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Published: November 7th 2007
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So after my recent conversion to Vegohood, I found myself in a Govindas restaurant in Quito where a giant poster advertised a yoga eco lodge, featuring photos of bare chested young men drumming under waterfalls and requesting volunteers. Vrndivan is a planet you can go with a REALLY good KARMA ticket and there is Krsna God living with his Gopis (woman) and its all very beautiful and no one dies. Its also the name of the community that I arrive in a few days later which is between mountains and jungle. After arriving I am asked if I´m a vegetarian by everyone I meet and having the extent and length of my vegetarianism investigated. My friend Ariel has been vego since the age of 13 so they are ready to initiate her right there and then, she also doesn´t drink, have casual sex or gamble. I don´t gamble, well sometimes I put a few coins in the pokies but the ancient egyptian one seems quite spiritual and two up, well you know its patriotic. Anyway they let me stay despite my impurities and for the next month Ariel and I cook delicious food in their restaurant which has an old stone
age kitchen. We make burritos, pizza, curries, pumpkin, tomato and cheese pie, empanadas, salad, soups and deserts all from scratch. As it is the Kitchen of Krsna who is by the way blue and the most famous and attractive man ever, we are not allowed to taste the food before it is ready when it is offered to the man himself. This causes some anxiety on our part but thank Krisna everything turns out perfect. It is fun to trust our imagination as we cook with new fruit and vegtables, like yuca and tomato de arbol.
We also go to temple and read the Bagavag Gita. The temple is a sweet wooden building with palm mat floors and the smell of incence and butter lamps and flowers. Temple service involves singing, drumming, clanging cymbals and reading the song of God. There is a Krsna deity with other smaller dieties who are kept behind a curtain most of the time. It is the job of Madaba to dress Krsna ever day, as a prince, a dancer and sometimes a Mexican, when he is put into his cot at night they dress him in wooly pajamas. For festivals he always looks very
Krisna Dogs
The one at the back is the goose burier glam with matching earings and tiarra. It is a great religion for little girls who like to play dress up dolls. He also has a statue of his wife who looks like a coconut and to us she is always known as the coconut. Perhaps sacreligiously we like to amuse ourselves giving nicknames to the Hare Krsnas, like River or Rio to a Chileno who looks like River Phoenix, or Mad Bull Sugar to one who is known to lose his temper. One time I ask Sudarsan about the Krsna doll and he short circuits, "No es Muneca, No es Muneca" (It's not a doll, It's not a doll) he repeats endlessly, shaking slightly and with craziness in his eyes. After that I don't ask him about the coconut.
Life here is pretty tranquil, we cook, dance in the yoga studio, open air by the river, we swim in the icy river and walk up the hill to chat with a guy who has a permacultue farm. One day the one eyed German Shepard kidnaps the Goose who was trying to cuddle him for warmth. The Krsnas are all very upset, because they had been feeding the German Shepard vegetarian
Waterfall shower
Our daily wash was under this little water fall - fresh and feisty! food for years and can´t understand why he took the goose. A search party climbed the heavily vegetated mountain side to search for what was left of the goose, only to find it buried up to its neck, frightened but very much alive. This was taken as a great success that Ras, the dog, had obviously evolved somewhat through his sacred diet and was now overcoming his natural killer instints. The goose, after a few days, could walk again and didn´t wait around to test Ras´s benevolence, she dissapeared upstream.
The people were all lovely and kept us laughing, despite some strange beliefs. One woman (the beautiful Laksmi, Japanese Princess in past life, believe me if you met her you would believe it!) told us that we had bad karma to be born women because we are weaker than men and have periods!! Next time I have PMS I´ll blame my stint as Mercenary in ancient Greece.
The experience was great, it was a lovely place to stay, we had sweat lodge, pitch black earth womb with drumming and ecualyptus sauna, we swam in waterfalls and rivers, we got eaten alive by biting flies and we chanted and drummed and
Kim and Finn
While I was partying away in Krsna land my awesome beautiful sister Kim, gave the light as they say in spanish to Finn! Felt so sad to have been so far away but I'm going to Canada to see them in Jan! yogaed and danced. We went to see their cross eyed German Guru talk in a beatiful adobe house near Quito. All the woman looked radiant in their saris and there were flowers everywhere, which we threw on the guru or put around his neck. There was a lot of ranting about how depraved the world is and how great its going to be on the other planets. I tried to explain that I believe most people are good if most of us are also a little lost in materialism, sense gratification etc and that we need to put good energy into living this moment the best we can, but I had about four Krsnas lecturing me at once, one of those one sided conversations that religious people have with you when they just keep repeating the same thing over and over. I was glad to escape by the end. But it was a good experience. I laughed alot and enjoyed to hear the teachings which are very similar to Buddhism but with a blue God Man, Krsna. It was lovely to live a life for no other purpose than spiritual advancement, no commercialism, business etc. But I think we need
new spirituality for the world, so I´m not going to become a Hare Krsna - my family was quite worried that I would, and I won't say the thought didn't cross my mind!! But as women don't get the cool hairdos, I'm not sold.
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