reproduces!"

Oh yeah wow sun!

the train from Delhi down to Chennai was, of course, beautiful. the green just kept getting lusher and the broad banana leaves more plentiful as we hurtled down closer to the equator than i'd yet been. asap we got from chennai to pondicherry to auroville.

auroville is a trip.

after the extremely muggy air in rishikesh where nothing ever dries it was totally blissful, man, to spend 4 sunny days and 5 starry nights in a bamboo shack right on la playa. the place is called repos and is presided over by bhaga, a french ex-pat who works as a cafe manager, guest house operator, house putter-upper, and international spiritual researcher and lecturer.

seems like everyone in auroville gets to be a bricoleur of their choosing. marx said that 'after the revolution,' people'd be free to fish in the morning, write in the afternoon, and go bowling at night, or something like that. well they didn't wailt 'til 'after' here. auroville definitely has a utopian vibe to it and bhaga says its an experiment based on furthering the positive evolution of the human species. founded in '68 (it would...) auroville started when people from every state in india and over 100 other nations brought a handful of earth from their neck of the woods and mixed it all together in that urn-type-thing on the little peak in the right of the pic. below, 1/2 down.


(i stole this pic)

and that big gold golf ball... you meditate in it. there's a round chamber that's lit when a mirror reflects a shaft of light straight down to this big crystal ball which then radiates all over the room. its covered in a mosaic of 2 million pieces of gold pressed between glass. and those 2 million tiles, said the tour guide, were "made in that building over there with the blue door," which was TINY. took 5 years. yikes stripes.

'course to some degree the group of people who get to work the job of their choice and all that, the 'aurovelians,' is an elite group that excludes the surrounding fishing villages which have big problems with water shortages, etc. we did hear of a school for people with and without disabilities that aurovelians were working to set up that sounded pretty phenomenal.

besides the scrumptious breakfasts (idly, coconut chutney, sambar, amaaaaaazign croissants, muffins, dark dark dark coffee, musli and curd, bananas, hibiscus flower jam (!), pineapple juice, etc.) and dinners at the community kitchen and the lunches i'll never forget at the cafe (salads! ahhhh i missed salads soooo much. they had fresshhh locally grown tomatoes, avocados, cucumbers, greens, cheeeeese, nuts, dried berries, etc.), and swimming in the ocean, the best part of auroville was renting mopeds and getting lost all over the town, which has the shape of a spiral galaxy.

photo drop

courtesy of E's camera

shore temple in mamallapurim, state of tamil nadu

whole lotta mangoes in delhi

big guy outside a temple in pondicherry

chess class in pipariya, state of madhya pradesh

ga-ga for ganga

so trains are totally the way to do it. the 37 hour jeep-then-bus-ride from leh down to delhi was, hopefully, the last time we use tyres to cover lots of KMs. on the train up to rishikesh the ride was smooth, food decent, sleep excellent, breeze marvelous, view fantastic.

Rishikesh: we stayed a little under a week at a SUPER colorful ashram perched right on the edge of the ganges/ganga - a maaaaaassive river with whatsgottabe zillions of gallons flowing at like 100 KM/hr, or something. seriously though, just sitting listening to/staring at the ganga was quite a sublime experience.

and ashram living was, of course, quite peaceful. 2 yoga and 2 meditation classes daily in the orange/blue/purple hall in the middle of the courtyard. learned lots of mantra/songs that would turn out to be amazingly and unexpectedly catchy. but the facedown yoga positions were kind of annoying with a beard...

... so on the 2nd day i decided to get a shave at the barber shop a couple blocks from the ashram. this was NOT peaceful. it got off to a deceptively smooth start. the barber lathered in tons of cream and taking off the 2 month old beard with a straight razor was like rolling off a carpet. no problem. then he asked if i wanted a face massage. i'd seen jake get this done in kashmir and it looked like no worries. but my barber, a springy wiry white haired man, basically started beating the living shit out of me. Had me in all kinds of wrestling moves (full nelson, etc.), slapped me around like he was trying to knock the hair off my head, stuck hands down shirt, pinched hard, twisted arms way beyond even my new-found yoga-trained flexibility, cracked fingers and neck, stuck fingers up nose... not even exaggerating, i swear.

another tidbit of note was the walk through the mountains to neelkanth, which was made rather tough by the oppressive humidity and attempted mango burglaries by monkey-land-pirates, but well worth it 'cause at the zenith temple we got this sweet red and yellow holy string wrapped artfully around our wrists.

sorry for the delay before this , by the way, but the downside of trains is that booking on the whack website eats up 99% of my patience for staring at computer screens.

next up: from the mountains to the beaches: the SOUTH!! yessssssss! and new snaps.


p.s. for your spiritual benefit, here's a mantra that i like called mahaamrityunjaya. it's for healing yourself or others, even at a distance.

om trayambakam yajaamahe
sugandhim pushti vardhanam
urvaarukam iva bandhanaan
mrityor mukshiva maamritaat

leh --> manali --> delhi. + ean

even after the mind-expanding rides from jammu to srinigar to leh, the leh-manali highway was stunning. the last couple hours we kept snaking up and up and up and up and up and up and up until we were way way way way above the clouds and the snow/ice chunks got huge, like winter whales strewn about. i'm not sure why these chunks were so randomly scattered, but the melting process carved them in beautiful ways. after cresting the top and beginning the long descent down into manali, we looked far below to small villages which were at an altitude quite a bit higher than most of the clouds liked to float.

manali itself was rather carnivalesque.. wide streets packed tight with people, mostly dressed to the nines. we heard raucus music and went to investigate and it seemed to be a coin-operated mess of machinery that made lots of crashing smashing sounds. it was night, and the whole scene reminded me a lot of the part in the old pinnochio cartoon where our hero ends up banished to the carnival and i think maybe he starts to turn into a donkey (knaamsayin?).

we were way lucky and got the last 2 tickets for the bus to delhi. well, the last 2 seats anyway. the room in the aisle was not wasted. some people sat on the floor and others stood for big chunks of the 16 hour ride.

we stayed in the tibetan section of delhi and when we arrived ean was already there. the hotel was a little remote so the three of us relocated to Camran Lodge, a hotel in pahar ganj (the neighborhood that 99% of us backpackers stay in) which was also (or was formerly) a mosque. the rooftop was amaaaaaaazing.

while in delhi we checked out jama masjid, the biggest mosque in india. we also chilled out in lodhi gardens (which has a sweet bonsai park and provided a needed oasis from the hustle 'n bustle), met some fun parisians and some wild scandinavians driving a technicolor hippybus across this earth (oncearoundtheworld.com) at GEM bar, ate some way fancy thali in connaught place, and saw a somewhat lackluster bollywood film, "thoda pyar, thoda magic."

next up: 1st train trip & ashraming in rishikesh