Happy Holidays!! (Hare Krishna Eco-village style)

Much apologies for the delay in writing, but we have spent the past two weeks without internet, on top of a mountain, WWOOFing and living in a Hare Krishna Eco-village, the seventh most bio-diverse place on Earth. Whaaat? As my brother said when I spoke to him after a 30 minute hike up a mountain for cell phone reception (at 5am), "that sounds about right". So yes, there are tons of stories, craziness, and RECIPES to relay onto this here little blog, but they'll have to come in installments, as it would be way too much for one post. (And that's right, we took cooking classes and yoga classes every day in the village, and we've got some fantastic, mouth-watering home-cooked recipes to post up here). For now, a very brief overview of what we've been up to...

We took an overnight train from outside Mumbai down to Kundapura, which is about 16 hours south, on the coast. Funny thing about being on the train- we sat in 3rd class A/C with two other men in our berth, and one man decided to play his cell phone/music player so loud that the whole car had to listen to a strange mix of bollywood tunes, Usher remixes, and the song "Raindrops keep falling on my head". The mix of east and west keeps getting stranger and stranger.

We arrived at 6am in Kundapura, hopped on a bus to Kollur (about an hour of sharing music with the conducter.. He dug on the Pimps of Joytime, and we watched weird Bollywood music viedeos on his phone. Our little walkman looked pathetic next to what he had!) Arrived in Kollur and took an auto up the mountain for what we thought we be a short 18 kms. to Bhaktivedanta Eco-village where we hoped we would be WWOOFing and working for the next two weeks. An hour and half later and a giant snake later, we're still climbing, the air is getting cooler, and we are officially in the jungle. Oh my gosh, what did we get ourselves into? All we see is jungle and some shacks, until FINALLY we pull of the road and pull into a gate to find ourselves in a gorgeous village. Turns out it's a Hare Krishna village! Well, we're open-minded folk, and though my only knowledge of Hare Krishnas is that the Beatles got into it, and they like to sell books and collect money on the street, so why not learn more...

We sit down to delicious prasadam (they eat twice a day, LARGE meals, delicious home-cooked most of it from the grounds itself, totally organic, oy amazing), and there are tons of people, Western, INdian, European, everything. I think we spent the first two days in shock... But basically we lived in a guest house that had a gorgeous view of the mountains and the jungle (pictures soon, I promise), along with some characters such as Lise, the Russian fashion designer from Italy who was traveling through India, Lulu, the Brazilian who has lived in NOLA, and now in Florida, who is a devotee who spends most of her time in Asia with other Hare Krishnas, a German couple who considered themselves "citizens of the world", a couple of Indian families here and there, and two American kids much like ourselves, who stumbled upon the village during their hike up the mountain. We spent our first couple days just hanging out and hiking around (Jake hiked up 7 waterfalls! I only went on the first day hike down the river) with these two travelers, Autumn and Toby, who were just wonderful beautiful dancing happy souls to meet on the road. Oh yeah, there was also Cambodian royalty staying there. They were so laid back and nice!!

After the first few days, nearly EVERYBODY left, and it was literally Jake and I, Lise, a lot of the Indian women, and Krishna Mai and Praymaneedi, the wife and husband who pretty much took over when the founder (an American named Tattva) was off traveling. We spent out days waking up really early, doing lots of yoga, doing some WWOOFING (Jake dug out a canal and fixd an irrigation network, I did everything from cleaning the bathrooms to working in the gardens), taking cooking classes, napping, walking around, and eating. It was wonderful and beautiful. We spent a delightful Christmas eve baking apples on our fire cauldron (needed for hot water in the bathroom), drinking the most delicious chai ever, and exchanging stories with Lise, Lulu, and Praymaneedi. Oh, and did you all see that full moon? It was so bright, we didn't even need flashlights. It was strange, yes, but really sweet.

A lot of things came up during this stay (our longest stay in one place yet!), but I'll leave it for later posts. Definitely will post recipes and pictures when we can... Right now we're in Mangalore, a pretty chilled out city on the coast. To get here, we hiked up the mountain for about an hour (oy vey) until we reached the paved road. We managed to hitch a ride down the mountain in the back of a truck (don't worry moms! It's a common practice here in India and it was TOTALLY safe!) so that made our trip a little more adventurous, and much faster. We leave for Goa tomorrow, so we're going to relax tonight and see I am Legend, that new Will Smith movie (with Hindi subtitles probably). East meets west again... gotta love it!!

Will definitely be able to post more from Goa, in between the raves and beach parties, and buliding of monstrous sandcastles....