Travels within travels

The Practical

It's hard to believe I've only been here for 3 weeks. Time passes differently here. It seems like every night before I go to bed I think, "Man, I can't believe it was just this morning that I [did whatever]". I certainly thought that a lot this weekend during our fun, whirlwind adventure in Hyderabad.

On background: Dr. and Mrs. Reddy, the parents of our good friend Vikram, are Indian imports to Michigan and have lived there for the past few decades, but they maintain a home in Hyderabad where they very wisely spend a good part of the Michigan winter. When they found out I would be in India during this time, they graciously arranged for me and Martina to fly up to Hyderabad to visit them for a weekend.

The travel itself is a fun Indian adventure story. We had a flight booked from the Mysore airport going through Bangalore to Hyderabad, but when we got to the airport (after taking two bus trips and a bit of a walk), we were informed that all flights were canceled. We had gotten to the airport early enough that we still had time to get to Bangalore by car (!) so the airline arranged for a driver to take us on the four-hour journey. Okay! We got to Bangalore just in time for our flight to Hyderabad. Now, neither of us has a phone that works here. We have our iPhones set to airplane mode so we can use the internet when wifi is available, and we have a (very old, slow) laptop with wireless broadband that works most of the times we try it, but we are certainly not easy to reach, especially if time is of the essence. Turns out the airline had tried to contact us to let us know our flight was canceled, and when that failed they called Vik and woke him up in the middle of the night and then he couldn't get in touch with us either. But, everything worked out, like it always seems to, and by Friday evening we were enjoying a massive plate of delicious Indian food at a rooftop party thrown by some of the Reddys' friends.

Saturday was a full day of Hyderabad highlights: we started at Charminar, then did a little shopping for bangles at some of the famed area markets, then it was off to Chowmahal palace. Hyberabad was ruled by Muslims for many centuries and this is reflected in a lot of its art and architecture. In the afternoon we walked around the Golconda fort, which is up in the hills outside the city. Highly recommended if you are ever out that way. It is a marvel of all kinds of engineering, including acoustic: our guide showed us how standing in one specific spot you can hear someone clapping from the top of the hill. That night there was another party. The Reddys are waaaay more energetic and social than we are, they put us younguns to shame! On Sunday they took us to a family wedding in Dr. Reddy's hometown of Warangal. It is apparently not unusual here to go to a wedding of people you don't know - wedding invitations are understood to include "you, your family, and anyone else you feel like bringing". This one was a relatively modest affair of "only" about a thousand people. It was absolutely beautiful and fun.

A note on the road trip parts of our journey: Indian highways are an interesting experience. They run through towns, for the most part, so stretches of clear road are punctuated by all that towns bring: cross traffic, pedestrians, speed bumps, cows/goats/dogs/buffalo, street demonstrations, etc. Out on the highway proper there are two lanes in each direction, officially. But in addition to cars, highway traffic includes bicycles, bullock carts, motorcycles bearing families of five, autorickshaws with nine people in them, buses, small pickups overburdened with coconuts, giant flatbed trucks with so many sacks of something tied onto them they are more trapezoidal than rectangular... you get the idea. Because of this diversity of vehicles, highway speeds vary widely. Everybody wants to pass the people who are going slower than they are, but since there are far more kinds of vehicles traveling at different speeds than there are lanes, this is not always possible if you play by the rules. So, we learned, you make your own rules, and your road trip becomes a 3-hour long, horn-blaring game of chicken. But, everything worked out, as it always seems to. And it was neat to get to see so much of the countryside between our destinations.

Now we are back in Mysore after an easy trip on Monday. (Another tidbit about travel in India: they have separate lines for women and men at airport screenings for domestic flights, so that women can be frisked in private, and the women's lines are way shorter. ) It felt really good to get "home" and to be back in the shala this morning. I'm picking up my little routine where I left off: yoga, dance, Sanskrit, and philosophy.

The Practice

Ashtanga actually has six series of postures, and the one most people are familiar with is the first or primary series, slso known as "yoga chikitsa", or "yoga therapy". According to Guruji (as quoted by Kino), "First series: body is healing. Second series: mind, emotions is healing. Third and fourth series: demonstration only".

The second, or intermediate series, is called nadi shodhana and is a set of postures designed to purify the nervous system. Matthew me practicing it last year and I had worked up to the first 4 postures. But when you come to Mysore for the first time, no matter what you are doing at home you only practice primary and Sharath decides when to give you intermediate asanas. (It is funny that we talk here of "only" practicing primary... people who are not in the ashtanga world stare at me in shock and say you do WHAT with your body and for 90 MINUTES EVERY DAY?!)

On Wednesday of last week, Sharath helped me with my dropbacks, then said, "Monday, pashasana" (the first posture of the second series). I said, "I'm not here on Monday, I'm going on a trip to Hyderabad". (Claudia had a good laugh at hearing this, and said I must be the first person who has responded to getting second series from Sharath with, "sorry, that doesn't really work for my schedule".) So he said, "Okay, Wednesday, pashasana". Then he changed his mind and said, "tomorrow, pashasana". Yes, sir! Nerve cleansing commenced. We shall see what comes out of it.

I missed two practice days while we were in Hyderabad, which Sharath pointed out this morning. He told me and Martina we had to pay 500 rupees extra for not coming yesterday. Heh.

The Path

If you'll forgive me for outsourcing my blogging to the talented and prolific Claudia once again, she has a great post about meditation based on a conversation we had recently... so it's the lazy man's way of sharing my thoughts on that.