Passing through Pushkar

I traveled last night by bus to Pushkar from Ahmedabad, which was a 12 hour overnight journey in a tiny little bunkbed that I fit into like a shoe. I found it mildly spooky to be the only visible foreigner on the bus, only because I also found that everyone I tried to speak with did not speak English. That made me feel a little vulnerable (as well as reminded me of how lazy I am as an English speaker!) That feeling of vulnerability has two sides for me: on one side it causes a little anxiety, having to pay close attention to sounds and body language instead of words (when trying to find the toilet between stops.) On the other side is the feeling of lightness that comes from that, with the only choice being to trust in the people around me. I was happy to arrive in Pushkar after an ok sleep on that bumpy bus with many stops and plenty of extra passengers. I usually have a no-bus policy when there is the option of taking the train, but once again, the train was booked days and days ahead.










Pushkar is another traveler's mecca where people arrive, unpack, and dig in to the mellow lifestyle. It is a hindu pilgrimage center with a local population of 14,000, and it has around 400 temples and several bathing ghats surrounding the small, beautiful lake in the center of the town. There are also lots of monkeys here! It feels much more Indian than Goa does, sharing only the tourist destination aspect- tourist geared shops, restaurants, and guesthouses. In the bazaar there are treasures from all over India, as well as many clothing stalls. "We can sew your designs, good prices!" I came through here to check that out...as well as to chill a little in between the urban madness. Two days here, then to Jaipur.

Back to business... by Leah

One of Ahmedabad's major industries is textile dyeing; it is a hub for dyeing and printing in India. My fantastic hosts took me to visit a SKAL certified low-impact dyeing and printing facility here. It was very interesting to see the industrial machines that do the scouring, dyeing, printing, drying, and finishing. What a process! The low impact method still uses chemicals, but uses hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine to bleach the fabric, in addition to avoiding the use of all banned chemicals. It was a very clean factory, and good to see what the middle road between conventional chemical dyeing, and natural herbal dyeing is like. I am still so much more drawn to the magic of natural dyes, but it is very important to have as many low-impact dyeing facilities in use as possible! This is a very good step in reducing the impact of the dyeing process, which is highly polluting when done in a conventional way. The conventional factory we will wait to see when Paul and I return here later.

Good news about Ahmedabad...
The petrol-fuelled auto-rickshaws that run within the inner city have now been replaced with gas, something like propane, which burns cleaner and more efficiently. This is a much needed change, and indicates some progress towards dealing with the air quality here. Still a long way to go though, as the scooters and motorbikes, which easily outnumber the auto-rickshaws and vehicles, still run off petrol, spewing a trail of thick black exhaust behind.

Republic Day...
Not much to report from India's much-anticipated birthday celebration (anticipated by me only perhaps!) No painted elephants, samosa floats, or twinkly dancers. Well, there was a small parade of high school students that paraded around the block in uniform with drums, but that was it. Oh well, apparantly Delhi pulls out the stops a bit more with the Republic Day parade- I missed that one, but will be there by next week, after a stop or two along the way. Ahmedabad has good hearted people, gracious hosts, greedy rickshaw drivers, fantastic food, and an unbearable audio landscape with all of that incessant honking. I am both sad and relieved to be traveling on in the next day or two. More from Jaipur in a few days...

Photos from India!

Leah sent me some photos this morning. These ones are from her stay in Goa last week... enjoy.

Beach supplies in downtown Arambol.


Portait of people and dogs on beach.


Beach vendors and sun bathers.


Waiting for Yoga to start....

Ahmedabad!

Ahmedabad is noisy, polluted, and totally mad. It's like all 4.5 million of its inhabitants are out there driving rickshaws all at once. (A rickshaw is a cross between a motorcycle and a car- I'll send photos for Paul to post soon.) Somehow in that hectic mess of traffic, people manage to get from A to B, in a loopy stream of honking mayhem. While I am here I will be visiting a weaving facility, a conventional chemical dyeing facility (to see the other side) and some natural dyeing folks I'll tell you more about soon...

It's funny that the one place I've been in India that I really want to have a beer is the only place I'm not allowed. Gujarat is a dry state in more ways that one- no booze! No card games either, apparently, as a sign says in my hotel room. And they said that Vancouver was no-fun city! (They did say that didn't they?)

It's actually not a bad way to wake up- to devotional songs at 6am- blaring, miked, and very, very live from a nearby temple with some minor technical difficulties in the speaker department. Maybe I will stick with the earplugs. I'm kind of getting used to them anyway. By the way, I flew here from Goa. I tried to take the train but it was booked from Goa to Mumbai, and it only cost a little more to fly than it did to travel first class on the train, not to mention that it took about 18 hours less travel time. I do worry about the cheap and abundant availability of flights these days though, for the ecological footprint. Unfortunately it is so easy, affordable, and convenient to be part of the problem. Two steps forward, one step back...

More tomorrow...which is India's 58th anniversary of Independence. It should be quite a birthday celebration!

The center of the heel (by Leah)

The 5 day yoga course is finished now. It was bang on, as usual. Sharat is an excellent teacher- dialed in, full of anecdotes, and razor sharp. "Press down with the center of the heel and extend the toes radically forward!" I'm feeling quite clean and light now, mostly from the yoga, partly from the ocean. On the one hand it's great to be feeling so balanced and relaxed, but on the other, it's a bit of a mental challenge now to gear up for a month of hardcore Indian cities from such a place of softness. I'm excited and nervous all at once! Now I will cover up (sorry bikini, that's all you get!) toughen up (for the travel bit), and get down to business. I travel to Ahmedabad tomorrow. Hopefully I will remember the center of my heels along the way.

"The difference between the master yogi and the beginner yogi is that the master is aware of all parts of the body, while the beginner is aware of only a few. Awareness is the only difference."
-Sharat Arora

Ps. A lovely British gal I met at the course gave me some homeopathic anti malaria pills! Hopefully they work as well as those no-jet-laggers. I'm a believer, now.

Recipe for Bliss, by Leah

I walked back to my guesthouse last night after dinner under a perfectly starry, moonless sky with the wide flat warm wet stretch of sand beneath my toes. I sat for awhile where the sand was dry and looked at Orion, the prominent constellation that I see here (which is also the prominent one I see at home! no big dipper though...) and thought again about my intentions for this trip...

The purpose of the trip is to spend some time with our partner in India, as well as research organic cotton and natural dyes further, including visiting other people who are dyeing textiles naturally. My intention is to continue aligning this outer purpose with my inner purpose, which is to keep drawing my awareness back into my heart and connecting with the earth and fellow passengers/ co-inhabitants. The inner part may sound a bit fluffy to some perhaps, but what can I say? I'm in Arambol, high on shoulderstands and backbends, and surrounded by hippies! Clean hippies, dirty hippies, dreadlocked, technoed and tattooed hippies, Russian, Israeli, and American hippies, and my favorite: the blissed out hippies from the 60's who are still here, in white beards and pink trousers. There is more than one.

Arambol is a very chilled out place where travellers come to relax and get away from the intense + sometimes overwhelming chaos of India. It's not really like the rest of India here- but a little bubble of bliss. The real deal is coming soon, however, as Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi, and possibly Varanasi (if I'm up for it!) are on the itinerary. That's a whole other reality. But in the meantime, I'm digging in to the yoga high.

* Recipe for Bliss*
1 package homeopathic "NO JET LAG" pills
1 flight to Goa, India
5 day yoga course with Sharat Arora, yoga intructor

Mix together in a guesthouse by the sea and serve with fresh watermelon, papaya, and coconuts. (Requires good intenstinal flora and a moderate tolerance to techno music.)

I'm in India!

Well I made it, and a pretty smooth trip all in all. I arrived in Mumbai at 11:30 am yesterday, the 18th, after 28 hours of flights and layovers, then bought a flight directly to Goa, finally arriving in Arambol at 7pm, after a total of 36 hours of travel. Surprisingly, I feel pretty good. I think those homeopathic"NO JET LAG" pills really worked. (Thanks for the tip Marilyn!)

I'm staying at the same guest house I stayed at when I was here 2 years ago, which I reserved from home just so I had a room to come to, and I actually got the exact same room even! It was weird and wonderful to enter the room and get flooded with memories from when I was here last- the squeak of the fan, the swirly plastic toilet bucket, the view of the palm trees from the bathroom window. I slept pretty soundly, with the earplugs- I had forgotten about that sqeaky fan.

This morning I attended the first day of the 5 day yoga class that I am here for (a nice way to acclimatize and relax into the journey I figure- yoga with a fantastic, Iyengar style teacher-his website is www.hiyogacentre.com.) I must say that I'm happy to be here, although it was hard to leave my cozy home in Nelson last week and it tugs at my heart a little bit still. Oh the bittersweetness of traveling. Most of all it's the smell of the air that really makes me feel like I am here... dusty, humid, manky, fruity... the occasional whiff of poo, nescafe, flowers, pollution, petrol exhaust, and watermelon perfume. Yum yum India!

More soon...

Please be seated for take off!

Leah has been in the air for about 45 minutes now. Leah's first leg of her flight is from Seattle to London. Total flying time is approximately 9hrs and 20min. After a lengthly layover of over 9 hours in London, Leah boards another British Airways plane direct to Mumbai. This leg of her flight is 8hrs and 40 min. Total travel time from Seattle to Mumbai = 27 hrs and 30 min.

I hope she can sleep on planes.

Mumbai is 13.5 hours ahead of Seattle. Once Leah arrives in Mumbia, she will board yet another plane, this one a local flight to Goa. Once in Goa, I'd imagine she will sleep for a while... zzzzzzz.

Thankfully, while in Goa, Leah will have some well deserved down time on the beach in Arambol.

The journey begins...

Leah is officially travelling to India. Sure, she is in Seattle for a couple days before her flight, but she is on her way nonetheless.

We had hoped Leah would have more time in Seattle, but she had a minor passport and visa crisis that was only resolved on Friday. Leah's passport expired mid-November, at which time she promptly mailed it off to get a new one.

The Canadian passport office received her passport on Nov 18th and, according to their website, would only take 20 days to process. That would mean that by Dec 15th or so they would mail it back. Not so... it wasn't until Jan 10th (Wed) that the passport arrived, just in time for a flight to Vancouver to get her India visa processed. By Friday, Leah was back on track, India visa and new passport in hand.

So, I drove up to Vancouver on Saturday to pick-up Leah and get her on her way to India via Seattle. Leah leaves for Mumbai from Seattle (via London) on Tuesday. Its then that the real journey begins. For now, Seattle is just a warm up...

Arambol

Leah will be taking a little time off in Arambol to do some yoga, acclimatize and just relax before the rest of her busy trip in India.

Arambol, also known as Harmal is situated about 17km north of Chapora and about 35km from Panaji, on the tropical west coast of Goa, India.

Arambol beach is known mostly for tourism, as many people from all over (especially Israel) travel here for vacation during the winter between December and February. Leah will be there during prime time vacation season!

I hope we get lots of pictures from Arambol. After learning more about the place, I kinda wish I could go there too!

Tell me about Mumbai

Here is a quick overview of Mumbia (formerly known as Bombay). The name was officially changed to Mumbai in 1995, but the former name is still used by many of the city's inhabitants and famous institutions.

I didn't know this, but the city rests entirely on an island called Salsette Island. It has a population of about 18 million, with a density of about 29,000 persons per square kilometer. For comparison purposes, the density of New York City is about a third of Mumbai at only 10,316/km².



In the mid-1860's, Mumbai because the worlds primary cotton trading market and up until about 1980, the city owed much of its prosperity primarily to textile mills and the seaport. Since then, the city's economy has become more diversified and now includes information technology, healthcare, engineering and diamond polishing.

The entertainment industry is the other major employer in Mumbai. The majority of India's major television and satellite networks are based in Mumbai, plus most of its large publishing houses. Bollywood is also located in Mumbai, along with its largest studios and movie production houses.

In terms of India's economy, Mumbai contributes 10% of all factory employment, 40% of all income tax collections, 60% of all customs duty collections, 20% of all central excise tax collections, and 40% of India's foreign trade.

Next up... Arambol

Our Itinerary in India

This post will list all the cities we will be travelling to on our trip to India. Leah is leaving in less than a week on Jan 16th from Seattle.

Leah will start her trip in India with a week at a favorite Yoga retreat of hers. Following that, Leah will travel to several towns and cities by train and plane to visit our current supplier, plus research and meet potential new suppliers of organic fabrics and such.

I will leave for India about a month later, on Feb 11th. Leah and I will meet in Bombay (Mumbai) and travel to me our current supplier. This will be the first time I get to meet our supplier and I am very excited to learn more about their Natural Dyeing Process!

So, enough pre-amble, here is our itinerary...

• Date, City
• 16-Jan, Seattle, Leah leaves Seattle
• 18-Jan, Bombay, Leah arrives
• 19-Jan, Arambol, Yoga retreat
• 24-Jan, Ahmedabad
• 31-Jan, Jaipur
• 3-Feb, Delhi
• 5-Feb, Madras
• 7-Feb, Karur
• 9-Feb, Coimbatore
• 12-Feb, Cannanore
• 13-Feb, Bombay, Paul arrives
• 19-Feb, Ahmedabad
• 22-Feb, Indore
• 24-Feb, Nagpur
• 26-Feb, Ahmedabad
• 27-Feb, Bombay
• 28-Feb, London (1 day lay-over)
• 28-Feb, Seattle

Over the next couple days I will look up each city we are traveling to and write a quick profile. That way, I'll know where I'm going...

Learning about India...

Truth Alone Triumphs
-India Motto

So, as our trip approaches, I've understandably become much more interested in the other side of the planet (which happens to be where India is).

The first thing I did was to ask for a world map for xmas (which I got for Hannukah, thanks Dad). With the map pinned to my office wall (right over top my US map), I can now see India in the context of both its immediate surroundings and the rest of the world.

Who does India share its borders with, you ask? Well, here they are:

• Bangladesh 4,053 km
• Bhutan 605 km
• Burma 1,463 km
• China 3,380 km
• Nepal 1,690 km
• Pakistan 2,912 km

To me, the most interesting border country is Bangladesh. The reason? Simple, most predictions about melting ice caps and rising sea levels also predict that those changes will wipe Bangladesh off the map... Not fair for a country who has little, if nothing, to do with global warming...

Like the rest of the planet, India also has several Environmental Issues:

• deforestation
• soil erosion
• overgrazing
• desertification
• air pollution from industrial effluents and vehicle emissions
• water pollution from raw sewage and runoff of agricultural pesticides
• tap water is not potable throughout the country
• huge and growing population is overstraining natural resources

What's interesting is that the same concerns that we have in North America about climate change, are also concerns around the world. In today's Gulf Times, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls for industrialized nations to develop alternative energy sources to save the environment. If only our leadership in the US and Canada was as forward thinking as others around the world.

The article goes on to point out that according to the UN Climate Change Secretariat, the top five sources of greenhouse gases are the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan. No big surprises here, except that Canada should also be on the list with the highest CO2 emissions per capita, per the David Suzuki Foundation.

So, what does this all mean? Well, I hope it means that in the process of learning more about India, I'll also learn more about how people around the globe are trying to reduce our impact on the environment. As I'm sure I will find, more and more people have growing concerns about the environment.

I guess the key though, is who among us is willing to actually do something about it...?

Shots, vaccines and violent nightmares

One of our first tasks in our preparations for India was to visit our doctors. Now, Leah has already traveled to India, Africa and other places where you would need, well, shots. Most of my travel has been in North America, so I've never had to worry about much.

For me, the list of shots and vaccines was pretty tame, I only had to get shots for Hep A and B (3 doses - now, in 1 months and again in 6 months), the rest of the vaccines are oral. The other vaccines were for Typhoid Fever and Malaria.

Sweet dreams...
I'm a little concerned about using Mefloquine to ward of malaria because I've heard about the violent nightmares as a side effect. Not only have I heard first hand accounts, but its listed as a potential side effect of the drug. Leah has recommended Malarone, but I haven't looked into it yet.

Leah said that after using Mefloquine on one of her trips that she was in bed for a week after her trip, plus she was paranoid the whole time. I don't know if I could deal with that kind of head trip in India, so I think I'll get a second opinion. If anyone has any advice, I'm all ears.

In the end I might just resort to a solid plan of Deet, long sleeves and staying indoors at dusk...