Yesterday I first enjoyed a nice Karate training and expected sore muscles after, which didn’t happen 🙂 Right after I went to Osaka and had a yummy cappuccino. I’m only wondering why I get a cinnamon stick instead of a spoon. What a waste of natural resources. 
This morning shomyo and tonight party 🙂
Nice reading: It’s up to you from Dzigar Kongtrül
Momiji – Indian Summer in Koyasan
After a long travel we are back in Koyasan. All trees are colored and it’s quite cold – heating again with kerosene heaters and feeling cozy warm in feather beds and jackets. My heart is somehow still in India and looking forward to plans for the next year. I already signed up for a Yoga Therapy course for next year 🙂
The most happy about our return is probably this gang here:
Yesterday I taught first yoga class after coming back and I was … confused, especially about words. Even such simple things like “back” or “shoulders” wouldn’t come to my mind anymore. On the end I was told, that it was good, uffff. I was so released! Although students are not so demanding by asana performance, they are by atmosphere – kimoji, that is what is important and komji ga ii – meaning the feeling was good – is the best compliment you can get. If people tell you, you are jousou, which means skilled – it was really the opposite!
Now some other things need to be done first ….
Maru Iku or going in Circles
Yesterday we came from Delhi to Mumbai to catch our flight back to Japan and today we go from Mumbai to Delhi to transfer there to the flight to Kansai Airport. It’s like turning in circles, back and forth.
After more than 2 hours of delay, back in Delhi. Now waiting for the plane to Kansai – via Honkong. Well, things have their own timing in India, but sometimes it’s just way too relaxed or just tiring as today.
Linux on the road
It’s the first time I used a Linux system on a laptop for travelling. I got a EeePc, put 2GB of RAM inside and installed MintLinux with Thunderbird, Opera etc. So far so good. Daily stuff worked fine, but I couldn’t transfer my photos from the iPhone to the EeePC, although I installed some software which was supposed to do the job. So I still need to figure out how this is supposed to work. I also got the Vodaphone stick to work, but I couldn’t receive SMS, somehow Betavine is not working as expected. Receiving SMS is important, as they usually send you passwords and billing reminders this way. As long as the EeePC is packed, it’s size is nice, but unpacked the keyboard as well as the the screen just feels way to small for everything. One can read and write as long as nothing else is open, but for using a three pane window layout for Thunderbird the screen is simply too small. Another thing which bothered me quite often is the size of the keypads and the layout of the keyboard. It’s done like for tiny little girly fingers and not for such big fingers, as I’m equipped with 😉 Particularly the cursor keys are so near to the shift key, that I quite often hit the wrong key, which can have some unexpected results :-0 For me the biggest disadvantage is of course that I can’t use 4D with Linux. This time I didn’t intend, but there’s always a next time 😉
Back in Mumbai
Back where we started, at the Jewel of Chembur in Mumbai. We thought we are on the safe side, after we bought bus tickets to Delhi the same day we arrived in Rishikesh. While we were waiting for the daily bus it turned out that there is no bus today! At least we got the money back for the ticket, but we had then to take a cab to Delhi. These 250km were a tough ride, the road is bad and traffic … better don’t ask. In Dehli we stayed in a Hotel called Prince of Polonia, a friend of us recommended it to us as a clean and convenient place, with a pool on the roof, next to the breakfast table 😉 Looking from the roof, ruins in between living houses and a huge dust-cloud over Dehli, nearly covering the sun. I’m so lucky, that I don’t have to live in such a polluted environment.
When I tried to book a train to Mumbai, no more tickets – it’s Divali in India, the festival for Ram and he decided we have take a plane. GoAir was late and we had the first time to pay for sandwich in the plane! The cab ride to the hotel was a bit like a special stage on a rally, more tiring than coming to Mumbai and the copilot was asleep 😉
Rishikesh
2 days ago we arrived in Rishikesh, one of the famous cities on the river Ganga. As Mahatma Gandhi is the father of the nation, so is this river the mother of India. There are a lot of myths about this river and every Indian likes to have a bottle of this sin cleaning water at his home, in case someone dies. The bus ride was either bumpy or curvy, but not at all dangerous as some reports imply. We took a private “luxurious” bus, which was really luxurious for Indian standards 😉 The bus reminded me to those buses, with which I was going for skiing in Germany when I was a young boy.
These last days before traveling back to Japan we are spending in a real nice place in Rishikesh, with hot-water shower working any time we wish, a nice bed, which doesn’t smell to mold, new towels and even toilet-paper. What a luxury! The place is quite new, it’s called Sanskriti and we heard it opened just a year ago. Our friends from Israel highly recommended this place to us. The food is excellent and ayurvedic, there is Yoga every morning here and people are very friendly. If you are not on a tight budget, give it a try, it’s probably one of the best places around.
Rishikesh also has a different price niveau than Baghsu, a banana lassi for example is here 60 RS, in Baghsu it’s 35 and better 😉
Today we also attended a Trika-Yoga class. This morning session was all about vajara-asana. Interesting introduction with a lot of useful information about this asana. One aspect of vajra asana is the connection of anahata, the heart chakra and ajna chakra the third eye, so connecting mind and heart and developing a diamond (vajra) body. Usually asanas are taught to prepare the body for extensive periods of stillness, this teacher is holding asanas pretty long, like in Yin Yoga, to make asana itself a meditation. Patanjali says, asana is a comfortable body position hold steady and a asana is mastered if it’s hold for 3 hours and 49 minutes. If I’d try to do that with even the most simple asana, I’d probably need to see a doctor or even the hospital after 😉
Tonight I heard from the same guy the best “how to” for doing visualization. You grab a pingpong ball and hold it 20 cm on the height of ajna chakra, the third eye in front of you, then you study the thing until you have remembered it and then you try to visualize it with closed eyes until you can clearly see it in front of your eyes. Very simple and sounds pretty effective.
