Well, it's been awhile, but time flies when you're having fun (and crawls slowly when you're sick in bed battling constant GI issues). So that pretty much sums up my time here in India, lots of fun but lots of puke too. Which isn't my favorite way to spend my evenings but has felt like a regular part of my routine at times.
But, it's now mid March, which means it's almost time for us to head to Nepal for a couple weeks. After Nepal, I will be headed to an olive farm is Greece, but Davis will be back to India for a month or so, and then in mid May, he'll head to Greece to join me for a few days before we set off to Italy.
But enough about the future, let's talk about the past, as seen through the present. (Thanks, Noora, for holding me accountable so I'd actually get to writing :D )
My plan was to spend the first two weeks of February in Rishikesh at a yoga teacher training course to do 100 hours and deepen my practice on a mental and physical level. I ended up loving it so much that I extended and stayed for the full 200 hours. So now I'm a certified yoga instructor! I have no intention currently of taking up yoga professionally, but I enjoy teaching friends and the experience was phenomenal.
Our typical day started with Ashtanga yoga at 5:30am. My day started at 4:45am because I would do some Wim Hof breathing before getting up and heading to class. After Ashtanga, we had meditation and mantra chanting, followed by pranayama.
We learned different methods like kapal bhati, bhastrika, and nadi shodhan pranayam and different tools like the jal neti, the little pot that you fill with warm water and salt and pour into one nostril and out the other; rubber neti, which I skipped, but is a thinnish piece of long rubber that looks like a snake that you push up one nostril and out your mouth (I had too many flashbacks from having doctors stick cameras up my nose to look at my vocal cords so I said no thanks); and kunjal kriya, where you drink a bunch of warm salt water really fast and then vomit it all back up, I tried this and while puking up tons of water and looking around to see a few other students doing the same, I thought why in the world am I doing this? I surely puke often enough in this country to not need to do it intentionally.
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| Shona attempting the rubber neti |
I loved learning the different breathing techniques, especially as I'm already a fan of doing Wim Hof's breathing flow, so it was fun to learn about all of them.
Breakfast followed pranayama and then we had an hour of self study time before an alignment and teaching methodology class. Then lunch, and another hour long break before anatomy and physiology, followed closely by philosophy. The last class of the day was Hatha yoga and then dinner.
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| Teaching the Class Lions Pose |
So our days started at 5:30am and ended at 7:30pm everyday of the week, except Sunday. Sundays were our free day and the school would offer an optional activity for students. I usually opted out because most weekends Davis would come down to Rishikesh on Saturday night and we'd get dinner and hang out all day on Sunday. One weekend that he came down, we went to place called Salad Bar because I have missed salad so so much. But the next day I was so so sick.. There might be something to that rule about not eating fresh fruits or veggies without a peel.. And then when he came down the following weekend, again I ate something that I shouldn't have, and got sick yet again.
The classes were so interesting. We learned we'd been doing many of the traditional poses wrong in alignment class, we learned about the human body and how yoga can help heal ailments, we learned about the chakras and the history of yogic philosophy, and we learned so much more than that!
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| Our final for anatomy |
During our breaks I could often be spotted on the roof of the hotel, walking in circles with a book in my hand. I was so tired of sitting, but wanted to read, so this was the best solution that I had found.
I couldn't have asked for a better experience. The course was amazing, and I highly highly recommend Rishikesh Yoga Teacher Training Center (RYTTC). The teachers were so knowledgeable and great at sharing that knowledge. My fellow students were all so friendly and welcoming and I made some great friends during my month there.
One afternoon during "finals week", they had us all walk down to a ghat on the Ganga for our afternoon yoga class. It was incredibly beautiful and such great vibes!
And the food was delicious!
On the last day of classes, for the 5:30am class, we did 108 sun salutations as a class. I had gotten food poisoning the day before and wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it, but I rallied through. It was so much fun and actually quite a bit easier than I thought it would be. We each went around the room leading the transitions, first with sanskrit counting, and then with any random thing that we wanted, like colors or foods, etc. As in, "yellow"- arms up, "blue"- forward fold (uttanasana), "red"- half forward fold (ardha uttanasana), etc. It made it fun and passed the time quickly! I wasn't definitely sweating and needed my water bottle by me, but I made it through them all! Such a neat experience.
During the last few days of the course, I began helping with a mural project started and drawn by a guy named Hunter. Hunter showed up at the school on my brother Hunter's birthday and they have the same first and middle name! These two guys have so many similarities, it felt really cool to meet someone so like my brother all the way in India! Anyway, Hunter, Abby and myself spent many long hours on this mural. Other students would help out for a couple hours, even Davis helped one day, but the three of us were determined to complete it and on the day after the course ended, we did!
It was such an incredible time. Painting and jamming to throwbacks with a couple other USAers was the finale that I needed to yoga teacher training.
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| Myself, Hunter, and Abby |
One the last day, we had a "test". But we never found out how we did on the test, and no one fails, so it doesn't feel much like a test. And then, we're certified!
After the course, I stayed in Rishikesh for a couple days till Davis got back from a Fullbright conference in southern India. When he got back, I met him at the Dehradun airport and we (after much confusion and haggling) got in a cab for 5-6 hours, headed east to Jim Corbett National Park to meet his family! We got there at night and said quick greetings before heading to bed with our alarms set for 4:30am.
Up early, we had an hour drive before hopping in an open jeep to go on safari. We didn't see anything big or crazy, just some deer, birds, and of course monkeys, but it was still a very pleasant morning. I hadn't met his family before so there was plenty of time for getting to know each other.
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| The whole famn damily! Davis, myself, Loralie (Davis's mom), David (Davis's dad) and Austin (Davis's brother) |
We spent a lot of time in the bus/van those first few days.
It was hard and slow winding that big ol thing around the narrow, curvy roads of rural Uttarakhand. We went to Majkhali to see the sister city with our university, Western Colorado. Here we went on a nice little hike. In the morning when we came down to breakfast, it was so pleasant outside so we sat down. The hotel staff urged us to sit inside because of the monkeys. The place was surrounded with trees, but we figured it wouldn't be a big deal if there were a few monkeys around, but boy were we wrong. As soon as a plate of pancakes was set down in front of Loralie, a monkey jumped down from a tree so quick and tried to snatch it. The staff shooed that monkey away, but the word had spread. The whole time we were eating we had around 5 staff members on surveillance with brooms and sticks, securing the perimeter. They told us, and we didn't listen. I felt bad, but it was very amusing. The following morning, we sat inside for breakfast.
Then we traveled to Rudraprayag and then Srinagar so Davis's family could see some of the places where Davis spent his time while here.
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| I got double-dog-dared to jump in when no swimming was allowed |
After Srinagar we went to Kanatal and enjoyed a little goofy adventure park and a nice temple hike.
When we'd had enough, we checked into the hotel and got cleaned up as best as we could before enjoying a more relaxing rest of the day. Some of the colors stained and my face was stained pink and red while the lower half of Davis's face was yellow.
The following day we did a cooking class (with the same people that Davis and I had done one with in December). The food was just as scrumptious as last time and we all had a blast cooking together. We were amused by another woman in our class who didn't like spices or spicy, she made Indian cooking nearly as bland as I think it probably can be!
The day after that was a rafting day (also the same as the one we did in December) but it was great to be there with more people, and the warmer weather definitely made this trip down the Ganga a bit nicer than the last one.
After showers, we had a really nice pizza night together for our last evening. It included focaccia and bruschetta. Boy, how I miss real bread. It was so tasty and left me salivating for the days to come in Italy.
The next morning we took them up for a walk to the Secret waterfall, and then to the Secret Garden for an incredibly wholesome and delicious lunch of smoothie bowls, salads, and quinoa dishes. This is the only place in Rishikesh that you can get some very western menu items but its always clean and refreshing. Shortly after, we said our goodbyes!
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| Using a leaf blower for the "wind in the hair" look |
I had a really wonderful time. Many of the days that week were so nice because often in the morning we would all do yoga together before breakfast, and sometimes I would lead us.
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| peek our driver, Ashok, joining in in the corner |
That week was also SO nice because we got to live a little more luxuriously than we do in our usual day to day. Our hotels had comfy mattresses, buffet breakfasts, even sometimes a gym! Although this did make it hard to go back to our "roughing it" style once they left. I am so grateful to have gotten to join them on their trip in India, it was wonderful meeting the fam and getting to go on some grand adventures together.
We stayed in Rishikesh for a couple days to recharge and then went to Kanatal for a few chilly nights before making our way back to Srinagar. It's been pretty wet here but we're hoping to hike Kuari Pass and Kuari Top as our last big adventure before heading to Nepal.
There has been some great things to see and do here in India, but I have to admit, in the face of the number of times I've been sick here, the cool things get slightly diminished in my mind. I guess that just means it's time to move on, while my memories are still positive.
Nepal, here we come!