Tag: India travel

the official transportation of this blog

by L. Valdez Karl

I always give credit where credit is due so I will admit that I stole this post from Fran.

She’s right when she says that in the talk shows’ credits they always have “transportation for guests provided by Fast Eddie’s Limo Service…” or someone like that.

So I decided the official transportation of Linda’s Yoga Journey is the always lovely AUTORICKSHAW!

Exactly two months from today I will be back home in Ma India in Chennai which is in Tamil Nadu in South India. One of the things I love about Chennai is the traffic — yes, really! — because I’ve realized that it operates on Chaos Theory. It took me about two days during my first trip to figure out how the chicken crosses an Indian road — basically you walk into it, because if you hesitate, you’ll really screw things up. Or you sneak into a crowd of people on a street corner and walk with them in relative safety in one fast moving glob of humanity, the idea being that if you’re surrounded by people, chances are someone else will get hit by a bus. And if you are a really lucky, the bus will stop. Hopefully not on top of you.

The video below was shot in Hyderabad, but it’s close enough to show you what Chennai’s traffic is like. Actually it has less traffic than on a typical Chennai street. Watch it and you’ll see lots of ‘ricks…THE OFFICIAL TRANSPORT OF LINDA’S YOGA JOURNEY!

I’ve only been in one minor accident while riding in a ‘rick, have run out of petrol once, and have only seen a few roll over, so don’t worry — we’ll get you where you want to go…eventually. Just sit back and relax!


view from an autorickshaw, Chennai, 2005

100 days

by L. Valdez Karl

One hundred more days and I lose myself in Ma India for the third time. These pictures are only three out of the 500+ pictures I took during my first two trips…

the vibrant colors of flowers from a flower seller’s cart in Pondicherry…

the joy of a man dropping flowers onto another man in a flower warehouse in Chennai…

and finally the children…children that have nothing compared to many American children, yet they have everything that is important…

These are some of the images that are burned into my mind ever since I returned from my first trip in 2005. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about Ma India, the good and the bad and the ugly. Some days I wake up thinking about her, and some nights I go to sleep thinking about her. I can’t explain it, it’s just the way it is. For those of you who have been to India, and love it as I do, you know exactly what I’m talking about, there is no need for explanation. As Louis Armstrong said about jazz, “if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know.”

I long for that very early morning in Chennai at the end of December when I take my first step outside the airport, and hesitate, stopping to drink everything in with all my senses, the sights, the sounds, and yes, even the smell of South India — a damp, cloying smell mixed with a bit of green and smoke and diesel fuel that attaches to my skin like wet cloth — and then step into my freedom.

Yes, freedom, because I feel free and light in India. I’ve just read the book Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney and she describes for me how I feel when I go to India, a solo woman traveler of a certain age…

I was alone, finally, with no one to protect me. I wanted to sing for happiness — a rare, raw, immediate sort of happiness that was directly related to my physical situation, to my surroundings, to independence, and to solitude. The happiness I felt that morning had nothing to do with the future or the past, with abstractions or with my relationships to other people. It was the happiness of entering into something new, of taking the moments simply for what they were, of motion, of freedom, and of free will. I loved not knowing what would happen next, loved that no one here knew me. I felt coordinated and strong, and the world seemed huge and vibrant. It was a relief to be alone…

My happiness was a feeling of physical lightness, of weightlessness, like drifting on air…

To prepare for her trip up the Nile, Mahoney read the Egypt travel journals of Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale. She writes that she recognized in Flaubert’s notes (written about 1850) the same kind of happiness she felt. She quotes Flaubert as he witnesses the Nile:

I felt a surge of solemn happiness that reached out towards what I was seeing and I thanked God in my heart for having made me capable of such joy; I felt fortunate at the thought, and yet it seemed to me that I was thinking about nothing: it was a sensuous pleasure that pervaded my entire being.

Mahoney quotes Florence Nightingale’s reaction to a Nile sunrise:

It looks. . .so transparent and pure, that one really believes one’s self looking into a heaven beyond, and feels a little shy of penetrating into the mysteries of God’s throne…

This is the sunset taken from the top of a temple in Rameswaram and just beyond the horizon is Sri Lanka. That night, as I stood at the top of that temple and stared into the limitless expanse of ocean, I began to cry as I imagined the monkey god Hanuman leaping from rock to rock to rescue Sita. Like Flaubert, I also thanked God. . .and Buddha and Shiva and Kali and Tara that I was “capable of such joy.” Such profound joy and pleasure that it indeed pervaded my entire being.

Finally Mahoney describes Flaubert and Nightingale as neither having “any desire to fit the tediously cliched expectations that society had slated for them”; that they both “prized solitude”; and both traveled Egypt during periods of “considerable personal uncertainty and self-doubt”, agonizing “over how they would use their talents and answer their natural impulses.”

I am a woman of a certain age who travels alone, relishing my aloneness. After traveling around the sun over 50 times, India was the first country overseas that I visited and it will be my last. I also do not suffer tediously cliched expectations gladly.

Ma India, I’m coming home.

i’ve been published…

by L. Valdez Karl


…well, kinda sorta…

Sindhu AKA Flower Girl of Flower Girl’s Rural India blog asked me to write about something that I experienced in India. She started a Travelogue section of her blog and I am honored to be the first one! I wrote about my most favorite India memory so far, the time I spent in Rameswaram. Please read more about my adventures in Rameswaram by clicking on “Kannen” or “Rameswaram” in the tag cloud.

Sindhu’s blog is one of the first entrants in my Blog Hall of Fame, so check her out.

Thanks, Sindhu, for asking me to post to your wonderful blog!

an attitude of gratitude

by L. Valdez Karl

Today is my birthday. And that scary picture of me (and my boyfriend Harry, or Hari as I used to call him) is circa 1971 when I was a young hippie chick in high school. I killed too many brain cells back then to remember who took that picture.

And how often do you get an email from The Universe on your birthday?….

Hey!! Sama, there’s not been a single day in your life when you’ve been anything but magnificent. Give this to yourself.

Every day you move mountains, touch lives, and perform miracles.

Every day you’re a success, a hero, an example.

And every day you change the world for the better…

The Universe

If any of you would like to get daily personalized messages from The Universe, you can sign up at The Adventurers Club – Thoughts Become Things. Yeah, yeah, I know…none of us need any more emails in our inbox, but it’s kind of neat to get a personalized message from the Universe!

I’ve been around the sun over 50 times now, and every year on my birthday I look back over my life. I can honestly say that I have no regrets, not even about the bad things I’ve experienced because I’ve learned lessons from it all. I don’t regret the drugs I took or hanging out with the people I hung out with, some good, some not so good, some wild and crazy, and others, just crazy. I moved out when I was 18 and never looked back, and for a while making it to age 21 was a little iffy.

Those of you who have read my very early postings know that I dabbled in yoga and meditation in my college days, when yoga was seen as the milieu of half-n@ked hippies sitting around chanting OM. My claim to fame is OMing with Buddhist and Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg at a hippie party, and no, none of us were half-n*ked, but I do remember some wacky tobacy and Ripple wine. On a quest for something more, I started reading the books of the Eastern wisdom traditions even earlier, when I was in high school.

Then my life detoured taking many twists and turns until I found the road sign again that pointed the way back to the Path. I believe there are no coincidences, and yoga brought me back home to myself, to the me that used to be, sans drugs and craziness this time. It is said that yoga connects or re-connects us to our True Self….I know it has in my case, and I’ve had a consistent practice for about 10 years now, and teaching for six. The rewards of yoga for me are so much more than physical — although the physical practice keeps me flexible and open and strong, the non-physical practice makes me whole. My meditation practice keeps me on an even keel, keeps me focused on the NOW, keeps me from becoming reactionary and held prisoner by my emotions or erratic thoughts. My spirituality feeds my soul.

A few years ago I had my birth chart done, and during our first meeting the astrologer told me that she has rarely seen a chart as powerful as mine because of the way certain planets line up. Pluto is very heavy in my chart, Pluto being the planet of death but also the planet of spirituality. She told me that according to my chart, the first months that I spend in India will be the most perfect times in my life to be there. She did my chart before I went on my first trip and she told me that “it will feel like you are going home.” She was right. Dead-on right. The waves of recognition that flooded over me the minute my foot hit Indian soil were too strong to be denied, and I had some deep emotional responses to certain areas in Tamil Nadu.

After my second trip to India I did my “astro travel” birthchart at Astro.com, and my Moon and Pluto (there’s that planet again!) lines intersect right through Tamil Nadu, in the exact spot where I travel. The crossing of Moon and Pluto means “there is a tremendous potential for transformation in this region…the path towards catharsis under Pluto’s guidance often leads through a valley of tears, but once you are through it, you will receive completely new insights. Mighty energies operate under this crossing. Repressed memories, past emotional hurts, and unprocessed fears come into consciousness to make you look at events of your past which you thought were long forgotten, as a result of which you experience cathartic releases…” Hmmmm….maybe that’s why I broke down in those Murugan temples…..

My astrologer has said that according to my chart I have not even begun to reach my potential, that my 50s will be a training ground for what will come after age 60, “taking it on the road”, as she calls it. All my yoga training and spiritual retreats are preparing me for what she calls an exponential explosion into the global realm, because the “Midwest is just too small for you. You came out of the womb looking to get out of the box…” A vedic astrologer told me, long before going to India was even a thought in my mind, that somewhere between 2008-2010 I would experience “divine grace.” I don’t know what that is exactly, but it sounds good.

I’ve always taken anything adepts have told me with a huge grain of salt, if things happen, they happen, I go with the flow. I traveled overseas — solo — for the first time in my life at the fabulous age of 51, and for whatever reason the planets lined up to take me to the heart of yoga. I returned six months later, once again a solo woman-of-a-certain-age traveler.

At an age when many people start thinking about retirement, I know in my bones that the best is yet to come for me. Many my age have health concerns, but I don’t concern myself with that. My arthritis is worse than some — I developed it in my 30s, and had shoulder surgery in my 40s. I had an ovarian cancer scare that required another surgery, and that’s when I created my mantra “I AM NOT THIS BODY, I AM NOT THIS BODY, I AM NOT THIS BODY”. It works for peace of mind and perspective, believe me. If I develop an incapacitating condition, I already know where I want to spend my last days, and it won’t be in an American hospital, I can assure you.

I regret nothing, and look forward to everything that will come my way, even the unpleasant things. I decided a long time ago not to dwell on the past or worry about the future. Life is a delicious ebb and flow and I want the entire banquet, not just a few nibbles at the buffet. Yoga cultivates many things, and one thing it cultivates is an attitude of gratitude. Thank you, Life, for being an excellent teacher.

Lindia’s India

by L. Valdez Karl

“There is a fundamental difference between a tourist and a traveler. One of my favorite travel writers, my friend Rolf Potts, said, “Tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers leave home to experience it.” Many people who think they are travelers really are no such thing – they might travel the world but they experience very little. The beauty of real travel is that everything is new, nothing is familiar – the people, the landscapes, the language, the culture, the food – the way of life as a whole. And true travelers embrace it all, taking off their personal blinders of habit, experience, bias, perspective and expectations to fully embrace this different new world they joyously find themselves in.”

So Shelley Seale writes in her post entitled “A Traveler in India” from the awesome Weight of Silence blog that I discovered today. I could not agree more. Some of you may have read my very first post in this blog about how when I was planning my first trip to India I endured a lot of what I call FearTalk from many people. FearTalk about India, about what might happen to me — FearTalk because most people, I believe, live their lives in fear. I listened politely but in my mind my hands were up to my ears and I kept repeating my mantra of “la la la la la la la la…..” I ignored their noise and booked my flights anyway.

I am currently planning my third trip to India for the end of this year and into 2008, for a mere three weeks. I am finding this trip harder to plan than my first two and I was not sure exactly why until I read the above quote — because I want to EXPERIENCE so much and I won’t have enough time. This woman of a certain age realizes that I have less years ahead of me than I have behind me, and I look at India as an endless buffet laid out before me where I won’t be satisfied until I gorge myself completely. I want to experience every morsel, the sweet and the sour, the delicious, and even what needs to be spit out immediately. I have two more trips to different parts of India percolating in the back of my mind to be taken within the next five years or so. I know in my bones that a time will come when I will have to take six months off to travel India. Six months will be a good start. My gal pal in India, sirensongs, says, “Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to lose yourself.” Why, indeed?

I have a friend who now calls me Lindia…I love the way my name combined with India rolls so easily off the tongue.

glimpses of Pondicherry

by L. Valdez Karl

March 2006



big Gandhi and little Gandhi, on the beach…

beggar girl with pup…

bowing to Ganesha…

emails home

by L. Valdez Karl

Unfortunately, during my first trip to India in September, 2005, I did not keep the emails I sent home. Y’all will have to be satisfied with my musings and rants from my second trip in March, 2006, including those I wrote for IndiaMike.com, where I am now a moderator…

enjoy!

the first pic is me with Suresh’s three darling daughters, his nephew, and a neighbor boy….such a simply sweet and beautiful day…..

the picture of me and my very large friend was taken in September 2005 in front the temple in Pondicherry….the blessing only cost me 1 rupee! definitely the money shot!
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3/6/06

…the intensive is going to be awesome, of course! this time we have Desikachar’s senior senior teachers teaching us and….Desikachar himself is teaching the meditation class and his son, Kausthub, is teaching the class on how the Sutras teach us how to transform ourselves.

This is a yoga teacher’s dream — at least for a teacher who believes that this is the heart of yoga. We chanted with Desikachar this morning, and he told us we sounded “fantastic”….

Once again, being here confirms for me that yoga is not about the body, but about transforming the mind. And once again it confirms that no one can put their own name on a 5000 year old tradition — not John Friend, not Ana Forrest, not Bikram….

This morning they talked about how true personal transformation, on a deeper level, can not come from a group class, it can only be done on an individual level, one-on-one, like Krishnamacharya taught. It can start in a group yoga class, but can only reach culmination, one-on-one.

As I laid in bed this morning in the throes of jet lag, I realized what coming here does for me — India integrates me, takes the yin and yang and pulls it together into the One that gives me peace. It is hard to describe, but when I realized it, it literally felt like two halves melting into one.

mmmmmmm……my India …..
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3/11/2006
first weekend of traveling…

woke up this morning in Pondicherry . Starting walking at 7 am — to beach on the Bay of Bengal , taking my time….. stopped to make “happy birthday” call to hubby while I was drinking REAL indian chai for 3 rupees a cup — had 3 cups. 44 rupees to $1 so figure it out!

There is a Ganesh temple in Pondicherry — the temple where the elephant blessed me last year. On my way back from the beach, they were walking the temple elephant thru the streets to the temple, her face decorated, her “ankles” wearing bracelets. They took the real Ganesha into the temple and walked her around. Following her were the priests beating drums, blowing horns, and pulling a movable altar with a statue of Ganesh covered in garlands. They walked her around the temple about 5 times or so, then took her outside. Every time she passed me I said OM GUM GANA PATAYAI NAMAHA, Ganesh’s mantra. The whole experience was awesome. And yes, Ganesha blessed me again…..when I gave her a rupee. The elephant is 15 years old by the way, still a young temple elephant.

I had breakfast on the beach in a tiny restaurant, 30 rupees. Idly with chutneys and a sweet lassi, of course…..

My trip is a bit different this year — I realized that now that I see the underbelly of India , last year, I saw only the good thru rose colored glasses. Now I see everything more clearly, the garbage, the shit — dog, cow, and human — on the streets, the starving dogs, the beggars holding puppies or babies to get your sympathy. There were two little girls, one holding a little puppy not more than 2 months old, so of course I gave them all my rupee coins and 30 rupees in paper money, how could I resist? I told them to feed themselves and the puppy. Who knows if they will feed the puppy?

But in spite of this, I love it here. I am a true buddhist when I can see reality as it really is, not as I wish it to be with no starving puppies and little beggar girls and no shit on the streets! This morning I called from the beach on my cell phone to Madurai , the temple town I will visit in two weeks, called 2 places to reserve a room. I have a reservation at a 1000 rupee hotel and a 118 rupee guesthouse next to the temple…..guess which one I will stay at??

well, think I will go back to hotel now, to shower, and go out for another walk. Will head back to Chennai about 3 pm or so…..

bye for now — and think about elephant blessings…. and all the other blessings you have in your lives…..
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3/16/2006

…it was a great theory class today, all about the bandhas, so interesting!! once again, being here re-confirms for me how this is the pure, traditional yoga, the heart, anything else is just faking it…..and anyone who puts their own name on yoga…
PUH-LEEEEEEZE!

the teachers keep emphasizing how personal transformation is the true goal of yoga, not getting the yoga butt or abs, but personal transformation, changing our states of mind, replacing negative tendencies with positive ones, and connecting to the True Self, how ultimately this can not be done in a group yoga class, it can only be done one-on-one with a teacher, as Krishnamacharya taught.

They showed us the sequence on how to teach the bandhas, starting with jalandhara going down to mulabandha, and how people should be able to inhale and exhale at least to a count of 10 or 12, before even attempting to work with the bandhas. Also told us about contraindications. Again, once more this emphasized for me, what NOT to teach in a group class, because everyone is different and everyone will have a different reaction to it — uddiyana bandha aggravates vata for example.

We were told that Krishnamacharya did not believe in kriyas. He said pranayama practice — properly done — was effective enough to cleanse the body of impurities. Desikachar was with us last night and he told us stories of his father, about how Krishnamacharya stopped his own heart for 2 minutes — it was only then that Desikachar took up the practice of yoga, when he saw the power of it. Until then he was not interested in it. This was in 1962 or so.

I’ve have gotten pretty good at chanting the Gayatri mantra….I don’t sound too much like a howling dog anymore!

other than that, was in a very minor rickshaw accident the other night, but was not hurt. Went out with a South African student to a bookstore and in search of sweet lassis. A Muslim woman on a scooter turned into us, her front wheel ended up underneath the rickshaw and she fell off. no one stopped to help, but the guy I was with got out to help her up. She just got on the scooter and took off like nothing was. We were lucky — two other students were in a rickshaw accident where the rickshaw rolled over. Lucky for them that they escaped with only bruises and scrapes, nothing broken.

This is India….
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3/20/2006

I just got back from another beautiful day in Chennai, thanks to my rickshaw driver, Suresh. I used his services last September. He usually hangs out at The Woodlands Hotel (a hangout for Westerners in Chennai) but is available for hire for the “American madam”. Thanks to Suresh I got my best photos last year, when he took me on my last day to Chennai’s veg/fruit/flower warehouses….

Suresh does not speak the best English, but we communicate. At the beginning of this week he invited me to his house for Sunday (today), and kept reminding me about it — “wife make fish, good, Madam…” with a big smile. He said he would buy a fish, and his wife would use a little oil (because he knows I don’t like “grease”) and some spices, and his wife will cook us a feast! He picked me up and I knew it would be a traditional South Indian meal when he stopped to get some banana leaves (banana leaves are used for plates.)

I kept thinking about how our relationship has changed since last year. He invited me to his house so he must think I will not be judgmental of him as a poor rickshaw driver. Many people I know would scoff at the idea of sitting on a concrete floor eating a wonderful meal with a rickshaw driver and his wife and kids (none of whom speak English!). Many higher caste Indian would not even consider it….

The fish was great, with steamed rice and a veg salad, and a dish of mutton besides. I hoped that his wife would not be insulted that I could not eat all that she gave me — I don’t eat much, and after a few slices of fish, I was full. The funny thing was that they gave me utensils and I said, no, I will eat with my right hand, south Indian style. The kids tried to use the spoons — they sat up nice and straight looking proper, and I motioned for them to forget the spoons, just eat Indian style, which they gladly did, immediately. It was a good laugh….

It amazes me how Indian women, no matter how poor they are, always look beautiful in their saris and gold jewelery, and we Westerners always look like refugees. With many there is a certain elegance as they glide through the dirtiest and dustiest of streets, seemingly without a drop of sweat on their brows….

We got to his house (two rooms, and the Indian squat toilet is outside in another room of the building, clothes washing is done in a bucket, and pounded against the ground), and of course the neighbors had to come to see the American (I don’t think too many westerners visit this part of Chennai.) His place costs 1500 rupees per month, the one across the way costs 3000 rupees/month — for “rich people” he says (44 R = $1)

He told everyone I am the American yoga teacher he drives around. They were all interested in my tattoos, especially the kids. Suresh has three daughters (which is a curse for a poor Indian man, he must come up with a dowry for each one when they marry), and I also met his nephew. After lunch, we went up on the roof where the laundry was blowing in the breeze, and the kids started posing for pictures. I took a ton of pics of the kids and some neighbors. It was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon, to me, the “real India”. I felt honored to be there, on the roof, running around with the kids, showing them the pics on the camera, it made me want to cry. These Indians I was with, none of whom speak English, treated me like family, someone who they will never see again….how many of us would do that?? It was a day I will never forget.

I heard the kids calling me auntyji, which is a term of respect for the older “aunty” in the family…..

this is my India ….tomorrow night on to Madurai, and more Indian adventures….