Zen. Done.

I'm back in Kodaikanal now. My three days at Bhodizendo were amazing. The lack of honking and sewage smell (the internet café I'm in right now might as well be a porta-potty) was a welcome change.

Here are a few shots of the courtyard:







It is surrounded on three sides by bedrooms, the cleanest I've stayed in in India so far.

From the roof, the views of the surrounding mountains are beautiful. You can see a lone church on top of one peak:



The days started with a 5:30 wake-up call and Zazen, or sitting meditation, from 6 to 7. After breakfast, there were chores known as Samu, or selfless service. I helped weed the garden where they grow a large percentage of the vegetables they need to feed the guests. There are three more Zazen sessions throughout the day, as well as a couple periods of silent free time. Yesterday was entirely silent until dinner at 7 when one of the staff struck the clappers, two small wooden blocks, and said "Good evening," signaling the end of the weekly Wednesday silence and the beginning of today's unscheduled "free day." After dinner, I busted out my tripod and began taking shots of the courtyard. When I started doing some light drawings with my headlamp, some of the other guests got curious and eventually a few of them got involved:





Tomorrow night I take a bus back to Ooty. Then it's Mysore for a day or two before I go to Murudeshwar for the wedding.

Look for the theme.

Last Wednesday, my last day of Mysore-style practice, I stood up from an Urdhva Dhanurasana drop-back for the first time without Saraswathi's help. While she stood by I did it two more times and she commented, "Aaaah. You do good today." The next day I slept through my alarm for 5 AM led class, missing my last day at the shala. At least I ended on a high note.

On Friday, I left for Ooty, 5,500 feet above and one state south of Mysore. I spent a night in the YWCA there with some fellow yogis. Friday was a moon day and Saturday is the usual day off so they had a rare opportunity to leave for two days in a row. We would have left on Thursday after practice, but that was election day in Tamil Nadu (the aforementioned southern state) and the Karnataka-T.N. border was closed because of some kind of protests or riots. The weather in Ooty reminded me of San Francisco. Our first day there was cool and cloudy. It couldn't have been less than 65 degrees, but all the Indian tourists from the hot, jungly cities were buying earmuffs and gloves from street vendors - more for fashion than warmth I think.

Here's our view from Y:



And a shot of the Ooty Botanical Gardens:



We found this guy in a quiet corner of the gardens:



This is Charing Cross, Ooty's downtown:



And then there's this:



The other yogis and I split on Saturday when they went back to Mysore and I went on to Coimbatore, a big, low, steamy city at the foot of the Nilgiris. There I spent a sweaty night in a cheap hotel where the grumpy desk clerk told me there were only doubles for 500 rupees. He sent me off with the doorman to see a room. When I pulled up the blanket to look at the sheets there were some dark yellow stains streaked across the bed in a way that suggested either the word "projectile" or "explosive." When I pointed this out to the doorman, he grumbled something in Tamil and said "No" a couple times. It seemed like he was trying to convince me that the stains were not there. After he escorted me across the hall to a 250 rupee empty single with clean sheets, we went back to the front desk where he explained the stains to the clerk who reluctantly checked me into the single, seeming disappointed that he hadn't been able to bullshit me out of 5 bucks.

In the morning I boarded a commuter train to Kodai Road where buses stop on their way up to Kodaikanal, another high-elevation town in Tamil Nadu's Western Ghats. True to India Time, the train departed 20 minutes late and arrived about two hours late. I started out with a whole bench to myself, so I laid down for a nap but woke up about half an hour later when a group of men sat down more or less on my legs. The train gradually filled up during the nine hour trip until I was standing up shoulder-to-shoulder with other passengers for the last thirty minutes. There doesn't seem to be any wait-for-people-to-exit-before-you-board etiquette here, so while trying to push my way past a bunch of people boarding, one of my legs found its way between the train and the platform. As soon as I walked out of the train station, a taxi driver started following me around, telling me all the buses up into the mountains leave in the morning. He said the only way to get there in the afternoon was to hire a 300 rupee cab to another bus station or a 1200 rupee one all the way up to Kodaikanal. I ignored him and walked to an Indian Oil gas station nearby where the attendant helped me flag down a passing bus that cost only 40 rupees. Getting off the bus was similar to exiting the train, but this time there was a conductor yelling at and slapping the people trying to rush on before I could exit. I was holding my big backpack in front of me and used it as a sort of battering ram to push through the crowd. I think I was being a little more aggressive than I needed to be. India is starting to get to me.

Big Things in India.

Big Thing #1: Chamundi Hill

Saturday morning I climbed Chamundi Hill just south of downtown Mysore. Along the 1,000-step path I passed the bearded Sannyasi in the picture I posted yesterday and gave him some change, maybe three rupees. When I stopped to take a few pictures with him on the way down, I gave him a ten-rupee note. As I was sitting next to him, he kept insisting in a sort of a hoarse whisper that I give him another ten rupees, which I eventually did. So much for asceticism.

Further up the hill is the Nandi Bull, which is Big Thing #2.



At the top of the hill is Chamundeswari Temple, where, like all tourist destinations in India, there is no shortage of locals looking to you give you a tour that you didn't ask for and then guilt you into paying them for it.

A few minutes from the temple is a statue of Mahishasura.



In Hindu mythology, the Asuras, unlike the benevolent Devas, are power-seeking gods, sometimes referred to as demons or non-gods. Because of his piety towards Brahma, Mahishasura was able to weasel his way into being granted immunity to defeat in battle by any man or god. He eventually abused this immunity and the gods had to create Durga, a female goddess that didn't fit the "man or god" bill, in order to kill him*.

Big Thing #3 is this group of kids that live in a small neighborhood of colorful concrete homes on top of the hill.



I started out taking pictures of a man sitting with a few girls and was quickly swarmed by the rest of the kids from above**.



Yesterday's dinner was Big Thing #4. I ordered something called Channa Bathura from the Chaats section of a restaurant downtown. I had never had it, but I knew Channa was chickpeas and I wanted something beany. Chaat is the word for a breed of snacks that usually includes some kind of fried dough with something flavorful either inside it, to dip it in, poured on it or any combination of the three.

So, the name of this dish didn't say anything about Puri, but it ended up including some:



In fact, it was mostly Puri, with a small side of Channa curry to dip it in.

Here it is held up for head-size comparison and with the sun beaming through its greasy translucence:



Delicious.


*Check out the Wikipedia link to Durga for a great painting of her battling Mahisashura as he pops out of the neck of a decapitated bull.

**As in from the picture above. The swarming did not happen from above. That would be terrifying.

And this.

I just uploaded some pictures but this internet cafe is closing. More tomorrow.

Suck on these.

Last week I took a day trip to a temple in the nearby town of Somnathpur.





On the way there, I saw this woman carrying a big hunk of cow poo. I've heard it's sometimes used for fuel.



I went to Mysore palace, former home of the Wodeyar dynasty, on Sunday night. They illuminate it with thousands of small Christmas-esque lights from 7 to 8 every Sunday, but the best shot I got was in the twilight just before 7 when only the flood lamps were on.




The doctor I met through AA in Bangalore is getting married in early May and has invited me to his wedding. It will be in Murudeshwar, a coastal town where there is a giant statue of Shiva that I could see from the Konkan railway on my way from Gokarna to Mangalore in February.

Mystery: Solved.

Basically, Anu told me that it was oil extracted from some kind of flower she didn't recognize the name of. She said it was very unlikely that it was real, because most essential oils are too expensive to just give away like the guy did.

Exciting, I know.

Snake oil and wolf nipple chips.

I ran into this guy again today.



He walks around near Devaraja market pushing a motorcycle hung with sacks full of incense boxes and mysterious vials of clear liquid. His voice is froggish and he speaks with an auctioneerish cadence over an ancient, tinny-sounding PA system. Whenever he sees me and my camera, his eyes light up and he takes a break from speaking Kannada to croak an amplified, treble-heavy "Hello!" or two. Today he asked where I was from and, before I could respond, put his newspaper-wrapped microphone to my mouth so that "America" was broadcast to the entire block. He pointed to one of his bags and asked, "What you want?" I didn't want, but because of his bright-eyed, shirt-and-tie charisma I asked for some incense. He handed me a box and after I paid him he gave me one of the vials, saying "This is gift!" Last time I saw him, a few men had rushed up to buy vials, so I was curious what they were. When I asked today, he motioned that the liquid should be applied to the temples and said it is for headaches, but couldn't explain what it was made of. Then, as I was leaving he took out a spray bottle full of water and insisted on spraying my face with it, saying something like "Very good. Refresh!" He sprayed me and then himself. After a few seconds I started to wipe my face. He disapproved of this so I just stood there wet-faced and laughing.



Next time on Sup, India: I have the label of the vial translated by Anu, the local cooking teacher/restaurateur.

For my fart joke peeps.

This morning during practice I did my first Urdvha Dhanurasana drop-back without help from Saraswathi. I can't quite come back up on my own yet. When she assists with the stand-ups, Saraswathi doesn't give much warning about exactly when she's going to pull you back up and today I let one rip right as she did. I said something like "Oops" and she made one of her "Aaah" or "Mmmm" sounds of acknowledgment.

After practice I went to a local woman's house to learn to cook some classic south Indian food. She showed us how to turn these spices:



plus some vegetables, into this:



And it was delicious.


And here are some prime examples of what I think I'll call Indlish from now on. This bike was parked near a coconut stand that the shala students use as a meeting place:







Indlish is somewhat like Engrish, but Indlish is about bizarre translations on personal "flare"-type items like clothing, stickers, and posters rather than the more official mistranslations of Engrish street signs and product labels. Indlish can also include English phrases or slogans that are assumed fashionable without regard for their meaning. Take for example this shirt I saw on a boy outside of a temple I was photographing:

.

And here are some shots of the temple:









And more temple kids:

You need auto?

Indian cities are filled with auto-rickshaws chugging their way through traffic. Most of them have the standard black and yellow paint job visible back in Picture Post v1.0 and all of them have a badge on the back proudly advertising their two-stroke engine that spews exhaust reminiscent of my lawn mowing days. Like all Indian vehicles, their most essential part is their horn. Some have buzzers or car horn-esque noisemakers with a trigger or button built into the steering wheel, but the best of them sport bulb-and-brass, hand-squeezed honkers that produce a pleasant, yet sufficiently alarming, "Womp!" It's the least abrasive and most comical horn variation in India.

On the go, rickshaw drivers shoot soul-piercing stares at potential customers, diverting their attention from the road in front of them for unnerving amounts of time. Stationary drivers have a pimpish way of quietly announcing themselves to passersby with calls of "Auto. Auto." But it's the pimping of their rides in the XZibit sense that is the most interesting. Most rickshaw drivers personalize their rickshaws somehow, but some of them go all out. Exterior-wise there are decals and custom paint jobs:


Hindu gods are common. Here's Hanuman, the aforementioned muscular flying primate.


Jesus makes an occasional appearance.


Along more secular lines, this driver loves his mother, acoustic guitars and... the Chicago Bulls?


I didn't see the driver of this one, but I'm pretty sure this is not a picture of him.


A lot of the stickers are English phrases that I think are intended to be funny. Today I saw "I busy. Can I help you?" which seems like a butchered version of something someone from Lakshmi* Sticker Co.'s creative department saw on a sassy pre-teen tourist girl's t-shirt.


This mountain goat sticker is popular, but the pierced horn and bindi are a rare addition.


The relationship between mother and child seems to be a common theme.

On the interior, there are goofy posters like the ones from a few posts back, shiny upholstery, speaker systems, and colored lights.

Two girls studying yoga with me saw a pair of Buddhist monks, complete with red robes and shaved heads, ride by in the back of a rickshaw that was blaring 50 Cent's "In Da Club."