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!

The wedding.

I'm back in Mysore now after a few days on the coast and in the jungle experiencing several firsts.

Monday night I took my first (in India) air-conditioned bus to Murudeshwar. Overnight buses aren't usually too hot to sleep well on, but they are too loud, bumpy, and windy. The A/C bus took care of all of that with its closed windows and swanky air suspension.

When I arrived in Murudeshwar I called the two of the numbers I was given to contact some of the groom's English-speaking family about accommodations. Both were disconnected so I checked into a muggy room at the RNS Residency, a group of buildings dotting the northern end of the peninsula containing the world's largest statue of Shiva.

Up close the statue appeared to be made out of concrete that had been painted silver. The quality of it and many of the other statues nearby was reminiscent of a miniature golf course, minus the miniature part.



Eventually, I was able to contact the groom through a number he had given me for his non-English speaking uncle. He was in his hometown 20 miles away but was able to set me up with a room in a different hotel. This one was air-conditioned, another first, and I shared it with his cousin and friend. They arrived in the middle of the night after a long, sleepless bus trip. The next morning when they didn't seem interested in any alarms, I started to get a feel for how Indian weddings work.

I had been told that the ceremony was to start at 7 AM, but my roommates didn't even try to wake up until 9:30. We all got dressed and headed for the wedding venue around 10:30. In the main hall hundreds of plastic chairs were being casually filled and vacated by guests that seemed alternately involved in and bored shitless by what was happening on the brightly lit stage. The bride and groom were performing puja after puja, led by an old, shirtless, priestly man in a lungi. There was burning of coconut husks, repetition of prayers, and application of bindis.

After standing around observing this for a bit, I headed downstairs for a catered breakfast of idly and sheera, a sweet dish made with farina. I went back upstairs in time for Muhurta which was at exactly 11:57 AM. This seemed to be the climax of the ceremony and involved throwing rice towards the stage and violent drum beating. And then there was lunch.

Sitting next to me during most of the ceremony was a young boy that had tried to sell me souvenir photos of the Shiva statue on the street the day before. I think he wandered into the wedding hall to cash in on the free meals, but he explained some of the rituals to me, so I didn't out him to anyone.





That's a kurta I'm wearing.

Next time on Sup, India: The bride and I are taken away to the groom's native village in the jungle and I wear a lungi.

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.