3st December 2008
Before I jet into the future I want everyone to know that we are fine, safe and healthy in relation to the Mumbai attacks that lasted for a few horrible days. Thankfully we were nowhere near the attacks and aren’t planning to go anywhere near there. It’s a sad thing to have happened and it will probably spark up some issues but the moment we see ourselves in any sort of danger we will leave so please don’t worry about us.
We’ve reached December with only 23 days to go until we leave Arambol, Goa and make our way to Nepal to renew our Indian Visas. We were going to go to Sri Lanka to renew them but since our Australian dollar keeps dive bombing we are holding onto all the coins we have. We get a plane to Delhi on the 24th December and stay for a day or two. I know.... Christmas Eve.... but it was the cheapest flight or else we would have had to pay triple any other day. Then the plan is to catch a train to the Holy city of Varanasi and hang for a few days, then make our way to Nepal where we’ll celebrate NYE, renew our visa and enjoy 3 weeks of dumplings and Himalayan views.
So what have we been up to? Yoga.....Yoga....Yoga! Surprised ahh... We’re learning a lot in yoga and for those who do Iyengar Yoga; it’s just such a privilege to be taught by a teacher who spent many years being directly taught by Iyengar himself, so many gold nuggets of information.
We wake at 5:30am every morning to go to yoga and finishing around 10:30am and our days consist of reading book after book, going for afternoon swims in the ocean, playing around with various programs on our laptop, eating, hanging with friends and on the last day of our 5 day yoga week we have live music, jams and musicians at the yoga hall in the evening followed by Chai (Indian tea) and snacks. It’s loads of fun.
We’re still feeding our Moo cow friend but we’re pretty sure he’s passed the message onto his fellow cow friends and now we get visits from others (check out the photos).
We had a dinner party last week and cooked the best pasta that’s ever been cooked in India! The pasta dish consisted of grilled eggplant and zucchini, real kalamta olives (the fringe benefits of being in tourist town) and organic Auroville Parmesan cheese. We invited our 2 best friends Arambol over for dinner, one is an Israeli music teacher/ audio engineer and the other an ex organic farmer from America who has now been studying Tibetan Buddhism for 5 years in Nepal. Both of them practice yoga with us and are awesome people and a lot fun to hang out with. Although the party didn’t erupt with any Bronco style bottle smashing over our heads, it was so much fun to entertain and serve them yummy food and talk about our experiences living in different countries. Next week with the help of our Israeli friend we’ll make humus and an Israeli desert called Saclab mmmmm. We have tried to make a few Indian curries but when you’re able to get the real thing (that melts in your mouth) for a $1.50 down the road what’s the point. Plus our attempts haven’t been the greatest!
As you can tell we don’t really have much to talk about besides food and yoga so we’ll leave it at that and let you look at the photos.
Our next entry will probably be from Nepal so hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and an awesome New Year!!! Take care of yourself.
Lots of love and hugs
Ben & Silvana xxoox
