First Impressions

Greetings from India!  I’ve only been here a few days, yet I already feel that I’ve experienced so much…

Even though from what I hear Mysore is kind of like India ‘light,’ it still feels very foreign to me, and has from the minute I boarded my flight at Newark.  Without exaggeration, I was one of 3 non-Indians on the flight (out of ~350 people).  Upon arriving in Bombay(/Mumbai) some 16 hours later, the abundance of poverty was apparent immediately.  We flew over miles of slums that surround the airport, practically spilling onto the runways.

All of the blue you see is tarps

From Mumbai I took a 2 hour flight to Bangalore, where a car was waiting to take me on the 3 hour drive to Mysore (for less than $40).  I decided to sit in the front seat for the ride, which may or may not have been a mistake as driving in India is absolutely terrifying.  Halfway there, the driver stopped to have a smoke and picked up some roadside chai, my first of the trip!  I was slightly nervous that my digestive system might never recover, but too tired to care.  It was unfathomably delicious, and I didn’t get sick!  Finally, at 2AM, 30 hours after leaving my home in North Carolina, I arrived at my apartment in Mysore.

It didn’t take long to make friends the next morning.  After wandering around for a bit, I eagerly ran up to the first obviously-western couple I saw.  They turned out to be wonderfully pleasant and helpful New Zealanders who immediately put me at ease and pointed me in the right direction.  Since then I’ve met people from Poland, Norway, France, Australia, and Cyprus, to name a few.  Everyone connected with the yoga community here has proven to be friendlier than I could ever have hoped.

A few things I’ve learned so far:

Do not disrupt a monkey that is crossing the street

Real chai is on a whole other level (and only costs about 25 cents)

Pet dogs are considered a status symbol

Loud burping, frequent honking, and blatant littering are not considered taboo (or in the words of my driver as he threw his garbage out the window, “yes yes, it is India, no problem”)

You can buy a lot with 100 rupees! (~$2).  In fact, if you try to use a 100 rupee note to buy something like, say, lunch (40 rupees!), they will often belligerently refuse it.

A good portion of the time I have no idea what the locals are saying.  This usually ends in me squinting and them bobbing their heads ambiguously (what does it mean??).  I’ve taken a few photos of my apartment with my camera, and hopefully soon I’ll be brave enough to take it out for a walk to capture the surrounding town of Gokulam. 

Meanwhile, back in Charlotte…

A week before I left for India, we unexpectedly had a new dog thrust into our lives.  Her name is Renee, and she is a former show dog whose princess antics and ‘bad behavior’ were causing her to show poorly.  We reluctantly took her for a ‘trial run’ to see how she got along at our house, and she immediately won us over.  It’s nice to know that on my return I’ll have this ball of love waiting for me!