The Fantastic and the Flaky

Pilgrim towns in India do seem imbued with a certain energy, or mania, whatever your choice of words. With that in mind, I felt after a week of quaffing 40 rupee americanos at Del Mar Cafe in Varkala, it was time to hit the dusty trail and head to a major pilgrimage sight, Rameswarem. This is is a sliver of land, truly an island, off the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu that nearly touches Sri Lanka. I've had some interesting travel companions in India, and for this excursion I was traveling with Carla, a 50-something from Atlanta who is finally getting her traveling yen satisfied after ending a 30 year marriage. She definitely had the right temperament to travel with me, as she was willing to improvise jump on rattling buses, sleep on second class sleeper trains and generally take things as they come, unexpectedly, and keep a good sense of perspective and humour about the craziness of India. We arrived in Madurai at 11 PM at night after a 6 hour train from Madurai, and managed to secure a clean hotel there for the night, no small feat for Madurai, which has some of the grungiest rooms I've ever seen. The next morning we got on a banged up public bus heading to Rameswarem(55 Rs) and 4 hour later pulled into town.
I loved every second of of our 4 days there. The Tamil cheer seems unrelenting. I remember walking down 4 flights of stairs and on every floor there was someone with a1000 megawatt smile for me. While riding a public bus, a chai seller on the corner smiled at me sitting on the bus and motioned to ask if i wanted a chai, a total impossibilty but funny. Everyone there just seemed to be buoyant. We took a bus 20 km out through small thatch hut villages yards from the sea to view land's end, and ended up riding in a truck with 6 guys from Delhi, including 1 rotund man who was described as a bodyguard, would rear his head back for some of the deepest guffaws I've heard, and insisted lolling on the tail of the truck rather than sitting down.
The ocean itself is beautiful, the water crystal clear, which is surprising as the Tamil coastline seems to have water that is suited for fishing more than swimming.
The other big thing to do in Rameswarem is get bathed at the temple. There are a series of wells that have water from 22 different places in India, and pilgrims from all over India come to be doused. Men with little buckets will take you from well to well(10Rs-100Rs) which Carla did one day and I did the next. It is kind of fun running around the temple sopping wet amongst swarms of black skirted pilgrims wearing prayer beads. The last water that is poured over your head is water from the Ganges, and you are given a bit to sip from your cupped hands as well. I drank, though I pray the source was closer to the Himalayas than Uttar Pradesh. I'm okay so far.
After a few days of snapping photos, eating great food, and enjoying the fresh night breeze blowing in from the Bay of Bengal, we decided to head to a place I knew very little about, Tiruvanamalai, fatrher north in Tamil Nadu. I did know that there is a mountain around which on full moon people walk around to get 7 years good karma (there are mathematical components to all this, evidently) and it just so happened that we arrived a day before the full moon. From the peace and quaintness of Rameswarem we were thrown into "Full power" India, as the Israeli youth around here might say. We stayed in the town proper the first night, which is ugly, screeching, rundown, jarring and full of beggars. It seems Westerners head here to make a guru connection, drawn in part by the Sri Ramana ashram, founded by a man who lived in a cave on the mountain for 20 years and then came down and founded the ashram. Near the ashram is where the Westerners are, and trying to get lodging here is nigh impossible so Carla and I ended up staying 4 km out in the country. Come full moon evening, we set off on our karma acquiring perambulation, 14km total, the roads crammed with people who are not walking at one place, as in a race, but are at all points around the mountain. Seeing the moon just over the mountain was worth the walk, as it reminded me of some of the work of Ansel Adams in Yosemite. There are food stalls and vendors and begging sadhus and women husking corn and mini-temples every other step of the walk, so it made it easy to do in that you basically put one foot in front of the other and don't have to worry about dragging water or anything else with you. Beyond the walk, there doesn't seem to be that much to do here if you are not staying at an ashram or involved in some course. The one moment of excitement was moving back to the periphery of the ashram after Carla left a few days ago to renew her Indian visa in Sri Lanka,. I tried to get lodging, and ended up with a 1-eyed psychopathic man in a skirt who tried shaking me down for more money after telling me that I'd have to sleep in the living room of the guesthouse of a cot. After seeing I wasn't a milquetoast, he found a room for me and promptly set about trying to get money from an older guru-seeking Kiwi, who did fork over the cash and slept on a cot in the living room. The shortage of beds here really makes people tolerate some strange things. I've been hanging out here trying to suss out anything of interest and reading (Atonement, Ian McEwan, pick it up if you haven't, incredible), and other than a few breezy mentions of morning lectures by gurus, nothing seems to be resonating. I'm due back in Madurai in a week to meet a friend of a friend, Julie, who's traveling in India for a spell, so I find myself in a killing time mode. I'm going to head out to a small village 30 km from here called Gingee, and then most likely go to India's #1 pilgrimage temple, a place called Tirupathy, which sounds reasonably crazy as I've heard 10,000 people have to sleep in the same room before getting a 2 second glance at a sacred idol.
In an aside, I've asked a constant reader of this blog and work-beleaguered friend of mine, Charlie, to buy a ticket to Burning Man festival this year. I've been 1 time before, in 2003, and it was an amazing experience. If anyone out there thinks they can get there this year, go, go, go with me. You'll never regret it and we can work out logistics together. I'm already getting giddy at the prospect of seeing Black Rock City rise from the desert, and I've got a few more mind blowing adventures on my platter before then. It's easier to get it together than you might imagine.

Embraceable Kerala

Has it really been since mid-December since I last posted an entry? It's easy to see how one can lose oneself when time's passage is not as noticeable. Well, I'll try to make some very abridged sense of what has been afoot in India since then.
With the holiday seasonfast approaching, it was off for another go at Sivinanda ashram in Southern Kerala. I had several reasons for going there ; Keep the yoga practice alive, be around people I had more than a passing acquaintance with over Christmas, and compare the ashram to to one I went to in Madurai. All three goals were accomplished; I met scores of people from all over the world, was able to hold postures steadier and deeper than before, and realized how fortunate I was to go to the Ashram in Madurai at first, as it is much less busy and there is a prevailing sense of calm and tranquility that can be elusive amid the hustle in Kerala. I also met a fellow blogger there who covered the experience quite succinctly. Below is a shot of one of the morning walks, which happened twice during my stay.

One of the most difficult parts of staying at the ashram was knowing that I was a mere hour away from a beautiful tropical beach paradise. After 11 days, I caught a cab with some other ashram refugees to go soak up some sun and splash in the surf at Varkala, the aforementioned paradise. Varkala is part of my history. I first landed there nearly 2 years ago and have very warm memories of my times there, in most part because of several crazy friends who go by the names Yael, Marco and Effie, so going back there with an entirely different set of people did feel odd. We left the day after Christmas, and upon arrival were hit with high rents for India, though through some determined bargaining and a bit of footwork were able to find two breezy, reasonably priced rooms. The next week+ leading u[p to New Years was a non-stop blur of eating fish, drinking espresso and lazing on one beach or another between bobbing in the surf. Varkala has done a good job of not spiralling into full-blown tourist ugliness while unabashedly becoming a tourist hot-spot and stop over for anyone visting Kerala. The beaches are bereft of sellers of any sort, as all the shops and restaurants are located on top of a sheer cliff that overlooks the beaches. The one small annoyance that became a major pain the longer I stayed was the long wait at all the restaurants. A 2 hour wait seemed the norm at most of these places, and all the restaurants are tourist restaurants, so on top of inflated prices, you can spend a good chunk of your time in Varkala waiting for your lunch or dinner. Perhaps I should have updated my blog while aiting for my barracuda at Tratorria. New Years itself was spent on the darkened beach with a bunch of people from the ashram, and after that we climbed cliffside to mingle with the revelers of the bars. Varkala has a strange rule about serving alcohol discreetly and all bars closing at a certain hour, and as 2am rolled around I could see why. Several table smashing tussles broke out between Indian guys as I walked back, and several of the girls from the ashram were groped on the walk back. One of the girls, Stacey, who has a very low threshold for this behavior, punched the guy who grabbed her in the nose, and held him over the edge of the cliff until her rage subsided! "Eve teasing" is the term given to men grabbing women in India. I've been with girls ho've been grabbed, and my reaction was similar to Stacey's, to unequivacally express that behavior like that won't fly. Usually by means of a shove and an ardent "No" in Hindi. I'm not justifying dangling some sexually frustrated, hormone wracked 18 year old boy over the edge of a cliff to ring in the New Year, I'm just saying I can kind of relate.
Next stop was the ashram of the "Hugging Guru" or Amma, which is almost required for anyone staying in Varkala. A 1 hour train ride, followed by a 30 minute rickshaw ride and we were there. The setting of the ashram is gorgeous; it's situated on the banks of the Kerala backwaters, interconnected waterways that are graced by armies of coconut trees from every direction, and a stone's throw from the Arabian Sea. Amma is a record setter, as she has hugged nearly 30 million people, and travels quite frequently on hugging junkets. When we heard she was in town, we had to get our hug, if not least for me to judge what one reknowned hugger( so I've been told) can learn from another.The 1st sight of the ashram is unusual, a number of Soviet-bloc style pink! buildings rising out of he jungle. Amma devotees are evrywhere, notable for their white robes, 1000 yard stare, and potpourri of nationalities. Ambient noise is everywhere. It's quite easy to stay there, as anyone can pull up and have a dorm to flop down in for 150 Rupees. After getting set up in my dorm full of 50 year old Russian men lounging in Speedos, I got in line to hug. I couldn't help but notice some behavior that would be viewed as strange in different settings. For example, a number of her devotees have dolls of Amma, and watching 60-somethings cooing over a doll was a bit odd. After a relatively quick 30 minutes in line, I was in the scrum on stage close to Amma, and her handlers told me to get on my knees, as this is the usual hug reciever position. She is surrounded by rapt devotees basking in her energy, and the crush of people is a bit disconcerting. There was an Asian man filming her hugging behind her and another devotee massaging her shoulders to keep her limber for the hug hungry masses. Someone else later told me there is a hug clicker that keeps a running tally of all the hugs. Before I knew it, I was temple to bosom with a 50-something year old Keralan woman who was whispering something in my ear. I thought the hug was over, was moving in my patented reverse kneel crawl, when suddenly Amma pulled me back in for another hug and whisper. I'm not certain if I ended the first hug too quickly or if she ascertained that I was in need of another one, but then suddenly I was pulled away and she was swarmed by someone else. As a certain doe-eyed Brit might say, "Scratch it off, Harry."