A surprisingly lovely interlude. (now with pics)

The best thing about the ashram was the people. And I was a bit sad to say goodbye to them. Buda and Maja (my company in Hampi) had escaped the day before me, as had Regina my fellow satsang skiver. And there were lots of others who stayed the course.

I need not have worried. By the end of my time in Varkala, pretty much everyone had turned up. Ok, I exaggerate. Not everyone. But there were a lot of familiar faces!

On the first day in Varkala I bumped into my first ashram face. Clare. She’s...well she’s all sorts of things. She’s a chef, a menu designer, a corporate caterer, a food journalist, a tailor addict and truly hilarious company. All summed up by the job title ‘Food Consultant’, I believe. Although I’m not sure if the last two are part of her official remit.

Anyway, we proceeded to spend the next week together. We set the world to rights and concocted a brilliant (even if I do say so myself) plan that combines both our talents. But it’s a secret, so I can’t tell you yet.

To cut a long story short, despite only going to Varkala on a whim, and despite the rather grotty beach, I had an amazing time there. 6 days mostly spent in cafes! It was with a good handful of reservations (and I don’t mean the train variety) that I left and subjected myself to 18 hours in sleeper class. Oh, and 5 hours at the train station beforehand.
Good thing I like trains.

A last minute decision (yep, I still specialise in those) saw me sailing past my booked destination of Cancona and staying on until Thivum instead. So I am now in Ashvem (south of Arambol) catching up with Peter (the Austrian) before he flies home.

I’ll let you know the next destination once I pick it.

Noisy peace (now with pics)

Two weeks in an ashram. How hard can that be? I asked myself. After all, I survived ten days’ worth of silent meditation. This should be easy in comparison.

Hmmm.

The first day started pretty well. I arrived at about 2pm, checked in, chatted to people, did some yoga and got fed. So far so good. Admittedly the food was a little dull, but not inedible. The dorm was clean, the people nice and the yoga good. I began to think that I might stay longer than just two little weeks. Foolish girl.

Things can change very quickly. One word: satsang. Twenty minutes of meditation followed by at least forty minutes of Hindu chanting. It started to go wrong for me about one minute into the meditation. Find peace, they said. Find inner stillness and calm. Peace? Perhaps if they provided industrial strength ear defenders I might be in with a chance. I’m not kidding. The music being pumped out of the nearby temple was at nightclub level. Someone suggested that they have to keep it that loud...after all, with 1.1 billion people competing for their Gods’ attention, they need to try hard to stand out.

So, inner peace having failed to be achieved, me and my increasingly bad mood moved into chanting. Now, anyone who knows me well can probably imagine how much I enjoyed this. Religion, ritual and group singing. I may have succumbed to the odd noribang in Korea and a night or three of drunken karaoke in Malaysia but rest assured, public singing is never going to be high up my to do list. Especially when sober.

I can honestly say I hated it. Ritual of any kind sets my teeth on edge. It’s a bit like nails down a blackboard to me. So by the time it ended I was seriously re-considering my earlier enthusiasm and trying to find out when the next train out would be.

To be fair, not everyone hated it. This was my issue. For some people it was a very spiritual experience, for some a minor irritation and only for the vast minority was it a form of slow torture.

Day 2 began at 5.30am with the early morning wake-up bell. We all gathered for Satsang at 6am and repeated the previous evening’s meditation to ear-ringing music and chanting to my gritted teeth.

Things picked up after that with tea, yoga and (still a little dull) food. Karma yoga duties were assigned (mine was cleaning the dining hall after dinner) and there was the day’s second yoga class. All followed up by dinner (now approaching the realms of very dull) and more satsang.

Repeat for 8 days.

Day 9. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand, I couldn't sit and I couldn’t bend - at least not without a little whimper. Now I know that I’m a wuss, but I’m also pretty sure that yoga isn’t mean to cripple you. So that afternoon I gave in and went to the gently yoga class (rather than the scary intermediate one). At the end I spoke to the lovely yoga therapy lady...it turns out that Sivananda yoga is especially bad for my kind of back issue. Oh good. (Don’t worry; I won’t bore you with the details. But I promise this complaint is not in my head, I have x-rays to prove it!). Trust me to pick the one style of yoga that will do me more harm than good.

Day 10. I escaped. I would have been crazy to stay. The satsang was turning me into a crazy person and the yoga was turning me into an OAP. Plus there’s only so much hatha yoga and breathing exercises I can take, even without the spine crunching backbends. Give me ashtanga any day.

The only question now was where to escape to. All the trains seemed to be booked for weeks in advance. But with a little persuasion (and I do mean a very little), a talked someone else into sharing the cost of a rickshaw to Varkala. It turns out the even yoga teachers can get backbended out.

The best things in life are (nearly) free

Alleppey was amazing. My Austrian friend and I took the early train down the coast (through some spectacular scenery – tranquil backwaters, tiny hamlets, bustling villages) and arrived just in time for the afternoon ferry ride through the backwaters to Kottayam. It’s the best 20 rupees I’ve ever spent. Alongside the locals, we sailed past the hundreds of private (and expensive) houseboats, coasting across Vembanad Lake and arriving in time for chai by the river in Kottayam – all before catching the last return trip back into the setting sun. It was breathtaking.

Prisoners and Prime Ministers (now with pics)

After two days on Kudle beach near Gokana, to top up the vitamin D levels, I boarded the overnight train to Ernakulam. I love the trains here (especially compared to the buses). Even in basic sleeper class I like them.

This trip was full of the usual un-usualness. The smiling old man in the berth across from me started his journey by carefully inflating his blow-up pillow, laying out his blanket and tucking in the corners, then giving me an enormous grin before settling down for the night.

There was a proud young couple with a new baby who were incredibly cute. Millions of vendors selling everything from super sweet coffee to, erm, super sweet tea.

And even two young men in matching blue outfits – who, on first glance, appeared to be holding hands. On second glance appeared to be holding hands and hand-cuffed together. And, on third glance, proved to be holding hands, hand-cuffed together and chaperoned by three men also wearing matching outfits. Police outfits. But they were all smiling. Even the hand-holding-hand-cuffed ones.

Towards the end of the journey I met an Austrian man and a French lady also heading to Fort Kochi. So on arrival in Ernakulam we shared the haggling and rickshaw ride. It turned out that the prime minister was in town, so there were no ferries from the mainland to Fort Kochi (I still haven’t quite worked out why the presence of the prime minister should equal the absence of the ferry...Indian logic I suppose) and we had to take the long way round – right through the city.

To be honest it was a bit of a shock after beaches and countryside scenery. The views from the train were beautiful. The views from the rickshaw were not.

But Fort Kochi itself is pretty. It’s certainly the most European looking place I’ve been for a while. Scarily colonial. A little tour of the churches, spice market (I’ve never seen so much ginger!) and old style laundry (with amazingly heavy irons heated internally by coconut shells) finished off with a ‘no I don’t want to go into that shop’ argument with the rickshaw driver was a good end to the day.

The old style fishing ‘things’ (no doubt there is a technical word for these...where’s the Lonely Planet when I need it?) along the river are brilliant too. They are these wooden contraptions that work on a seesaw/balance system. Basically, you have a huge net on one end and weights on the other. Less weights let the net drop down into the water – more weights pull it back out again (hopefully with fish in).

You can then buy the fresh fish and take it along to a restaurant of your choice where they will cook it for you. Which is exactly what my new Austrian friend, Peter, and I did last night. It’s a cool novelty if nothing else.

Next stop: Alleppey.