Locked and Loaded

All packed and ready to roll. There's gonna be a lotta cricket goin down. See you in 3 weeks!

Rock and roll!

Just finished shaving my entire body. As most of you know, this indicates that I'm about to head off on a journey where cleansing oneself should be an incredibly efficient process.

That's right! 21 days in the Himalayan wilderness starts tomorrow morning!

My team consists of: Luke, the leader who has been running serious outdoor trips in colorado, alaska, india, and nepal for over a decade, Leo, an anesthesiologist from Sydney who has been my roommate in Leh, Lars, a Swedish software engineer who has been living in Sydney for over a decade, Piotr, an astrophysicist from Poland, an Ana, a very cool girl about to start her PhD in physics at CalTech. Everyone is incredibly interesting and has plenty of shit to talk about. There shouldn't be much silence during our trip.

We've all been acclimating in Leh for 3 nights now. The city is like an oasis town nestled in a desert valley between huge mountain ranges. It is incredibly touristy. Historically it is a Tibetan village, and feels nothing like the rest of India or Kashmir. There are so many white people here it's scary. 70% of the town is Buddhist, and many of the locals all look more Chinese than Indian. There are also many nepalis who work here.

The first day was sort of an orientation, the second day consisted of sightseeing in the morning and then a nice 2.5 hour trek over a ridge in the afternoon. Today we took mountain bikes up to the highest motorable pass in the world, the Khardung La, at 18380 feet, and biked 46km back down to Leh which is at 11562 feet, so needless to say it was epic. We rode trek mountain bikes an my gears were complete crap, but I still had an amazing time and definitely need to do more mountain biking in the future. I may try to bike up the pass when we return from the trek on august 9th or 10th.

We've been in leh also with the rest of the project himalaya team. Kim took her group out on a 30 day trek today. Her group was a bit larger than ours an they'll be doing a beautiful trek in a different region as ours. Jamie has been spending time with us during meals. He's climbed Everest 4 times and know everything there is to know about trekking and mountaineering so it's certainly awesome to converse with him.

Our trek will head aoutheast of leh towards the Tso Moriri region, which runs along the disputed border area between India and China. There are a few large lakes there surrounded by towering 6000+ meter peaks. We have a tentative itinerary but also have a few plan b's and plan c's depending on how things look. Luke and the team of locals will make day by day decisions to decide where exactly we'll go. The goal is to scale 2 of the 6000 meter peaks in the 21 days. We've got ice axes and crampons (which are like ice spikes that attach to our boots) to help in this endeavor. If we're really lucky we might stumble upon some snow leopards!

Along the way we will be supported by 7 locals who basically lead the donkeys ahead of the group, set up re entire camp, and cook all the food every day for us. We'll only be carrying day packs, and all of the rest of our crap will be waiting for us when we reach camp. I know this sounds totally pussy, but I have been talking to other Trekkers who told me about how awful it is to set up camp every night for just 5 days. So I'm okay with the 5 star service this time around!

3 of the group members (Luke, Lars, and Piotr) have serious Nikon cameras with tripods and the whole 9 yards, so they will have some amazing shots from the trek. I'll make de with my canon point and click, as of course I am in the top 5 best users of canon point and click cameras worldwide rankings.

We've also got all sorts of fancy amenities like iPhone speakers, a solar panel battery charger, camp chairs, a library tent, etc. The donkeys do all the heavy lifting!

Most of the days we'll be up at normal hours and hit the road by 9 after breakfast. The days that we try to summit will be 2AM starts so we can be at the peak during prime weather.

I've been getting up around 5:30 for the past 3 days and doing 1 to 1.5 hours of yoga. I'm going to try to keep it up during the trek. I was speaking with folks at the yoga course and they said that yoga and especially the associated breathing exercises are the best physical tool to assist in acclimatization. I'm going to focus on making sure I do breathing exercises every morning in lieu of taking diamox or the other weird pills I got in China to combat altitude sickness.

I'll likely be entirely out of touch with society until August 8th, so don't get worried if you don't here from me. If you don't hear from me by the 10th, then you can be worried.

Passing through Dr. Ass

I got up early on the 15th to head out of Srinagar. Had one last tea and breakfast with Rayiz' wife and daughter and then jumped in a rickshaw to the taxi station. I ended up throwing them some extra cash as the family had been so nice and helpful, even doing all my laundry for me cleaner than I would ever have been able to do myself.

The bus and shared-taxi station in Srinagar is kinda nutty. It definitely feels like a ripe place for a terrorism attack if that was gonna go down. It's nice to get out of there quickly, so I dd my best to get in a shared jeep for the "8 hour" trip to kargil. The drivers are quite aggressive, trying to get you in their taxis by offering such things as "only Englishman in the car" or "only 3 people in the back. They all say that they are the best driver in the best car. Eventually I jumped in the backseat of a chevy jeep with a British girl and local guy sharing the side-facing back section with me, while 2 Swedish brothers, an Israeli, an Indian an another Kashmiri sat up in the front 2 rows with the driver.

The drive was rather tense, as it seems all the drivers are racing each other. Our driver was funny but crazy. There were a few times when all the cars were stopped because traffic was only allowed to go in one direction, so most of the passengers and drivers would be wandering about on the side of the road. As soon as the signal was given that we could go, our driver would start screaming at all of us and run back to the car so we could get the wholeshot and be the first vehicle to head forth. Of course this advantage was always short lived due to poor road conditions, construction, and traffic.

When we stopped for lunch, he was adamant that we only had 10-15 minutes to eat. It was kind of sad because the drive was so beautiful, it could have been nice to get to enjoy it more. We passed over the Zoji La, which is a dramatic road up across a 4000meter pass and continued through spectacular valleys. At one point in a village the road was blocked for an hour as some locals decided it was a good time to build a ditch across the road and insert a water pipe. Another annoying thing was that the Kashmiri guy in the back with me kept blasting the Moslem prayers through his phone.

Let me pause for a second here to discuss the logistics of Moslem prayers. I get it, pray 5 times a day, it can be beautiful thing. But holy shit when you publicly blast the prayers through loudspeakers from every mosque and through cell phones, it's the most annoying sound in the world. I'm not talking about the language or the words or the meaning of the prayers at all. I'm sure that is all a very nice thing. I'm talking about the acoustics. When you play any high pitched sounds through a megaphone, it may as well be projecting a baby whining as loud as possible for the whole city to hear. And when they start every morning at 3:30AM, it makes the noises of China sound like heaven. Point is, use headphones, buy some subwoofers, do anything to change that horrendous sound that you force upon the world around you.

Anyways,

We made it to kargil in the afternoon, and I split off with the Swedes and Israeli. We had a decent dinner at "New Las Vegas restaurant" and then I passed out. I shared a room with the Israeli guy, he took the floor and I got the bed. I was getting a bit sick from all the dust we breathed in on the ride, plus had a headache from sitting sideways for 9 hours so I needed a good night sleep, and popped a sudafed which helped a bit. I was awoken by the fucking loudspeakers and tossed and turned for a bit before the sun rose. I eventually got up and did a nice hour of sunrise yoga on the rooftop which definitely made me feel better.

We caught another ride that morning in a better car with a Buddhist driver who was far less stressful. The road from Kargil to Leh was a lot nicer than the road from Srinagar to Kargil, but it still had some hairy parts as we had to wait for a few bulldozers to remove landslides. We had some great meals along the way and made it to Leh a little after 2 in the afternoon. I parted ways with my car buddies and searched for the hotel where I was to meet my trekking team...

Pahalgam overnight trip & return to Srinagar

It's been about a week since my last post. I only just regained Internet yesterday after 4 intense days of travel.

We last left off in Srinagar where I used an actual computer for the first time of the trip because my SIM card didn't work in this state. I later managed to somehow buy a local SIM card off the kid at the shop which kinda works for edge connections but not very fast. Either way, it was totally illegal for him to sell it to me like he did so I'm lucky to have it plus it has been useful.

The next day, Rayiz, Tessa (a girl who was also couchsurfing with rayiz) and I headed thru Pahalgam to a small town called Aru, where we set off onto a trek through the Lidder Valley. It was
Absolutely spectacular from start to finish. Lush green meadows flanked by pine forests along crystal clear rivers and small glaciers. Grazing animals everywhere, local herdsman and local hut people doing their daily routines. It was simply incredible.

The goal was to go as far as we could, then set up our sleeping bags and sleep under the stars. Rayiz was amazingly helpful throughout the day as not only did he arrange the transportation to aru but he chatted with locals to figure out where we should go on the trek. We totally had a million options to pitch camp but the valley was just so stunning we kept going further and higher. As it got later, the skies became ominous and rain started coming down when we were in the middle of nowhere along a ridge. We quickly found some herdsmen who told Riyaz there were a bunch of families huts up ahead. We figured it was our best bet to see if any of these locals would host us for the night seeing we didn't have any shelter from the rain. Eventually a group of 4 locals caught up to us and told rayiz it was cool. After they led us on an absolutely grueling final ascent to their hut, we quickly realized we were in for a hell of an experience. This hut was a combination o 2 families. The 2 adult males looked exactly like Osama bin Laden. The female mothers were a bit phased ar first when we showed up, but their combined 13 kids absolutely loved us. They were captivated by my camera and attempted their darndest to speak English.

We eventually settled in for the night in their hut, and they fed us tea, roti bread, and a rice & dal dish all cooked on a makeshift wood burning stove. The hut was crammed with like 17 people and a cow an a rooster. We eventually slept in the middle of the tent and as we were going to bed, the kids were hovering over us staring. It was pretty scary and I then mixed all my valuables into my sleeping bag with me. Nothing got stolen but there definitely was a little bit of a weird vibe despite their hospitality.

I didnt really get any sleep that night, but what was I to expect in that situation. I did wake up to a cow very nearby. After a nice tea and roti breakfast, we hiked up to a beautiful glacier lake beyond their hut and ten retreated back the way we came for the day. The kids were all very sad to see us go.

We made it back to Srinagar that evening after fighting rain much of the way.

That night I met up with Rebecca ad khuram (who I stayed with in Delhi) and they treated me to an amazing buffet dinner at this amazing hotel/historical government building up on a hill overlooking the lake. It was great to see them again and talk a bunch before I was to move on the next day.

To be continued...

Srinagar Couchsurfing

I landed in Srinagar airport yesterday and it was insane. It was like a battle for the luggage carousel. Vicious. Then i was hounded by people to fill out foreign visitor card, where they needed to call the local # i gave them of a couchsurfing host to verify that I had somewhere to stay before letting me pass. Then they still tried hustling me nonstop to stay in a houseboat. It was a mess. Eventually I finally got in a cab, and about 2 minutes out of the airport, we were stuck in gridlock traffic, cars turning around in opposite direction on one way road. Armed officers running through traffic to get up ahead. 10 minutes later they had cleared whatever issue was going on, and we were on our way to my hosts spot.

Then all of a sudden 3 Kashmiri army soldiers with huge guns jump in front of my cab and stop the driver and just jump in the cab with me. 1 up front and 2 behind me. I just smiled and nodded at them. We drove about 2 minutes, and then they stopped and jumped out. I guess when you're carrying a gun, hitchiking is free.

We finally got to my couchsurfing host, who picked me up on his beautiful shikara boat, and we cruised across the Nagin Lake to his house on the banks. There were 3 other couchsurfers staying there. I've been hanging out with a Dutch girl who lives in London right now and is also crusing around Kashmir.

The rest of the day consisted of paddling around the lakes, enjoying all sorts of hospitality, amazing teas, foods, dinners, and sunset.

This morning we woke up at 4am to get back on the lake for the sunrise and some crazy floating farmers markets. A bunch of sightseeing and now I'm finally at an internet cafe using an actual computer for the first time since I've been in India.

We're trying to figure out what to do tomorrow. Probably an overnight trek somewhere. Need to figure it out soon. Also trying to figure out a local cell phone.

Kashmir

I'm back in Delhi after a long train ride that was delayed because during our journey, another train in the same Indian state derailed and killed over 35 people. Yikes.

One of my friends from TTC was very kind and invited me stay with her family for the night in Gurgaon, just beyond Delhi. It was really weird not waking up in my ashram bed, and I had an incredible night's sleep. Enjoyed a great western breakfast with eggs and oatmeal!!

At delhi airport now, headed north to Kashmir. Planning on couchsurfing for a few nights in Srinagar then continuing to Ladakh via some form of transportation. It could be a shared jeep taxi, it could be a motorcycle. No idea yet. Well see what happens once I get to Srinagar. Hopefully it stays peaceful because obviously this part of the world doesn't have the greatest track record in recent years. Technically it's only about 100 miles from Abottabad, Pakistan which is pretty awesome. There are extremists in the region so I will consider keeping a low profile and not do anything entirely stupid. Still going to wake up every morning and wave the American flag for 5 minutes before anthony else.

Internet access may be limited as my current phone SIM will no longer work in the Kashmiri state due to security issues. I'm going to try and get a new one but not sure of that possibility.

Go USA womens soccer!

Success!

Satchidananda

Well, all done now. Test did exist afterall (no pizza! Doh!) All that's left is one more casual asana class, feasting and graduation. We've got some free time at the moment and I'm just sitting outside in the mist taking it all in.

I certainly feel incredibly educated in both philosophical and practical matters. I feel extremely healthy and I'd like to do my best to maintain it. I have greatly enhanced my understanding of what makes a good teacher, not just in yoga but in all walks of life. I have a much improved general awareness of others.

I don't necessarily feel any more "pure" or "enlightened". I haven't had any massive realizations or awakenings. I am sure that I will return to my normal life and continue to party and live freely. I hope to do so with more balance. I committed to a life of devotion and selfless action, but I will make small steps in that direction.

I'm certainly relaxed and stress-free, but then again, I've always been like this so it's not much of a change. I do have much more awareness about why I'm like this.

I've made some great lifelong friends who are all planning to help me out through the rest of my time in India, including a one month reunion dinner when I get back to Delhi on august 12 after my himalaya trip.

I will continue the quest for knowledge, refreshing myself at additional yoga events in the future.

At the end of the day, I'm still the same Trevor. Definitely better off and super happy to have enjoyed this experience. The only change is that I now have an additional name, ha.

The simple vedantic definition of self = awareness (sat) + consciousness (chit) + bliss (ananda) is a fantastic guideline to live ones life. This is a fantastic blueprint for life and one that I'm very happy to have experienced and understood.

Time for finals

As I enter this blogpost, it's just after 11PM and tomorrow is our final full day in the course. It is said to involves 3.5 hour open-response final exam.

I've been on the record since day 1 that I think the exam is total bullshit and they're just using it as a scare tactic to force us to learn. (fraternity conditioning)

Either way, everyone else is stressing out about it("How many points is each question worth?? What score do I need to pass?? Do we need to know the Sanskrit names for all the yamas and diyamas??"), while the teachers and staff just discuss it nonchalantly.

I personally spent about an hour reviewing some stuff but didn't stress out for a second. It's not like we're not going to "pass" if we don't know all the Sanskrit names for the 9 steps of Bhakti yoga.

Anyways, guess I'll know by 7:30 am tomorrow whether or not my intuition is correct.

Otherwise, it's been an emotional couple days, wrapping up our final classes and seeing some of the staff and students leave a day or 2 early due to various circumstances. One of my roommates left today after taking the "test" in a secluded area.

This TTC was a big deal for the teachers as it was the first time they operated a large scale TTC under their new independent sivananda organization. It was also the first time at this himalaya ashram that a TTC was undertaken. So a lot of their own blood, sweat, and tears went into this creation and you can really see how committed they are to spreading the teachings to others.

I've been able to have many one-on-one conversations with the teachers about practical issues I would face trying to teach yoga back in the states and they've all been incredibly forthright and helpful. It's certainly not a cakewalk to create your teaching arena. It's obviously yet to be seen what will come out of this experience, but I certainly believe that I would be an effective teacher if I choose to pursue this path.

Guess we'll have to wait and see. Bedtime.

In case you were curious...

I've been in India for a month now and only twice have I enjoyed a "real" shower when I stayed in the hotel in Agra and with Rebecca and Leyla in Delhi. I've still yet to shower with hot, let alone warm water. Nonetheless, this sacrifice is very minimal and I quite enjoy the bucket baths by now. They're quite water efficient. The challenge is just pouring that first bucket of cold water on your head. Just like jumping in a cold pool or ocean, you get used to it immediately after 2 seconds of pain.

Anyways, I'm sure it's going to be a massive step up from whatever type of bathing I'm going to get to enjoy during my Himalaya trek. Just wanted to be sure I documented it before leaving the ashram in 48 hours.

Being appropriate

For the past 4 years, I've been living in fantasy lands. Places where you can get away with saying whatever you want to whoever you want without really having to watch your mouth. Physically and mentally I've more or less been consistent for the past 4 years, but verbally is another story. I like to believe that I had a relatively decent respectable mouth back in 2007, but I've since evolved into a carefree, vulgar, usually inappropriate person in my day-to-day discussions.

There's a few reasons I can identify for this. 1 main one is the Florida Betas an their seemingly invincibility to saying and doing whatever they wanted. It was always incredibly entertaining and I definitely took many lessons from them. Gainesville itself lent itself to extreme "get to the point not beating around the bush" honesty because you could say anything you wanted to any girl and if she didn't like it there were another 50 girls to try it on in. Then throw in China which is just a total joke of reality - I have zero important attachments and zero repercussions for saying/wearing/doing whatever I want. It's fair to say that at least 90% of the expat community and 100% of the chinese community think I'm crazy. And somehow I've thrived in that environment, giving less and less of a shit every day. If something is ridiculous, people expect me to be the one to volunteer to do or say it and I happily oblige. It's liberating to not have any concern about what others think, but the way I've been going about it is definitely a slippery slope.

So here in India, I've made a conscious effort to not be such an outward douchebag. I've been treating the experience like a series of survivor, getting to know most of my fellow students on a personal, familial level. As the only white guy, with all my stories and general character, I've obviously naturally stirred a lot of interest, but instead of padding my ego, I've been toning down my act. I haven't been hitting on any of the girls at all, of which there are definitely a few whom I would have otherwise gone for. This approach is interesting in that it has built me a considerable cache of credibility as opposed to the usual expectations of zaniness.

I haven't been cussing at all, and with the exception of dealing with my injury, I've been in a very positive state of mind. I can't say that I'll stay this way when I return, but I certainly don't miss being vulgar and agitated.

I know that the next month with a group of 9 Ladakhi guides/porters and 5 Trekkers will be an entirely different dynamic than this, which is often like a summer camp. It will definitely be interesting to see how I operate in that environment.

Mother worship and Omkar

Tonight we just had our 4th Puja of the course. The pujas are ceremonial events with a lot of chanting and singing and fire and dress up and offerings and beautiful yantra designs and all sorts of traditional symbolism.

The first 3 were held in an outdoor covered corridor (because we had pretty big fires going) and they all sucked. It was uncomfortable, cold, wet, bugs everywhere, and you felt disconnected unless you were in the 4-5 person front row. By the 3rd puja, I just showed up early and sat in the back so I could zone out and be comfy.

So needless to say I wasn't very excited about tonight's event. However, it turned out to be awesome. We held the puja indoors, with fantastically organized seating arrangement, beautiful candles everywhere, and it was a tribute to Devi, the Devine/supreme mother, or whatever you want to call her. The names aren't important, but the symbolism was. The main yantra is in the picture from 2 posts back. I am sure there are many star of David fans reading this so they should get a kick out of it. Lots of these in Vedanta symbols.

This time, instead of ceremoniously celebrating a confusing deity, this time we were told to focus our thoughts on our own mother, as she and Devi are the same thing in essence. This made things nice and practical. I'll spare the details on the chanting and the offerings, but suffice to say it was a beautiful ceremony and I got to think about my mom the whole time. (I wonder if she reads this blog). I feel this effectively makes up for my mothers day inactivity. The previous blog post is a picture of my "offering" area which you can see I put a lot of passion into as opposed to the folks siting next to me.

I also spent some time thinking about the other mothers who are near to me (Gigi, auntie belle, etc) and thought it was an excellent way to celebrate the meaningfulness of motherhood.

After the ceremony finished, swamiji had me come over to him to be given a spiritual name. A few other people in the class had received their names earlier in the course but I didn't want one then because I didn't think he could know me well enough by then. Tonight was a perfect opportunity to get the name, and it was funny because about 20 girls were standing there anxiously awaiting to find out what it would be. Swami started saying..."your spiritual name is..." an then because of the crowd, changed it to "his spiritual name is...Omkar". Which means "the sound of Om". Everyone oohed and Ahhed as apparently this is a highly valued name within India (with movies and songs about it as well).

Om is obviously a pretty important sound in yoga and has many high level meanings and symbolisms which you can go and wikipedia on your own. I'm happy with it.

Midnight and time for bed.

This is my mother's day gift (see next post)

Are pictures working?

Putting things in Perspective

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

2 nights ago during the talent show I busted out my star spangled banner and serenaded the group with a rousing rendition of our national anthem. Today I've worn the flag all day and even used it as my yoga mat. Again maintaining the title of most patriotic expatriate in the world.

Anyways, it's been 5 days now of no exercise for me. I haven't blogged in that time, as I was busy trying to sleep and recover. 2 nights ago (right after the talent show) I came down with a fever an couldn't sleep all night, then woke up with explosive diarrhea. That was fun! I ended up skipping most of the activities yesterday to recover from that episode and actually finally got some well needed rest.

This morning I woke up and FINALLY felt better after 5 days of no improvement and only additional discomfort. As the day has gone on, I feel very positive that I will have a full recovery by the end of the week. Still, I don't plan on doing any more of the asana classes as I don't want to risk re-injuring myself prior to the himalaya trekking.

Today's afternoon class was a "prenatal yoga" class, so it was perfect for my condition. I still skipped most of the poses but it definitely helped put me in the shoes of a pregnant woman if I am ever to teach one. I also have a lot more sympathy for chronically injured folks who aren't able to do most of the poses at all. So I guess that's a silver lining of the injury.

Also, it was interesting to analyze my injury under the scope of the vedanta philosophy we've been studying. Essentially, the idea is that all our personal attachments in life are only temporary and not "real". Therefore when we think we find happiness in these objects, it is actually a false sense of pleasure, as our true happiness is a result of concentrating our mind and bringing us close to our inner consciousness, which is inherently bliss. So technically even "my body" is a temporary object that we must detach from eventually. Therefore if we rely on the body to bring happiness, it will eventually also bring pain.

Yea I didn't explain that too well, but you get the point...

The other thing is...in my usual life, I easily go 5 days at a time without any exercise all the time. I even go 10-15 days often. And during these days I'm going out drinking, eating like shit, and being a total lazy bum. This particular setback only lasted 5 days and I was still an extremely healthy, relatively productive person. Still, I was totally devastated that I couldn't participate. It absolutely killed me to sit in the classes and watch everyone else do their poses as I was immobile. It really goes to show how addicted one can get to a healthy cleansing routine if practiced every day.

I just dropped my iPhone while it was charging and might have broken my USB charging cable...hopefully I can solve this somehow!

Otherwise, there's not much to recap over the past few days because I missed out on the weekend trip and other events to recover.

Hopefully I an juice this phone up and keep it going.

Whoops

Well now it's official...

I've gone from best shape and health of my life to most dehabilitating injury of my life in just 48 hours.

After Sheela's acupuncture last night I woke up this morning with much improvement but still planned o rest today. Well at lunchtime with everyone else practicing their poses I tried to demonstrate a headstand to help someone out, and as I came up, I totally aggravated re injury. It's now far worse than it originally was. I have nonstop pain and find it tough to even breathe.

There's nothing I can do at this point except completely rest. I'd say there's a lesson to be learned here but honestly I feel that I would probably do the same thing again in the same situation.

I'm quickly realizing that my physical body is far and away the object that I value more than anything else. I've lost cell phones, cameras, wallets, etc which all pissed me off and set me back, but this is much tougher to stomach (no pun intended). I am usually entirely dependent on my ambulatory capabilities, and when I can't even reach 2 inches to grab a pen without cringing, it's pretty depressing.

Everyone is very concerned and helpful which I appreciate but honestly the best thing for me is just alone time to refocus and reframe everything. My mind is getting extremely agitated as I google what kind of injury it probably is an how long it will take to heal. None of this matters. I just need to sack up and get it off my mind and rest. My himalaya trek is scheduled to start on July 16 and hopefully 2 weeks without any serious heavy lifting will be enough to heal before then.

Going to start reading again, which I haven't had any time to do since I got here. First up: autobiography of Gandhi

Could be worse.

Wish me luck