...really need to learn the plural for "mongoose"

delhi --> varanasi (kashi)

o glorious days. yoga on the rooftop of my guesthouse as the sun rises, huge ganga sprawling below... these have been wonderful days. it is amazing because in many ways i don't even feel like i have left here, even though it has been more than a year. of course there are always surprises. these have included hordes of locusts at the train station, butterflies everywhere and the river so high that you cannot even walk along the banks. it is amazing and great fun. there is an entire family of mongeese (?) living below my guesthouse and that has absorbed much of my time.

also! i was eating dinner in a little restaurant and a korean woman came in. she looked very familiar but i thought i was just being stupid and racist, thinking all asians look alike. haha. but no, it was actually my friend ahrie who i met in ladakh last summer! our emails had not worked so i hadn't heard from her since then. she now works in india doing tours for koreans (which she likens to being in korean jail- haha). it was amazing and random to reconnect with her, but now i think we will see each other many times. she is a die-hard indophile and can be counted on to return over and over. wow.

so now i leave for the ashram and this will be my last blog for quite some time (providing i get accepted etc.). i just want to thank everyone once again for your hospitality, time and love. i left canada with a very happy heart and will return that way as well. all my love.

om namah sivaya.

filth soup

vancouver--> seattle--> amsterdam--> delhi

it's amazing how much nervousness can suddenly just be washed away. my first footstep on pahar ganj at 2 in the morning and i start smiling like a fool. delhi is familiar and homey. the smell of urine, the ambivalent cows, sad sick dogs, burning garbage and legions of pashmina salesmen... these are things i have come to know well and even cherish in some perverse way. the skin on fresh buffalo curd, cheap thalis, remembering my hindi, booking train tickets, blaring bollywood music, the smells of sandalwood, rose and jasmine leaping out of this overwhelming smell-scape for brief but enchanting moments. those things are nice too. chai! i missed this all and i am happy that it feels so good to be here once again.

i did, however, underestimate the monsoon. it has been raining continuously since i got here late last night. the streets are a filthy soup of cow dung, garbage, human fluids of various variety and everything else imaginable. suddenly i dream of gum boots and a poncho.

i've slept about 6 hours total in the past 2 days and i'm on a night train tonight to varanasi. i'll write more from there before i go to the ashram on the 17th.