गोआ and Goodbye

After an easy day of hanging around the 'hood in Mumbai, we got on another plane and flew to Goa.  Here's a detail of the Goa airport; it fits with my general experience that "everything is interesting in India".

Anyone know what this mural depicts?  Post a comment!

We took a taxi to Arambol, which was recommended to us by international yoga friends, as a beach area separate from the main party scene.  Our last week in India was spent at a place called "ResidenSea", which was recommended to us from Lonely Planet.  ResidenSea was run by a local family; there were a few dozen huts where folks slept, a restaurant feature and several "hang out" areas.  Actually, here's a video of the whole thing, filmed as usual on my last day:

The other main patrons at ResidenSea were three Russian couples who hung around the restaurant area  in their bathing suits, drank, and smoked hashish all day.  At one point the manager went by fanning around a pan of baked hash.  (Don't ask me how that works...)  Anyway we never talked to them.

There were basically two kinds of people in Arambol:  europeans getting a low-expense "exotic" vacation, and native indians selling them stuff.   Which reminds me, we ran into Sebastian again.  On Wednesday we took a bus to go to a huge marketplace, but it turned out to be more of the same: you could tell from the skin color who was buying and who was selling.  There was an exception:  one day while swimming we met a group of engineering students who were skipping class to have some fun.  I did in fact reprimand them.  Later, when my cohort was making an acroyoga photoshoot, they mimicked the poses in the background.

Sharing Americanized yoga with India

So...we had a great relaxing time.  We did a lot of swimming, I burned through a novelization of the Ramayana, we did yoga with a cool guy named Vijay, we partially celebrated Courtney's half birthday, and we got really silly with British accents, chatting away at the local restaurants.

Why am I dressed up?... I don't have that many outfits.

Jennifer got exuberant handshakes from this dog.

Look at his expression.

Also, more cows.

If you declare that you handled cows, you may be detained and miss your next flight.

We saw some disoriented (Russian?) guy alongside a road with some weird injury.  He couldn't talk to us, but we informed some cops we saw much further down the road.  I tried some Hindi with the taxi drivers and they were amused.

But that's about it, kids.  We flew back to Mumbai, packed up, and reflected on the trip.  We were delighted to run into Kavitha again at a TIFR canteen, and told her our stories.

I bought that shirt in Goa.

A taxi came and they left.  I managed some hugs out of the situation.  Good times; I plan to visit them back in Norman this summer.

Spatillomans Forever!

...

Phew!  Well that adventure sure took a long time to write up.  I will try to catch you up quickly with the next few posts.  (Actually I'm going back to the States in a couple days.)

Cold Train

The Spatillomans were pretty lackadaisical about planning ahead.   We had to get back to Delhi for our plane flight, but it wasn't until a couple days before leaving Rishikesh that we bothered to book a train for that.  We booked it through  a travel agent who had earlier forbidden Courtney from snacking on raw garlic while surfing in his internet cafe.  (I gave up on numbering her antics, but I assure you they are guaranteed.)

We were too late to get the A/C car, so we got second class sleeper car.  Who would want air conditioning in the winter anyway?, we thought.  The only clue we had about the upcoming horror was how the agent emphasized the word "freezing" when warning us.   I bought a small blanket.

We got to the train station around 10pm, starting to get cold.  We probably looked a little silly, being foreigners and not immediately knowing our way around.  Creepy guys gathered around where we were sitting and openly stared at us, without saying a word.  We took pictures of this weirdness:

When our train arrived, we carried our heavy luggage up and down the long line of cars, searching for S8, the one with our seats.  It wasn't there.  An absurdly formal British female voice instructed us over the loudspeaker to board the train, but there was noone to help us find S8.  A couple "know-it-alls" were wandering around, watching everyone board; they didn't work for the train station but tried to be helpful.  They were not.  A couple assured us that S8 was in this direction or that direction, giving us the head wag.  It was in neither direction.  One guy opined that we should simply get onto any car before the train left, pointing out that technically, since we had tickets we would eventually get seats.  Do I need to explain how horrible that would be, squeezing all our stuff down dozens of crowded cars in the dark, confused and unable to speak to anyone, and heaven forbid another party doing the same from the opposite direction??  Anyway eventually S8 and S9 showed up and were connected to the rest of the train.

After we settled, I took this video:

The train ride was eight hours of freezing cold and listening to snoring.  There was no heat on the train.  Just imagine being in a metal box outside through the night in the winter.  Eight hours of wishing we had more blankets.  Evidently plenty of blankets are provided in the A/C car.  My companions were grimly composing blog entries to articulate their suffering:  see here and here for their chilling stories.

When dawn came, and we arrived at Delhi, I took this video:

We got off at a metro stop, and took the metro to the airport. A guy wonders if he's been the best host when his party starts talking about the worst trips they've ever been on, and about the Holocaust.  As we approached the airport, though, we somehow transitioned from the third world to the first.  The new airport in Delhi is really clean, warm, and classy.  It was good to back.  Here are pictures of some asana and mudra statues in the airport:

We really appreciated the sun that morning.

Can you spot your favorite mudra?

We got back to Mumbai and took a couple days to recover.  Stacy and Courtney caught a Kareena Kapoor flick.  Then we flew to Goa for the final leg of our vacation. 

Happy Mother's Day!

गंगा

Our next stop was Rishikesh.  This is a holy area at the Himalayas where the Ganga starts.   It's sometimes called the yoga capital of the world, and since we were a yoga-centered team, we were really excited to go.  To be more precise, we would be in the Laxman Jhula area, a tourist area famous for its bridge.  Here's a video of the bridge.

It was a long drive there, so my friends finally cracked open the Hindi alphabet books we got in Delhi.  We had a nice academic time looking at some vowels and copying them down many times.  They picked my brain on some of the basics, which got me interested in Hindi again.

Entering Rishikesh was taking one step away from India and back towards the west.  I'd say at least half the people there were western travelers, with their wide eyes and backpacks.  Residents were...chilled out.

Hari dropped us off at our hotel in the evening and bowed out of our adventure.  We said goodbye in the way that three enthusiastic yoginis with a mild crush on a quiet Indian man and a modest mathematician who appreciates a good driver would say goodbye.

The hotel that Wahoe arranged for us was a great price, to be sure, but there was pretty much nothing there except for beds and plumbing.  For example, we had to buy TP from outside.

We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant.  Actually all the restaurants in the area are vegetarian, and have roughly the same menu:  Indian, Italian, Israeli.
The following night was the worst night of my year.  Let me not go into details, but I think that when you feel nauseous, there is an obvious thing you should try doing.  If you don't do it, and instead assuage the symptoms with medicines, very unpleasant things may  happen.  Now as soon as I did the "obvious thing" I was on the road to recovery, although the next day I stayed in bed mostly.  I was also really chilly, and should have procured a heater the previous evening.  Oh well.  We had been warned about the cold, and this would not be the end of our troubles with heat.

Okay, so as I said, Rishikesh is really more of an "international" place than an Indian place, so begins to fall outside the purview of this blog.  We took some yoga classes, went to restaurants, thought about going to a cult but it was too early, visited internet cafes... I guess we did a couple "Indian" things, though:

We took a rickshaw to Rishikesh proper and visited the Ganga.  Here's my video coverage of the event.

It was nice and peaceful.  Some kids asked for money and I juggled pebbles for them instead to their bemusement.

Some sharply dressed young men started a photoshoot.  Courtney was in several.  Since I had shaved that morning, they let me pose for a couple shots.

Make some noise for the Desi Boys!

Back by the bridge, Hari came by for another delivery, and we realized that we needed more photos of him:

Mehar's cool too.

We were milling around another part of the Ganga in Laxman Jhula when some sadhus invited us in for hot milk.  So we went into a little hovel with a cooking area and spiritual posters around, and sat with three "chilled out" men.  Their names were Swapnamhoomi, Omkar Puri, and Bhola Baba.  Swapnamhoomi was retired from a job in law, and was our host, being the most gregarious and fluent in English.  They had blogs and e-mail addresses.  Yes, everyone and their baba has a blog nowadays.  Stacy asked about the Ganga.  Omkar Puri told Swapnamhoomi the long story in another language, and then he repeated it to us.  Bhola Baba sat with eyes glazed over, presumably enjoying being chilled out.  There was smoke in the air...Stacy said it was a nice story, to which they insisted that it was a fact, and well she got called skeptical again.  They invited us back the next day for pasta, but we didn't show up.

Another curiosity in Rishikesh was a shopowner who would declare, "Everything is possible!  Fantastic! Bombastic!" everytime someone would walk by.  He is well-known for this.  On our last night, I tried to catch a video of him doing this.  I didn't quite get the timing right, and so you can see him singing a song about being "Mr. Lover" and flirting with Courtney.  Enjoy.

That's about it for Rishikesh.  Next I'll tell you about our notorious train ride back to Delhi.