The Past Two Weeks

In the first picture I'm with some pilgrims in Sringeri who asked to take a picture with me; we're in front of the famous temple. The second is of some other pilgrims at dusk with the temple in the distance (unfortunately the pic turned out a little dark . . . ). The third is a picture from the spectacular mountains near Munnar, looking down on the clouds.
_____________________________

Okay, here goes an attempt to get through my time here in the past two weeks so that I can get back to writing posts about relatively recent events. So, as they say, Here We Go! :

After Murudeshwar I went to another small town off the beaten path, having enjoyed my time in the former so much. This one was (and remains) known as Sringeri, and it is an important pilgrimage site for Hindus tucked away up in some beautiful green mountains. Though I went with the intention of staying one night or maybe two if I was really inspired, I ended up staying four or five. What happened was my first night a shop owner I encountered insisted on introducing me via phone to a German man living in the town. So I met him the next morning and ended up staying several nights at this house that he sort of but not really owned (this was never clarified . . . ), and ran as a small ashram-type thing. This guy was really quite a character-- I wrote up something about this intending to transcribe it here, but I find that I have lost all interest in actaully typing it up. For some reason transcribing has come to be one of the banes of my existence-- which is why I intend to mostly avoid it from now on! The house itself was beautiful-- warm, wood interior, with ceramic roofing in good indian style. Set in a little village about a fifteen minute walk from town, it was wonderfully peaceful and just a great place to be.

I spent the first two days mostly reading finishing the first novel I've read in almost a year and a half! (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.) On the third day a Russian man and Polish woman joined us as well. They were all nice enough, and though at first it looked like they were going to teach me some meditation practices and so on, by the time they decided to do so after a couple days I had lost all interest. Not in meditation in general, but in what they had to offer-- a bunch of silly falsely-Hindu (I thought, not that I would really know) new-age nonsense preached by a guru who (while alive) presented himself rather too messianically for my taste. As was made abundantly apparent by the television station devoted to it alone (the only one we got in the "ashram"), this "movmement" was constantly making all sorts of claims to being a science and having scientific validity; this in particular got on my nerves. And a lot of what these people believed was little more than self-serving, superstitious crap as far as I was concerned. So, when they decided they were ready to begin my instruction, I decided it was high time to move on. But I'm glad I had this experience-- it helped clarify what I'm looking for with this sort of thing, or rather what I'm not looking for.

From Sringeri I made my way to Kochi, a long ways to the south, in the state of Kerala. Kochi was okay. A lot of people I had encountered fairly raved about, so by this time I wasn't surprised when the place didn't knock my sandals off. Tourist crap, etc. So after a night I went further south to Aleppy, where I thought I might do a trip in the famed backwaters (lake-lagoon-canal network). I met several nice English guys in the little guest house where I stayed, one of whom said he would be interested in joining me to Munnar, a hill station in the vicinity. So I aborted the better part of my backwater plans, settling for a thoroughly pleasant two-hour public ferry ride through the backwaters as the first leg of the journey inland.

Munnar was quite nice. The town is starting to explode into yet another tourist hub, but so far it's still pleasant enough and the mountains all around are stunning--steep, lush, some covered in tea-plantations (which happen to be really pretty). It's also much less hot, which was a welcome change. The English fellow I was with proved to be a good companion, as we seemed to have a similar take on many things in India as well as the Western world. I didn't have long to spend there, so after two nights I continued on my way, while he stayed to do a short trek nearby.

After a day of buses and trains I arrived in Calicut, a coastal town in the north of Kerala, where I stayed with a kind, young Ayuvedic doctor who happens to be Muslim (Ayuvedic medicine is based on Hindu texts) who I had met on the train to Kochi. We had hit it off on the train due to a common interest in Buddhism and a shared love for the writings of religious scholar Karen Armstrong, so he had insisted that I stay with him on my way back north. During my stay we talked about all sorts of interesting things, most memorably arranged marriage. He kept emphasizing that he had known what he was getting into because he and his now-wife had mutual friends from which he could find out about her, and they had met once, amongst relatives, for half an hour. It's pretty crazy from a Western perspective, but it seems to work out just fine for him as well as lots of other people . . . . As he mentioned at one point, the divorce rate here is low. Certainly this is in part due to greater stigma against divorce, but I sometimes feel there's also something to be said for being less fixated on finding the very perfect person. All in all, it was a pleasant stay and Mubasshir (the doctor) was a thoroughly gracious host.

I left early afternoon the next day, headed for a largish city called Mysore. I got off early, however, as I wasn't feeling especially well-- at a small, charmless town along the way. After an ordeal wandering the town looking for a room with a vacancy, I ended up in a giant room with four beds (for some reason cheaper than the double). As it turned out, I had what I believe was some food-poisoning. It was kind of grim--vomiting in a not-so-nice bathroom in the middle of the night-- and yet in a strange way I relished the experience. I've been realizing during my time here that I don't necessarily have to let mild physical discomfort lead to mental anguish, so on this night that included the one-month point (4 am) of my arrival in India, it felt like a right of passage-- a kind of a test. And, I'm happy to say, I was able to keep my spirits more or less in-tact through the experience.

I have to run now, but that gets me most the way to the present! Give me feedback if you have any . . .

--Josh