If I see one more hippie with a flute tied to their pants, a flowing Indian scarf wrapped around their dreads, or a vacant "blissed out" smile wandering around I'm going to EXPLODE. The time has clearly come, my friends, to leave Mcleod Ganj. Don't get me wrong it has been wonderful, but if I wanted to spend all my time surrounded by hippies with acquired Indian accents I would never have left Arcata. I have decided to go to Amritsar tomorrow which is the home to the Golden Temple, the "mecca" of the Sikhs. I've met lots of people who went there and loved it, plus the lodging AND food are free so no matter what it can't be that bad! It'll also save me from spending any more time in Delhi where I had originally planned to spend a night or two but now just the mention of it makes me want to bathe in purell, curl into a ball and die. ANYWAY, my trek! The trek was quite an experience. I'm not even sure what to write about it! I think when I decided to go "trekking in the Himalaya" I was so distracted by the utter romance of it that I didn't really think about the fact that trekking=hiking up mountains ALL DAY LONG. I felt pretty slick for the first few minutes, striding away from the trekking place with a sleeping bag tied on my backpack and energy bar in hand, congratulating myself on being so fit and adventurous. Let's just say that about 35 minutes in (right after we stopped going downhill) I had a rude awakening as I lay sprawled out on a rock BATHED in sweat under the beating sun trying to decide if anyone would miss me if I just stayed there and left my body to the elements. Yes, I am not exactly the trekking type. That being said, it was GREAT to push myself past my limits and every time we reached the top of a hill or a section I felt SO proud of myself and so grateful to be alive!! We saw the most wonderful things---the light of the sun setting on the mountains, a mama goat with a baby that had just been born hours before (some of the umbilical cord was still attached!), tiny villages that seemed like they were straight out of National Geographic, et cetera. I took my first shower in 8 days in a mountain stream with the clearest most beautiful water I have ever seen, and had an almost romance with a beautiful shepard man (!!). By night three I was feeling pretty slick again and we were staying in this Durga temple in the middle of the forest with absolutely NO ONE around except the two guys who kept the temple clean and a few stray dogs. I thought I would seize the opportunity to be an inspirational mountain woman and sleep under the stars, since there was no light around I knew they would be breathtaking. I threw out my paper thin pad and hopped in the sleeping bag, ready to be amazed. Weeellll, apparently secluded mountain temples are fucking FREEZING. Within minutes I had only one eye sticking out of the mummy bag and was trying to still see the stars without letting any air in (impossible)...DETERMINED I went down to my room and put on all the clothes I had (3 pairs of pants, a t shirt, a fleece sweatshirt, an ENORMOUS borrowed wool sweater, a borrowed wool coat, wool gloves, wool socks, a scarf and a wool hat) and went back up to try again. I was so fat I could barely fit in the sleeping bag, but at least I wasn't shaking...for long. I started to feel a cool breeze on my leg and reached down to find that the zipper had exploded! my whole legs were out in the air. And as I tried to roll the bag under my legs the top zipper exploded too because I was wayyyy too big and I just laid there in a heap trying to convince myself that at some point this would be funny but was just sooo bitter and too angry to even see the stars at this point. I had to give in and trudge down to our "cozy" little room downstairs which was actually just a concrete jail cell-esque thing with no beds and all sorts of charcoal graffiti on the wall but once I was in there it was a whole lot warmer and I was able to shed enough clothes to fit in the sleeping bag and slept like a baby. Overall I am SOOOO glad I decided to go and although I pretty much feel like a fossil right now because I'm so sore my muscles have crystalized, I can't wait to trek again! I can't believe I spend so much time indoors in my normal life...trekking made me remember how heartstoppingly wonderful nature is and now all I want to do is frolic around in streams and sleep under the stars (in warm places ONLY.) Sooo I'm off to begin this last leg of my solo adventure (only 8 days left!) and I can't wait to see how it goes. Love to you all!!!

clean

quick quick: FRESH AIR IS SUCH A BLESSING!!!!!!!!!!!!! When I got off the bus (after 11 hrs train and 4 1/2 bus behind a puking guy) I had to cry with joy at breathing in real fresh air...I think even if I had gotten off a bus into Los Angeles I would have cried because the air quality in Delhi/Agra were so unbelievably horrible...But getting off into the pristine chilly STAGGERINGLY beautiful himalaya filled me with so much joy I just needed to shed a few tears. It is so different here....The town is very small and is all built into the mountainside so everywhere you look you can see trees for days and the huge snowy peaks of the himalayas and BLUE SKY...the actual place is mostly full of shops and then the Dalai Lama's house/temple....everywhere you look there are monks and grungy tanned travelers and barely ANY hassling at all...such a change. Today I woke up early and decided to wander and it was SO amazing to be able to wander through something other than pee filled alleyways and dirty shop infested streets...I could walk through trees and rocks and scrub!!! What a joy!! I actually ended up at a waterfall with this crazy view of a valley and found a dog friend who walked all the way up with me so even when I accidentally ended up at a drug den I felt totally safe. Anyway I just wanted to say that I am going to start a trek TOMORROW!! Ack!!! It's me and an older lady who I haven't met yet from Alaska, and we will be trekking for four days/three nights and staying in small villages along the way. I'm kind of nervous--it is FREEZING here at night but they said I could use all their gear so I will probably be a Tibetan snowwoman with ten enormous coats and woven pants and mittens and stuff. I would say I'd post pictures of it--but my camera broke!!!! What a terrible place not to have a camera! I bought this ooooold school point and shoot and I'm hoping the pictures from that will actually work. OK time to go pack, Love to everyone!!

get me out of delhi

hellooooo from a smoky closet like thing in delhi, blechhh. I am here for eight hours between trains and had this huge ordeal finding a place to put my bags...I got loud at QUITE A FEW people along the way who tried to take me down back alleys to their "very nice, AC, AC" hotel and after running away about 8 times ended up at the shithole of the century where I had to scream at the people to even give me a bathroom. GUH. At least its only $4/night. BUT, everything else has been GREAT!!! I cartwheeled around in front of the Taj Mahal this morning (SO BEAUTIFUL), meditated with some monks in under the Bodhi tree a couple days ago (my new favorite place on earth), and got called hot by a hijra (man/woman) on the train the other day after giving him/her some almonds. I spent the last four nights travelling around with Aaron (the BFG guy) which was great....it makes a WORLD of difference to have a man around and it is also nice to have company on lonnnng drawn out train rides. We met a German couple on the night train to Agra and spent the the last couple of days with them which was also really fun. Aaron and I both got sick at different times, blech....apparently there was some scheme a few years ago in Agra where restaurants would poison their food and then when people got sick they'd refer them to quack doctors who would charge them insane amounts of money for "treatments" and then all share in the profits...so sketchy!! I don't think that's still happening though as I got sick in Varanasi and he ate some very shifty chicken in Agra that I think was the culprit. You really have to be on your guard here though! I have LOVED seeing these big crazy cities (minus Delhi) but I am MORE than ready to be in the mountain air in Mcleod Ganj. Apparently the Dalai Llama is in Dharamsala right now so maybe I'll be able to hear a talk or something! Yee!!! Love love love to you all (My heart is bursting with it!)

overjoyed

HELLOOOOOOO friends!!!!! Just wanted to do a VERY quick update (everything on this computer is in chinese and it seems like it may crash any second) to say i made it, and I LOVE IT....I am SO happy travelling alone and have had almost no problems yet...I keep having these wonderful coincidences, like for instance I accidentally somehow got bumped up to first class (!!!!!!!! IT WAS AMAZING) on my flight to varanasi and met this wonderful girl from china who happened to have a car and a guide in vara. and took me to my hotel for FREE (the ride would have been almost 1000 rupees--20 bucks!!) and then I got to go around with her and her guide for a couple days and see everything free (her work was paying for the guide!) and get acquainted with the city. I also met this 6'3" gentle giant type from the Bay Area who I've been going around with and feel MUCH safer with out at night, and we decided to go to Bodhgaya (where the Buddha got enlightened) and Agra (Taj!) together so that should be fun. Saw the burning ghats (i wish EVERYONE could see these at some point in their lives!) and dogs /bodies/trash galore floating down the Ganges and put my feet in there (!!) and constantly have to leap over/dive around enormous piles of shit and trash and flowers and offerings and every other thing you can imagine under the sun. I am just so so so so happy and if you have EVER wanted to come to Varanasi DO ITTTT this is the wildest placeI have ever seen. Love to you all!

hummingbird

So I know I said I'd do an entry with some of the things that really stood out to me over this past 2 months of classes, and I'm sure if I could think straight it would be a wonderful entry, but really my mind is already one thousand nine hundred and nineteen kilometers North floating down the Ganges, navigating train stations at dawn, and climbing the Himalaya. Having this condensed semester of classes has been amazing, but 5 hrs of class a day plus field trips on the weekends for eight weeks gets rough no matter how interesting the subject matter is. My notes for class this past week look like some cross between the chore list of an obsessive compulsive ("FIND purell, call airlines to confirm ALL flights, listen to more Peruvian music when I get home...") , an abstract art installation, and the journal of an over excited 22 year old having cliched but oh-so-inspired realizations about life and living ("I will not sit down, close my eyes, and renounce life to attain enlightenment. I will dance to it, love to it, laugh to it, sometimes travel backwards but always with both eyes wide open."). Oh and uhh a few lecture notes in there too...somewhere.

Right, to the point of this post. North India is known for a lot of things, but respect toward women/safety of solo travelers is not really one of them. So I want to put up my itinerary on here, and then make a promise to do a quick update at LEAST once per week to let everyone know I'm still truckin. It might sound dumb but otherwise no one would know if I went missing or something like that until 3 and a half weeks from now, and this seems like a good way to have a lot of people accounting for me. I also got a cell phone, so if you get a call at some ungodly hour from a weird number, please pick up! My phone number is 919591139725.
My rough itinerary looks like this:

Oct 15th train Mysore to Banglore
Oct 16 Fly to Varanasi (via Delhi)
Oct 16-22 Varanasi (eee!!!)
Leave Varanasi Oct 22 at night, take night train to delhi.
Oct 23 & 24th Delhi
Oct 24th night train to Pathankot, bus Oct 25th to Dharamsala/Mcleod Ganj
Oct 26-Nov. 1st Mcleod Ganj
Leave Nov. 1st on bus and then night train to Delhi
Nov 2-3 Delhi
Nov 3 fly Delhi to Kochi, taxi to Amritapuri in Kerala
Nov 3-7 Amritapuri (Ammachi's ashram)
Nov 7 taxi to bus station in Kochi, overnight bus to Mysore arrive Nov 8th.

I have a HUGE smile on my face as I'm typing this and my heart is seriously pumping a mile a minute. I am going to see people being burned, and dead bodies floating down the ganges, and people completing spiritual pilgrimages they have been waiting their whole lives to make, and Tibetans living in exile, and caves and ashrams tucked in the Himalaya, and boats floating lazily down the backwaters of Kerala, and the place where Ammachi was born, and...whatever there is in Delhi!!!!! WITH MY OWN EYES, STARTING TOMORROW!!!!!!!! I am so blessed.

Love to you all and please picture me returning from this month safe, happy, and whole.

yogic cleansing: not for the weak.

Haven't been updating recently because the tool is really coming down to the grindstone (is that a saying?) as we have LESS than two weeks left in our semester and that means that the 3000- 5000 word papers they assigned us in each class at the beginning of the trip that I was conveniently pretending didn't exist/hoping that at some point they would say they were just kidding about are now due allllll too soon. I have been spending my days puttering around the internet trying to find sources (the library here kind of stinks, but dr. rao assured us that wikipedia is a "very good source" so i dont think they're too worried on the absolute undisputed validity front) on dalit (untouchable) women and the goddess Durga and eeking out as many words as I possibly can from my poor shrivelling brain. Therefore there isn't much to report on the activity front, save my small bouts of insanity and majorly upped consumption of peanut butter as a comfort food. Oh! We did visit a yoga ashram which was pretty great---and by great I mean kind of grotesquely enthralling in the way that thriller/horror movies are great or touching something that you know will give you an electric shock just for the thrill of it is great.

In an effort to give us some idea of yogic life and practice, they decided to educate us on the ways that one can cleanse their body beyond just taking a bath or eating good foods. SERIOUS cleansing. After a short talk this little twiggy yogi in a white sweat suit hopped up to the front of the room and I was kind of expecting him to jump around or do some kind of twizzling pretzel poses that speed up your digestion and cleanse your colon or something. But ohhhhh no. No no no. He started with the neti pot, which for those of you who don't know (I didn't) means you pour water in one of your nostrils and then all the bogeys and creepers living up in your nose come out with all the water through your other nostril. Kind of weird, but also pretty cool. I was diggin it. Then he whipped out a string, and shoved it up his nostril til it came out his throat, and started flossing in between with this big smile on his face. At this point I was getting a little uneasy about yogic cleansing, but I thought this might be as bad as it got. He threw off his shirt next, showing us all these wild contortions of the stomach including one where he puffed out only the middle of his stomach in a line and then made it twirl around.....I know that makes no sense but seeing it made NO sense either! I tried afterward and could get nowhere near it--I mostly just puffed my stomach in and out and then farted a bunch HA. Anwyay so after the contortions he sat down on the ground and proceeded to (not exaggerating) swallow THIRTY FEET of white fabric (it took almost 5 minutes becuase he would have to gobble down only so much at a time and then wait--a lot of it is mental becuase you have to control your gag reflex and if you panic anywhere in there you are screwwwwwwwed) and once he had swallowed it all he pulled it back out!!!! Gah!!!! At this point I had only one eye open and was 3/4 hiding behind another girl's head because I was getting rather queasy and had already decided decisively that yogic cleansing is NOT for me. For the last hurrah, he drank water through his nose (I don't even know), shoved a tube down his throat, and then squeezed his stomach and all the water he just drank came pouring right back out of the tube. Man oh man. The rest of the day was actually really nice...we got to do a small movement class, go on a guided meditation, pet some loving baby cows, and listen to fantastical speeches on the origin and meaning of life by this WONDERFUL yogi named Narayana Swamiji who looked like a mix between Snoop Dogg, Eric (of Eric and Kris), and God.

Hooray it's time for lunch...I will update again soon I want to do an entry where I share some of the things that we have learned in class that have really moved me. There are SO many things and I either cry or get close to tears in class on the regular!

Wish me luck on my papers, and hope everyone is happy and healthy.