Downshifting

My university friend moved to the countryside 6 years ago. All of a sudden she decided to abandon a flat in Moscow, brilliant perspectives, money and career and settle down in the middle of nowhere, in an old Karelian house with no tap water or heating. Everybody thought she was crazy - bathing in a spring in the middle of winter, being alone for days, 80 km from Petrozavodsk, her, who had always been very social (I'd say socioliser), comfort-loving, ambitious and city-girly, all of a sudden she found her peace in that village that'd stay empty for several months a year. In winter it's perfect as you can jump from the sauna directly into the snow dunes all naked without thinking of neighbors staring at your red butt :) here I am by the way, all steaming and freshly baked:

I love the place, specially in summer. It's clean - really clean, air-water-soil-energy-everything. CLEAN. And nourishing. And giving you some space for feedback and reflection. For breathing in-out. Just for re-connecting with nature. Imagine living in a wooden house with a "Black" banya (special type of Russian sauna that is super-healthy wealthy and wise), faaaar from pollution, noise, people (first of all PEOPLE - this layer of collective consciousness disappears and even the transparency of your dreams changes...). Being frugal - berries, veggies and herbs, mushrooms and local dairy products, everything organic without being certified, everything breathing love and care, made or collected with your own two hands, cooked with affection and charged with prana. I love this way of life! Now being back to my parents' flat I feel how I cleaned and charged all my channels there, how life was NOW and meaningful, and how normal it is to live like that, though for many people it would feel strange and extravagant... It's like eating fresh carrots instead of a carrot cake for me now!

Well, let's see when and where I will do the same! Hm, though I have to discuss the "snow-bathing" option with Mr.D. :) may be we can change it into sun-bathing on the sea-side hehe...

28 January, apparently Saturday...

Organized chaos... in the Universe, in our comprehension of life, in our thoughts, in the way we move or talk, in our feelings or in the birds going South. Varanasi train station is also organized chaos. I've never seen that before... Hundreds of people, everywhere, mainly on the floor, with their own places, food, toilets, with their own hope... to get into the next train. We were going to Gorakhpur from Bodhgaya and had to change in Varanasi. We didn't know they had one of their Mehlas (religious feasts). And we didn't know they'd all want to take the same train we bought tickets for. How to describe... lake of people. Sea... Ocean... with inner rivers and boats. With luggages and prayers. Noisy, stincky, pushing, swearing, crying... Someone told us they changed all the sleeper coaches into the sitting ones. If you've ever taken a train in India, you'd understand what I mean if I say organizes chaos, right? Indian don't buy tickets to sitting trains, they just go. But when you have thousands of those who just go... Police was rude and violent. Somehow we managed to find someone who would help us to squeeze into our coach. Terrible. They through out five or seven people for us three. Difficult to be equanimous. Difficult not to gasp. C'etait infernal... Then in the train... you couldn't step - people EVERYWHERE, literally. We had to find out places and convince people that we had right to occupy them (actually not a problem - the policemen were outside shouting on people through the window and nobody protested, they just had this crazy inner wave of anger towards us...). We tried to sleep on our benches surrounded by faces (close to me there were 4 women sitting on the floor, and some more in my feet). In the middle of the night more policemen came and there was a fight and they were throwing people out again and then nicely asking us if we were ok, if our luggage was safe. Sad... specially when you understand that it's all about money - the ticket I bought was 80 rupees, 1,5 euros and it gave me right to be treated as a human being. Sad, again and again. Well, let everybody be peaceful and happy, policemen included! At the end it turned out to be less drama than I thought and we even had sandwiches and tango music for breakfast!

So we arrived in Lumbini, for that had to go through 101 small things - rikshaws, immigration service, busses, dust, people, traffic, long walk with bags, screaming monkeys. Crazy day! Oh, Lumbini... Buddha was born here. There are tens of monasteries around, have never seen that before, it's a big supermarket! The town turned out to be a one-street village, like in a spaghetti-westerns. Pretty clean and with nice people... Everything much more expensive than expected, but I supposed it's due to the wave of tourists coming from India to spend their obligatory gap of two months outside the country. Locals are spoiled by the amount of money floating here as well (Lumbini is a UNESCO-heritage place, but everything is done in a real wannagenna style, roads go out of the plan, money disappears etc)

Right now in the vipassana center, on a short 3 days self-retreat - after the previous course ended they nicely let us stay, providing food and shelter. I am supposed to meditate, but now it's 21.34, there's no light, and if I sit and concentrate on my sensations, I immediately fall asleep, so I decided to write all this instead. See you  soon!

Be Happy and don't forget to chew!

(oh, the lights are on again, I'll try to do some vipassana...)

Tchuf Tchuf

Sitting on the train to Gaya - my first Indian train trip. Sleeper class - it's like our Russian platskart but with 8 places per room and one million things happening. Families with small kids, old saddhus begging, chai-coffee, food and press sellers passing by starting from 6AM, everybody screaming and farting and listening to their own music on mobiles. If you are sensitive to sounds and smells you'd better NOT take Sleepers Class. But for me it's real India - people are kind and true. Oh, right now I'm being attacked by a cockroach and there's a battle in the toilet zone. That's life! Everybody says "Hallou" to me (that's basically the only English word people know...) and stares at my Yellow Hear again and again, one lady - and that starts to be normal - asked if she could take a pic on me later on. Again and again we pass by landscapes that make it REAL for me, with fields and clay houses, with women ALWAYS washing clothes - seems to be their main daily practice, with naked kids and piles of cow shit (this i the normal fuel in rural zones), with monkeys on the temple roofs and men peeing wherever their left foot stops them. Lots of tents and huts, many women on construction sites, there are no tractors, so if you need to transport a pile of bricks from a truck to the place, they use... womens' heads. You know the picture, right? Saree, head covered with a special supporting scarf and there you go - superwoman... The train will be late, it's ALREADY late - 3h at least, we'll see by night time. It's normal... David told me once their train was one and a half day late. Well, this is India :)

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

Tibet in India... again

Sitanshu The Great took me to the Mindrolling Monastery - a Tibetan settlement in the suburbs of Dehradun.
I feel so happy and balanced in places like this. It's a different universe - with stupas, monks, quiet and friendly people, no trash and no honking, noone staring at you cause you're "Yellow hair". Everywhere flowers, flags, prayer drums, and it's CLEAN :)

I could walk around there for hours, would sooo much like to stay for some days, but one of the guys whom we asked about accommodation for outsiders rolled his eyes saying "not possible". Well, not everything is possible in the land of Buddha...

Here are some pics

Sitanshu The Great