Back.

I'm back in the US now. I'm visiting some friends in New York at the moment. This city used to seem crowded and dirty to me. Not anymore.

Here's the rest of the story of the wedding:

After the main ceremony at the wedding hall, the groom invited me to his hometown. I got on a crowded minibus with a bunch of his family and rode an hour inland to a small village called Gerusoppa in the middle of the jungle. We were able to drive right into the village, but coming from certain directions, the only way in is via a ferry across the Sharavathi River.



The groom's teenage cousin, some of his friends and I hired one of the ferry boats to take us up the river to some temple ruins and grade A jungle swimming.

The travel health clinic I went to before leaving the US suggested I not swim in fresh water. I had ignored a lot of their suggestions about street food and brushing with tap water. I had also been sick about 6 times in the last 3 months.

I held my mouth tightly shut while swimming and prayed that nothing swam up my urethra. I've heard that's a possibility.





Some of the groom's family had been requesting a yoga demonstration since my arrival in the village the night before, but they had also been stuffing me with food so I had been a bit hesitant to do any of the entertaining asanas for fear of contorting myself in some vomit-inducing way. In the middle of some further marriage-related puja-ing, after the swim and before lunch, someone said "You will show us some yoga now!?" and I found myself empty-stomached and thus excuseless. Half the audience of the puja turned their attention to me. I could not deny them. I warmed up with some simple forward folds and then showed off Kurmasana, Urdhva Dhanurasana drop-backs
, and Sirsasana (AKA headstand) to much applause.

Lunch was served in the classic South Indian manner: on banana leaves on the floor. It was delicious and complex enough that I don't want to describe it here because I'm hungry and want to stop writing. But here's a picture!