Bangalore - Kochin - Kannur (What a journey!)

Well here I am at my 'first' placement - this one is to learn to work with people and help them in a holistic way using 'yoga' and 'Ayuveda medicine'. It might sound impressive and it is - its just I am not! And the worst in the yoga class goes to - Sylv and also John from Germany is pretty crap so we keep each other company at the bottom of the class! (Nae offence John the baby - or did I take that 'too far'!)

I have put a lot of this in my journal, but not brought is with me and so I will try and keep you up to date with what I remember - every day is just too full!

On leaving Mumbai I reached Bangalore and went to get my 'prepay taxi voucher' and then you come out to all of these faces watching you looking for something - food, money, information. Just a sea of faces and one guy comes up to me and asks for my voucher to take me to the taxi. And I must admit - I really don't trust taxi drivers. Not here anyway, or maybe its just that they stare at you all the time. Anyway he takes me to this bit away from the airport and asks me to 'wait' - Scottish paranoia then sets in! He goes with half of the voucher and then I look at my half which says you should not part with it until you reach your destination - yup I am an on the ball traveller! So I wait a while thinking I might just go get another voucher when he comes back with his car and starts loading my stuff. I must admit that I find the most scary part of this travelling in India is the getting the taxi from outside the airport - there is no rhyme nor reason to it!

And so arrive in Bangalore and go for a wonder outside. I know I am just here and felt the same when I first got to Mumbai but I did feel quite sad in Bangalore - it was so westernised. All shops and no 'barras' like stalls on every inch of the pavement like 'I am accustomed' to in Mumbai! (Outside my hotel Anukool in Mumbai there was 2 guys in a little stall like booth cutting hair and shaving guys in a space 3 ft by 3 ft!!) Anyway you can buy anything in Bangalore. Oh yeah and you can buy chocolate here! But I have decided to try and give it a miss 'again' for a while. I then stayed over night for my flight to Kochin the next day. I am so sick of flying! On the plane I met a woman who works with disabled people and she is interested in partnership work and so I said I would get her in touch with 'GESH'. She said when I go back to Bangalore for the youth festival I should get in touch with her and she will show me what it is like in her NGO. On leaving the flight her husband was there to greet her and she convinced him to take me to my hotel which he did. They were so very nice. And so to the hotel 'Excellence' where a european dish including mashed potatoes is actually a potato syrup! Oh well they tried and I should really be eating the local food, its just sometimes I could just really go a roll and chips! I asked them about 'Kannur' where I was to go next and was told it was 8 hours away!!!!! I was to be there the next day at 11am and it was now 2pm. Eventually I decided I had to do it by taxi - can you imagine an 8 hour journey by taxi how fancy nancy am I! It cost me fifty quid, but I have tried to move on from that rash spending. And anyway it would have cost ten times that much in Scotland!! My taxi driver was also lovely - Sean. He took care of me and made sure I got to the right destination.

And here I am in Kannur and like everywhere else the cars blow their horns all the times, constantly. I have heard that it means you want to over take. But when you look at it logically there is no way they can overtake some situations. It is like peeping your horn in a traffic jam just for the heck of it. Its mad, I can hear them right now! And contrary to what I would have thought - the law of the mechanical jungle is the...'bus'. The bus is a scary monster to avoid when crossing the road. The bus stops for no-one, absolutely no-one, maybe a cow wandering on the road as they do here aimlessly all the time (and they are of sacred significance) but for nothing or no-one else. Even as people get on it is still moving (and talk about people getting on the bus its like being in a school bus queue - people just push each other out of the way!). And so the bus, it drives along avoiding pot holes and rickshaws (the little tri-motor bikes with seats to fit 3 in the back but we always manage to squeeze in 4). For a journey of about a mile it costs about 1p. the same journey on the rickshaw costs about 30p and so sometimes you decide to just go for the cheap option even waiting half an hour for it. And if the rickshaws try to rip you off for an extra 5p well you don't stand for that, pay them and walk away. They will fight you for it though! Back to the bus, its usually jam packed, mainly women sit at the front and men at the back. There are far too many people on the bus but the driver will always squash more in. The windows have no glass only a curtain of leather tied up when it is not raining. But even when its raining it is still warm! And off the monster goes zooming through the streets peeping at the slower rickshaws and cars and bycicles and people walking, taking corners at high speed shaking rattling and yes humming!

While here in Kannur I am learning. The first week about yoga, which I am rubbish at but God loves a tryer and thats me. There is 11 of us in the group altogether from France, Belgium, England, Germany, Japan and me (Scotland na na na na!) Everyone is pretty nice but as French is the most dominant language many go off in French chats and thats understandable but hard at times. We have a cook who makes us Indian food for every meal, his name is Sadish and he is great. Our yoga master is Shree Kamur. Everyone is great and helpful.

The host who owns the building we sleep in is Ranjit and he is fab, he gets us doing all sorts of cool stuff and he will be teaching us Aryuveda next week. He knows everything there is to know about plants and flowers and health. I was out on his moped the other night through the winding paths thick with bushes and random little stalls and over the road from where we are which lies just by a beautiful beach where the waves are massive. Since then I have convinced all the rest of the group to get a chance on his moped it is so much fun. Ranjit has also given me a massage which was out of this world.

Yesterday was the 'festival of Onam' which is a big big Hindu festival in Kannur it is like Christmas or New Year. So big. We were invited to the homes of some families near where our cook and his family live and also Ranjit. We brought gifts for the children who were overwhelmed. 3 of them made some pictures for me which I will treasure. I have lots of photos and will get them on here as soon as I can. They make a flower decoration on their floor which is to me like decorating a christmas tree. All of the shops outside are shut as it is such an important day. And so we have food with a great family and then visited others including our yoga teachers.

Today I have been to a wedding with the rest of the group. We were in a big hall. The couple were sitting under a flower arch display with family all around them. The hall was jam packed with people. It was beautiful. We then went in to get food, they must have fed about 200 people maybe more. On our sitting some men came round and put the food on to our palm leaf - spicy, sweet, tasty food on a bed of rice. It was so lovely the food and we were rushed to finish it as the next sitting were waiting to come in and get their seats and as I said before - it is a big rush with these people getting somewhere, like children in a rush to get somewhere before their friends.

Oh well thats about it for me, there is so much more but I couldn't get in to it all right now. Today we did yoga on the top of our building, it was beautiful and I couldn't even begin to say what the view was like as we are beside the beach with the great and powerful ocean and palm trees all around our guest house. In the guest house we sleep on mats and have our stuff semi neat beside us. It is a heaven. Last night we sat by the beach on the rocks watching the sun set. So beautiful.

I will let you know more next time my friends. Thanks for keeping up with me. Its nice to know you are all out there and reading this is like a support for me. Remember to send me a comment. They cheer me up. I just tried to send a couple of emails but this computer is a bit antiquated and it just wasn't working for me. Here hopes this updates and I have not lost all of this info!

Aw the best and happy 'Onam'.

Hugs
Sylv x