I am really slow in writing those days - both to my family, to my diary (dear diary...) and to the Universe. Let it be - there are small things happening and I am really enjoying, no Internet actually gives you so much time for... communicating  -"log off and go for a walk with the dog", right? (Loesje is always right, so...)

One more vipassana finished one week ago, new horizons, new stories, new people and as usual new me. This time my ever-restless part had hard times... but well done dear Yana! :) I've worked a lot on my heart center and now feeling REALLY good, like it was in one movie: "today I am better, not better than you, but better than myself yesterday". 

Now in Rishikesh, THE yoga capital, THE New Age Place of the... West - you can have everything here from flute lessons and ayurvedic super-doctors to astrological reading of your mamma's dog's past lives. So people stay here for months in ashrams, find their gurus, chat with sadhus over a cup of chai, bath in Ganga and pray for their nuuumerous gods. The town is as touristic as it could be, with German Bakeries and musli for breakfast, with street beggars speaking English (Hare Om full power!) and rikshaws charging you 10 times more than they would charge Indians - normal, right? Cows are as holy as everywhere in India, they eat posters from walls, beg for chapaties and poo everywhere they can, last days it was raining so to get from our place to the center we had to swim in the porridge of cow s..t, soooo natural and soooo eco, the biggest deal was not to slip and shmak down :)

Everybody is doing yoga here and me... I'm slightly apart. The idea before coming was to stay here for one month and do agama yoga first level, but now I am leaving for Bodhgaya toorrow and took only one class in Iyengar Yoga with a private teacher from... Israel, a guy who is writing a book on asanas and practicing 25 hours per week, pretty impressive how advanced he is and.. how humble he stays at the same time. We met over a momo soup (youpiii, momos here are the best!) and just chatted and I said I'd like to take his class, and it was actually the best (technically) yoga class in my life! We also talked a lot (again over momos:), he's not spiritual at all, yoga is 100% physical for him, but he talked about sensations and concentration the way we would do it in vipassana. Just a new angle of the same thing. Interesting! I also got updated on Israeli politics, sure...

So here are some pictures from Rishikesh, enjoy

The ShriVedaNiketan ashram where I stayed - 100 rupees per night and free yoga classes twice a day

Shiva on the Ganga

In The Office - best chai and banana samosas in the town!

RamJuhla, the first bridge

With Lina, Swe, so nice to speak Swedish after three years!

In a coffee house, fancy pro-European with toilet paper in the bathroom. Coffee for 50 rupees, but such a pleasure - my first cup since three months...

One of the Gats

Come on to On the other siiiide...

Lemon with Soda...

Next three pics are from an orphanage established by an American lady, with 60 kids living and studying there. You can volunteer and work in the kitchen (they have a cafe with the yammiest food in Rishikesh!)

Yatra on the Ganga 

Hanuman and Shiva