Left Hand Path

Every week, I shave my head with a hair clipper I bought in the States.  Since I got to India, it's become a Sunday ritual, one that I thought I would have to forgo today when the power went out around ten.  Blackouts are a daily occurrence here and sometime stretch on for as long as 5 or 6 hours.  I called a friend back home and to my surprise the power was back on when I returned to my apartment.  The only power outlet in my apartment is at the far end of the room a considerable distance from the bathroom.  I'm used to being able to shave in the bathroom and have the discarded hair fall into the sink, but instead I set up a towel to collect the clippings.  The converter I have to use only clumsily fits into the electrical outlet so for the most part I have to manually hold it into place while I shave.  So I crouch on the floor over the towel with my right hand gripping the clipper and my left hand holding the converter into place and very awkwardly shave my head.  It takes about 5 or 10 minutes.  For some reason, while the clipper works (which frankly I didn't expect to happen), it makes a horrendously loud noise -- much louder than it does in the States -- that I suspect travels across the courtyard.

The staff, however, is in no position to make noise complaints because they have a habit of setting off firecracker-like noise bombs, sometimes as early as 6:30 a.m., ostensibly to scare off the crows that gather in the early morning but I think at least partly because the massive boom makes them giggle.  There's no shortage of noise in India, and I always keep the overhead fan running while I sleep not because it's excessively warm (in fact, the nights in Goa tend to be rather cool) but because it drowns out the racket outside.  Around 4 or so, the resident animals begin to awake and there's a cacophony of sounds from the crows and an endless supply of barking dogs and probably a bunch of other animals I don't recognize.

Yesterday I went to the Saturday night market with some friends.  It's essentially a repeat of the Anjuna market and it looks like most of the same sellers go to both, but many of the stores are set up on a gradual incline up against a hill, which makes for an impressive sight as the sun sets and the lights go on and the crowds of people begin to arrive.  There's any kind of food you can imagine, including sushi, Turkish food, chocolate croissants, and a nutella-banana pancake that I had for dessert.  (Side note-- I'm officially approaching the third week mark since I have had chicken, beef or pork-- the longest period of abstinence in my life.)

It was a nice night, but I was dreading the ride home because I would have to drive the scooter at night, which is a death-defying stunt as there is almost no artificial lighting on the streets in Goa.  The first obstacle was actually finding my way back to the street, complicated by the elaborate network of parking areas and congested traffic with vehicles honking impatiently.  I ended-up at one point pointed backwards away from the entrance in a parking lot on my scooter, too irritated to be embarrassed by my ineptitude.  This is a major pain in the ass on a scooter since you can't reverse-- the parking attendant ignominiously pulled my scooter out backwards before waving me impatiently out of the lot.  Once I got out of the area immediately around the market, the traffic mercifully thinned out a bit, but that was a dubious improvement given that the more isolated stretches of road were only lit by the headlight on my scooter and the headlights beaming from the bus or car driving towards me, which were half-blinding and disorienting.  Mercifully, I made it home in one piece.  I heard that there will apparently be a nano car available on the Indian market in the next year or so competitively priced to cost about as much as a scooter.  I can only imagine the damage it will do to the environment and to the already unbearably congested roads here in India.

Pad Thai with your Dal

There's a restaurant in Goa called The German Bakery, and it's typical of the western-Indian hybrid food which is so popular in this tourist town.  It's not as extreme as some restaurants, which boast that they offer Chinese/ Israeli/ Thai/ Indian/ American/ Italian food (most of it mediocre) but you'll still find Pad Thai with your Dal, and both Cappuccino and Masala Chai.  Not surprisingly, the German Bakery is almost exclusively populated by Western tourists, and judging by the burnt-out hippie look (the crusty hippies here are often German, interestingly enough) most of them are long-term Goan tourists.  So I was a little surprised the other day when a table of Indians sat down next to us.  One of them ordered his Cappuccino with Indian-accented English, but it quickly became apparent that the rest of the table consisted of Indian Americans, who you don't see often around here.  They seemed vaguely annoyed with the place and kept asking a lot of questions in clipped tones, looking vaguely ridiculously in their goofy shorts and polo shirts (men and women both).

I didn't overhear this part, but my friend later related to me that they asked for Splenda and other artificial sweeteners for their coffee, and seemed incensed when none was forthcoming.  The request was ridiculous of course -- they might as well have been inquiring about gym memberships in Mogadishu, artificial sweeteners to my knowledge simply don't exist in India, or at least not in Goa.  So, today we met the Ugly American, which is not at all surprising except for the crucial irony that they were in fact Indian Americans in India acting the belligerent tourists.

The experience illustrated in an unexpected way the often uneasy marriage between east and west here, which invariably affects all Westerners regardless of how Indian-fied they try to become.  I heard some Ashtangis talking about Auroraville, a small town near Chennai which was apparently founded as a sort of utopia by westerners as a respite from the western world.  However, the Ashtangis told us how the beaches there are strictly segregated so the western women can walk around in bikinis or topless without being openly ogled by Indian men, a common phenomenon at Goan beaches.  As westerners, we often feel we should be able to pick and choose what aspects of Indian culture we rub up against.  I saw this in a former yoga instructor of mine, who completely fell in love with India while she practiced yoga in an affluent neighborhood in a city in south India.  One night when we were returning home from dinner, our rikshaw driver stopped in a poorer neighborhood while he went off to find gas somewhere.  She became intensely agitated, even angry, when she realized how destitute the neighborhood was -- and it wasn't even that bad by Indian standards -- wanting nothing more than to return to her little Indian island before the light and space of India really put the zap on her head (ten bucks to whomever gets that reference-- no googling permitted).

Meanwhile, I feel like I'm assimilating a bit better. At the very least, I've started to take on that monotone lack-of-affect demeanor that typifies so many of the yogis around here, especially the long-term ones, a condition brought on by an excess of yoga and heat and the total absence of stress.  Driving a scooter through Goa has also become more entertaining than terrifying, and I'm now semi-pro at negotiating the cavalcade of ancient buses, cows, dogs, workers with goods balanced precariously on their heads, as well as other scooters and motorcycles, that can pop up out of nowhere like a nightmarish driver's ed video in which you have to slow down and speed up and loop around and veer wildly to the left to avoid buses that hog two-thirds of the tiny roads and avoid slamming over the speed bumps (called rumblers) that spring up randomly and are particularly treacherous at night because there's almost no artificial lighting on the streets.

I'm still practicing nearly every day, although I've moved to a different yoga studio where I take Mysore classes every morning.  It's an infinitely more relaxed place, with no real sense of hierarchy, and in fact on my second day there, the instructor suggested I do second series -- which consists mostly of backbends-- in order to give my wounded hamstring a break.  This is near heresy in Ashtanga circles, where you're generally not supposed to approach second unless you've mastered primary, and as a result I required some coaxing before I followed her suggestion.

Between second and an expert Thai Massage I received later that day, my hamstring seems to be healing much more quickly than I anticipated.  For those of you unfamiliar with Thai Massage, in my limited experience, the Northern style consists of engaging pressure points (not unlike Shiatsu, but not quite as subtle) in combination with a series of vigorous stretches in which the massage therapist uses their entire body to push and pull you in various ways, including a hamstring stretch in which she positioned herself at my feet and pulled my leg toward with her hands while pressing down on my hamstring with her foot, which was one of those moments in which a seemingly gentle pressure produced a sensation that crossed over into pain pretty quickly.  But it was the good pain when you know tension in the muscles is being released.  Highly recommended, especially since it lasted two hours and costs me about 25 bucks, gotta love India prices (although the massage therapist was not Indian but British).  I've got a Shiatsu massage scheduled for Monday and then it's off to Pune on Tuesday.  Tonight it's the Saturday night market in nearby Arpora.  Gonna check out a beach in North Goa tomorrow called Arambol that's supposed to be beautiful.  All in all, a mellow weekend.

Ashtanga and its Discontents

So, today was the anti-climatic end to my tenure with Rolf and Marci here in Goa.  Between being sick, getting injured during one of Rolf's Kurmasana assists and a moon day, I only ended up practicing there a fraction of the two weeks I paid for (Also, no Saturday classes, unlike Mysore).  All in all, not the most pleasant experience, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to Ashtangis, but I think the negative aspects of my experience have more to do with me becoming increasingly less attached to my Ashtanga practice in general.

For those of you unfamiliar with yoga, Ashtanga is characterized by its intensity, its speed and the fact that there is always another more extreme asana waiting around the corner.  It is designed to be essentially impossible.  I always thought of this as a way of breaking down the ego, as at some point you simply have to accept your limitations and back off from the practice.  However, due to its extremity, Ashtanga attracts a lot of hardcore personalities and big egos and due to its hierarchical structure, invites and fosters a sense of competition.  And ultimately, in my experience, people back off from the practice not because it flattens out and dilutes their ego-driven competitiveness, but because they end up getting injured from pushing themselves too hard and have no choice but to stop or at least slow down.  I've known quite a few Ashtanga casualties over the years who have dropped out of the practice for this reason.

I was immediately confronted by this reality when I first walked into Rolf's classroom.  Rolf, to his credit, does not emphasize the hierarchy nearly as much as Sharat does in Mysore (specifically, Rolf will not object to a certain extent if you continue to a subsequent pose without having mastered the previous pose, which is strictly verboten in Mysore), but nonetheless the atmosphere of competition and funereal solemnity was very much in evidence.  I went to a vinyassa class on the first Saturday in Goa, taught by a charismatic gay British man, and I was struck by how his easygoing charm lent the class a sense of fun and unpretentiousness painfully absent from Rolf's classes and too many Ashtanga studios in general.  There was a crew of hardcore Ashtangis taking Rolf's classes who had that standoffish egotistical attitude that you always see at the most prestigious Ashtanga studios.  I was walking by some new residents at our guesthouse the other day and said hello, and was warmly greeted in return.  My sarcastic comment to my friend was, "They're obviously not Ashtangis, way too friendly."  Of course that's a generalization and I've met many friendly people too, but you get the idea.

I have no intention of abandoning my practice, although I will have to modify it significantly while I contend with my hamstring injury.  However, I will not be attending any more of these high-powered Ashtanga studios, it doesn't work for me.  The things I dislike about the practice -- the egos, the arrogance, competition, etc.-- tend to be magnified in this environment.  I like my low-key classes with a local teacher who knows me and knows what they're doing but is relatively low-profile.  I'm also excited for my month long yoga course in February, which comes from a different school than Ashtanga, although it can be traced back to the same lineage-- the timing is perfect.  It would be one thing if I was 23 and had just started Ashtanga and I was at a point where I could struggle more with my practice, but I'm 33 and my body is basically where it is and will not become that much more flexible than it already is.  The yoga course in February emphasizes that its focus is on how a yoga pose feels, and not how it looks.  I'm very curious to see what exactly they mean by this and whether it's as sensible as it sounds.

Vietnam

Of all the countries I am to visit, I am by far most excited by Vietnam.  The country has always fascinated me ever since I saw Apocalypse Now when I was 9-- a huge cliché, of course, but I've been reading books and watching movies about the conflict for as long as I can remember, and I have also developed an enormous appreciation for the cuisine.  I'm knee deep in a huge book on Vietnamese history, which focuses on the war with the U.S. but also reaches back to the country's earliest recorded history and proceeds through the French colonization and eventual defeat at Dienbienphu.  I've compiled a list of places I want to visit, which includes the obvious-- Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and Hanoi, along with riding a Chinese junk on Halong Bay, and visiting Haiphong, Hoi An and Danang, and of course the Mekong Delta.  I think I can do all of this within 3 weeks to a month, and I'm currently researching tours that will be able to take me to at least some of these places.  Naturally I look forward to my first morning in my hotel room in Ho Chi Minh... "Saigon.... Shiiiit.... I'm still only in Saigon."

I'm also considering expanding my trip to Cambodia-- which was originally intended to only involve a visit to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat-- to include a flight to Phnom Penh to amongst other things visit the museum dedicated to the Khmer Rouge, which promises to be a memorable if grueling experience.

Time Share

So, the pace of life in Goa is very slow.  This is most excellent when you want to decompress, as I did during my first week here, but it can verge on becoming a bit dull if you linger... 3 weeks definitely qualifies as lingering.  Plus, I hurt my hamstring during an especially vigorous Kurmasana assist, so I've been somewhat indifferent to my Ashtanga practice since.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting back to a city early next week when we fly to Pune-- and from there I fly to Chennai on 2 February and on to Shanghai on 1 March.

Meanwhile, planning an activity every day in addition to yoga practice has become mandatory so that the days don't degenerate into tedium.  Sunday me and my friend-- who henceforth will be referred to as "Princess" -- were looking for something to do, as not only did we not have an extra activity planned, but we were both taking a day off from our yoga practice.  So we decided to start off with a leisurely lunch and then figure it out from there.  We left the guesthouse and began walking to a nearby restaurant, and were almost immediately accosted by an Indian dude in his early 20s who assured us that he wasn't selling anything, but was in fact giving out free prizes as part of a promotion for a resort located in Baga, one town over from Anjuna.  I opened my prize, a free one hour cruise.  No biggie.  However, Princess opened up her prize and discovered that she had won one of 4 things-- 7 days in Bali, 7 days accommodation (in Goa, Thailand or Bali), an iPod or one other minor prize.  The young Indian's face lit up, and he claimed that we had just made his day because he was going to get paid for this and wow! was he excited. Sensing a scam but wanting to kill time, we complied and he immediately escorted us into a taxi and took us to the resort.

On the way to the resort, he began hammering us with questions, and was a bit dismayed when he discovered that Princess and I were only friends, he had obviously assumed that we were a couple.  He kept asking the question, as if he couldn't believe the answer.  "She's very difficult", I mumbled, by way of explanation.  Princess laughed.  Our young Indian salesman insisted that he pretend to be a couple, and furthermore that we not mention that we were going to other places in India and instead say that we were only on vacation for 3 weeks, exclusively in Goa, that we were not backpackers, that I was working full-time and that we had been going out for 4 years.  He kept revisiting these details, quite concerned that we were able to lie accurately and convincingly-- most likely his job would be on the line if management discovered the lie.

We had to fill out some paperwork when we got to the resort, which was indeed very nice and plush by Goan standards, much more opulent than our guesthouse.  Then our guide showed up to give us our tour, and just as we began, I remembered that a friend of mine who had just left Goa had mentioned that he and his GF had gone on a tour in which they were given a time share presentation, which of course meant that the carrot they were dangling in front of us-- Princess' prize-- was probably bullshit and that this whole charade was a waste of time.  Still, it was relatively painless and the hour we were mandated to spend with the guide passed fairly quickly, with the occasional lie invented on the spot to season the chit-chat.  He gave us some vague details about their product, which was essentially a time share that promised to give us excellent rates on resorts all over the world.  Eventually our guide, realizing he was getting absolutely nowhere with us, did his best to cut the interview short.  We were starting to get hungry and soon what had started out as an amusing diversion was getting old. After another series of bureaucratic exercises, we got to the end of the line where we were to find out what Princess had won.  The prize brochure had one of those scratchable entries like with the lotto, and to our amazement and borderline disgust, one of the Indian dudes working for the resort brandished a grotesquely long fingernail and scratched off the covering to reveal Princess' prize-- 7 days accommodation in Thailand, Goa or Bali.  Which was probably the standard prize, they most likely assumed that most people-- due to constraints on claiming the prize-- would never bother to collect.

We got into the cab home, driven by the affable Udai, who had an extra finger on the side of his right thumb and for some reason decided to drive us home through this tiny village that probably had no running water, which aside from the cars on the tiny road, could have looked almost exactly the same 200 years ago.  From opulence to third world poverty and then back to the beach -- all included within our vacation package!!1!  We finally made it to lunch, and the afternoon was almost derailed when I realized I had lost my cell phone in the cab, but then on our way home we ran into the twentysomething Indian dude who gave us the original resort pitch, and he took me back to the resort and to eleven-fingered Udai, who returned my cell phone for the low, low price of 100 rupees.

Time killed: 3 hours.

Anjuna Market

Wednesday is market day in Anjuna, so we decided to check it out.  We decided to walk and it took us at least half an hour to get there, still not sure if we followed the directions correctly, but we made it.  It's set up in the middle of a huge dirt field that leads up to the edge of Anjuna beach and was considerably larger than I thought.  We walked down the entrance street past all the parked cars and scooters and rikshaws and cabs and immediately the heckling began.  I was first accosted by a twentysomething scamster who somehow managed to convince me that there was something dreadfully wrong with my right ear that needed his immediate attention and to my surprise reached right in there with what looked sort of like a Q-Tip and withdraw a nasty blob of earwax.  He started to go for the other ear and I decided I'd had enough and made my escape. I offered him one rupee for his troubles and then scoffed when he tried to get a hundred.

There's a main drag, so to speak, through the center of the market which roughly splits into two parts.  The main drag is lined with shops and cluttered with sellers, tourists, burnt out hippies, vacant bystanders and the hecklers trying to sell you anything from bongo drums to maps of Goa to random pieces of cloth.  You can take a left or right and go down into one of the alleyways which are thankfully bereft of vehicular traffic but crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with shops.  I remembered from the Mysore market how spice is displayed in pyramid-shaped stacks, brightly colored, cool to look at even if I have no desire to buy them-- which is kinda how I felt about all the stuff there.  Since Goa is so touristy, you'll find an odd and rather uncomfortable stylistic mishmash of Indian and hippie.... There was a number of stalls with t-shirts emblazoned with iconic images of Che Guevera, as well as the ubiqitous Sanskrit OM symbol and even tees that said "Free Tibet".  Naturally there were a ton of stalls selling endless CDs of Goa trance.  As well as a ton of Diesel knock-offs.  Overall it felt a lot like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, which I visited this past March, although the heckling was much more persistent in Anjuna.  Still, like in the Grand Bazaar, after a few too many turns and samey-looking booths, I started to totally lose sense of where I was in the maze of shops, it all becomes a blur with no beginning and no end.

There were also a lot of beggars.  One of the first I recalled seeing was a haggard looking mother carrying a small baby in her arms; apparently the small baby has been identified as a potent selling point because I saw quite a few more moms-and-baby pairs walking through the market with outstretched hands.  When I was in Mysore a couple of years ago, I was walking down an otherwise quite suburban street in Gokalum with a friend when this beggar, a tiny little girl who barely made it up to my knee, started bouncing up against my leg demanding money. She kept this up for nearly a block and I was incredibly uncomfortable and wanted her to get the hell off me but she was this tiny little girl, what the hell was I supposed to do?  Scraping away at my Western guilt with surgical precision.  It's impossible to forget when you're in the third world that even your meagre bank account bank home amounts to undreamed of wealth for a lot of the people you encouter.  You can't really escape it.

After an hour or so of the market I could feel my skin overheating in protest.  I'm not accustomed to getting so much sun, and it's rapidly turning me into a sun-baked retard.  I often lose thoughts, I stumble over sentences, I get halfway through saying something and then drift away and I can't do anything quickly anymore.  Totally sweet, I recommend it!

I'm a vegan hippie dirtbag.

A friend of mine just arrived, and we did some errands like get me a new cell phone, blankets, etc. and then got lunch.  I ordered the "Blue Tao Special", which is tofu and seitan in a spinach based sauce with brown rice.  I offered my friend some of the dish, and then realized that this was another milestone because she's a lifelong vegetarian and currently vegan as well, and this is probably the first time when going out to dinner with her that I have ever ordered a meal that fit entirely within her dietary constraints.

Also, in India, there's generally a layer of dirt on just about everything and slowly I've begun to accept that.  I'm staying basically clean, but with a little less fanaticism.  I don't cringe as much at the unsanitary conditions.  I practice yoga and pranayama.  I haven't cracked a caustic joke in at least a week.

It's official-- I'm a vegan hippie dirtbag.  If you're on my MySpace friend list, you might want to consider a prophylactic deletion.  Things are only gonna get worse.

I'm sick... and homesick.

Getting sick-- what is commonly known as "traveler's diarrhea" -- is a rite of passage in India.  Everybody I know who has visited there has a story.  I managed to avoid it the first time I visited India, but no such luck this time around.  5 days into my trip and I ate some fish at the restaurant at my guesthouse, and a couple of hours later I was buckled over in my room with stomach cramps that just wouldn't quit.  I spent the next 36 hours in my room trying not to puke and waiting for the worst of it to pass, which finally happened when I started taking antibiotics.  I'm not the biggest fan of Indian food-- south Indian food, for the record, is very different from what you get at Indian restaurants in America-- and after about 10 hours of abdominal pain, I could barely remember what it was like to have an appetite.  I went out once to check my email, and as I left, the power went out, another common occurrence in India.  Fortunately, it was back on when I tottered back to bed about half an hour later. 

I'm not sure if I had a fever or not, but I probably did-- all I can remember of those 36 hours, aside from fading in and out of consciousness, is the 12 episodes of Weeds that I watched on my iPod.  How surreal to be transported to an upscale California suburb while fighting the runs in Goa!  It was quite the Showtime marathon.

I suppose it's natural to be homesick when you travel abroad for long periods of time, but I've been so excited for my trip for so long that I never thought it would hit me quite as hard as it did.  Sitting there in bed, intestines gurgling, on that hard bed with the stiff little pillow far far away from home, I wanted nothing more than to be back in Philly hanging out with some of my peeps, maybe checking out a metal show or getting some sushi.  I miss you fuckers! 

Vagator Beach

I spent yesterday afternoon at Vagator Beach with a friend, soaking up some rays.  For me, as I am a translucently pale powdery white boy, "soaking up some rays" means "huddling under an umbrella lathering my few patches of exposed skin with SPF 50."  Even this proved to be problematic, as I felt the beginnings of those hot flashes that are the early warning signs that if I don't reduce my sign exposure post haste, I could ignite.  So I moved to the beachfront cafe behind where me and my friend set up our beach chairs and ordered a lemon soda.  A beachfront cafe in India means a bunch of tables set up underneath a potholed canopy with a rickety wooden bar in the back.  I pulled out my bible, the Lonely Planet guide "Southeast Asia on A Shoestring", and commenced research session #141 for my upcoming adventures through Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia in March through June(ish).

Soon a crew of twentysomething Indian youths (I can't believe I just typed "youths" to describe twentysomethings!  I'm officially an antique) sat down at the table next to me and commenced some heavy drinking.  The drunkest of the group, who was sitting directly diagonally and to my right, eventually got too wasted and too curious to leave me alone, and invited me to have a drink with them.  Initially, I resisted but he was persistent and I agreed to drink another.... drum roll!... lemon soda.  They regaled me with tales of U.S. culture, and seemed particularly enamored with Stifler from the gross-out teen comedy "American Pie", who they affectionately referred to as "The Stifmeister" -- a term I never expected to hear at Vagator.  They turned out to be college students on leave from their school in Pune, an affable bunch, one of them preparing for a post-graduation software job in Bangalore.  Eventually my friend Dan tired of roasting under the sun and joined us.  The same drunken Indian couldn't stop repeating how he thought Dan "had beautiful eyes".  It wasn't a gay thing, it was a weird thing.  It's not at all uncommon to see Indian men, straight men, walking along the streets holding hands, although I haven't quite figured out why this is such a common phenomenon.  I've been told that this is related to the fact that Indian men are allowed only limited contact with women prior to marriage, and this also results in sexual experimentation between straight men who have no other outlet for their growing sexual desires.

I knew Dan vaguely from classes in Philadelphia, although he moved to L.A. years ago.  Imagine my surprise when he showed up while I was eating breakfast that morning, out of the blue, on the other side of the world, calling me by name!  He was kind enough to show me some of the more important sites in Anjuna, the part of Goa where I'm staying.  Giving directions in India is challenging, because there are hardly any street signs and almost no roads seem to have names or designating marks.  All you get is the occasional sign with the name of a neighborhood and an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction.  The directions to the yoga shala were an exercise in unintentional comedy, because they contained  mandates such as "take a left at the house with the red trim down the dirt road behind three houses".  Scooters are the preferred mode of transport in Goa, so I found myself zooming down the streets, helmet free, trying to deal with driving on the left side (damn those Brits) and negotiating the onrush of cars, rikshaws, derelict free range dogs, cows, scooters, motorcycles, pedestrians, goats and huge antique buses packed wall-to-wall with people that look like leftovers from mid-twentieth century museums.  The rules are murky and flexible but essentially simple: the bigger the vehicle, the higher the priority-- with the exception of cows, who drivers avoid no matter how drunkenly the animals wander across the street.  Drivers constantly lean on the horn on the roads in India, but it's message is entirely different from the way we use it in the States.  You honk your horn when you're passing on the right side, or when you're approaching a free-for-all intersection and want other cars to know you're on a potential collision course, or when you want a slower moving vehicle or pedestrian to get out of your way.  There's never any anger behind the honking.  I find myself having a lot of trouble adjusting to this new way of honking, as I can't quite shake the fact that it's obnoxiously rude.  The roads are horrendous, an exercise in barely controlled chaos, and like the rest of India, I'm continually amazed that they manage to function as well as they do. 

Yoga in Goa!

I went to my first yoga class on Wednesday (the 8th I think, the days are already starting to blur together... I think it's Thursday).  As is typical for India, getting there is half the battle, and I was originally supposed to start on Tuesday but my ride didn't show up, so I opted for independence and rented my own scooter, and one of the employees at my guesthouse kindly directed me to the yoga shala.  This turned out to be an essential exercise, because it involved several winding roads and a random left turn down a dirt path that led behind several houses and finally ended up in front of the building housing the shala.  I managed to find it on my own fairly easily -- only one instance of pointing and asking "yoga shala?  yoga shala?" -- but I had no idea that the mildly cool January mornings in Goa turned icy cold while riding unprotected on a scooter, and so I showed up at the shala shivering in my black doom metal t-shirt (Buried At Sea, for you folks who care).  There's a rickety wooden gate in front of the home, and another rickety gate held fast with string leading up the stairs to the second floor, where the shala is located.  I passed by an avalanche of flip-flops and dutifully deposited my own before proceeding up the stairs.

Ashtanga, the type of yoga I practice, consists a set sequence and the traditional way of teaching-- called "Mysore", named after the city in Southern India where the practice originated-- consists of the yogi moving through the sequence on his or her own, with the instructor performing adjustments and providing verbal instruction as deemed necessary.  There are a few poses where students are more likely to be adjusted, usually due to their difficulty level, such as the infamous kurmasana and supta kurmasana, which involves lying down on the mat with your arms lying flat underneath your outstretched legs, straightening your legs as much as possible, and then moving on to the next pose, which involves binding your arms behind your back and then crossing your legs behind your head  This is both easier and harder than it sounds, although I really have no idea, since I've never bound my arms and crossed my legs behind my head at the same-- I was gifted with both tight hips and shoulders, which makes this pose doubly perplexing.  Some shalas operate on a strict hierarchy-- you can't advance to the next pose until you've successfully done the previous pose-- which naturally provokes much competition amongst students.

Anyway, because the class is taught Mysore style, students roll in and out seemingly at random.  I approached the entrance and there were a few students waiting around.  I've already encountered German, Japanese, British and Italian students.  Almost immediately upon my arrival, the door swung open and the main instructor poked his head out and said "One more" and then looked back inside and changed his mind: "Two more".  He's a small German man who looks like he could be anywhere from 40 to 55 years of age, a common characteristic of hardcore yoga types.  Two students walked in.  I didn't have to wait long, and set my mat up in the corner.  Ashtanga is a very physically demanding practice, and there's always a way to go further and push yourself harder, and therefore it tends to attract intense personalities.  Entering a studio is often like making your way into church-- silent, solemn and disciplined.  This shala was no exception, although there was fortunately no emphasis on preventing people from moving on to the next pose if you couldn't squeeze yourself into a bind or straighten your legs completely or float backwards or whatever the asana demanded.  The female instructor introduced herself and recognized my name from my emails.  Her first comment was "The toilet, don't flush any toilet paper, and only flush if it's a poop."  Welcome to India!  About half an hour into my practice, a dog set up shop near the front of mat, ripped a couple farts, and generally made himself comfortable.  After I was done, I opted out of changing out of my soggy shorts-- the bathroom proved itself to be entirely too fragrant for my tastes, although I consider myself fairly fearless in that department.  Maybe it was the random puddles on the floor, presumably from the buckets used for showering.

On my way home, I drove by an elephant, my first-- quickly followed by another elephant, this one covered in white symbols drown in paint.  I felt unstuck in time for a moment.

I spent much of the rest of the day hanging out with a friend, walking around on the beach, eating and doing lots of reading.  Sooooo stressful!