Monday, February 14, 2011

Farewell India...



As we have learned on this trip, all things are impermanent, including this trip itself. The end is here, or if you like, a new beginning. The traveling twosome have gone their separate ways; Max to continue his travels in Thailand, and Eli is headed back to the good ol' USA.  We have had the time of our lives on this trip and learned an enormous amount about the world, and ourselves. We also want to thank you for reading our somewhat inane and ridiculous updates. There will be some more posts coming (including an extensive photo gallery) but this is the last update from the subcontinent.  Good bye India, we hardly knew ye...

Looking sharp...

Getting cleaned up for Thailand
Shooting stuff on the streets of Kolkata

Sunday, February 6, 2011

V.I.P.-assana

The Bangalore Vipassana Meditation Retreat Center: our home for 12 days
Ok, so this is one of the most difficult posts we've created this whole trip. Besides the necessary dullness of ten and a half hours of daily sitting, to describe the minute shifts and intensely personal revelations experienced during such an experience would be both excruciatingly boring for the reader and far too revealing for us. What we will say is that we recommend that all of our friends and family consider taking this course (it's available worldwide and it's donation-based AKA nearly free) as the time at the center will certainly change your perspective and probably change your life. Be Happy: nuff' said.

Ok, so the first thing we did after Vipassana was eat KFC: sue us.
Since Vipassana we've been on the move hardcore. One night in Bangalore, four nights in Thiruvannamalai, four nights in Pondicherry... It's really nice to be on the road again considering how cooped up we were for the course and how our time in India is running very very short (at the time of this writing, our visas have about one week remaining). Tomorrow we will hop a bus to Chennai and grab dinner with an old friend from the Annapurna Circuit before catching the 30-hour train to Kolkata (commonly referred to as "Calcutta" by Westerners), where our respective flights will depart next week. During this last week+ we've become gurus by circumnavigating the Arunachala (a mountain that is a physical manifestation of Shiva), woke up at 4:45 to fight through a ornery line to buy Takkal (Hindi for, too-shortsighted to buy tickets early enough) train tickets, and accidentally led ourselves all the way through an underground, bat-filled sewer while looking for a Utopian village. Fun-filled crazy days to be sure, but we gotta soak it all up while we're still on the subcontinent. 
Gettin' Sadhu wit it in Thiruvannamalai

Our Thiruvanna Mama

Casper the Friendly Condom

Big Ol' Shiva Temple