Blogs from Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India, Asia - page 14

Blog by Bronia After leaving Darjeeling we made a 27 hour train journey back to Delhi. Having never spent so many consecutive hours on any mode of transport anywhere in the world before we didn't know what to expect other than it was going to be looong. I can confirm it was both long and tedious getting feelings of cabin fever towards the 20th hour! Despite the decent class ticket we booked, sitting in a carriage on bunk beds for 27 hrs whiling away the time and hearing endless calls of "Chai chai garam chai" ('tea tea hot tea') as well as the countless offers for bottles of water, newspapers, flashlights, inflatable pillows, casio watches, calculators, travel blankets, electronic keyboards (we couldn't figure that one out - what use do you have for a keyboard on ... read more

What I have learnd in India .... all in eleven days! Right hand - left hand ... let's eat! The emphasis put on eating with the correct hand, i.e. the right one because the left one is used for cleansing unmentionables, is not adhered to very closely....in fact I ate with a muslim and he did not even wash his hands before he delved into his dinner. When at the house of a muslim we had tea and buns and these buns were torn into by everybody in the room with both hands. Maybe very orthodox muslims do better....have not met any of them yet. ...WM... green texas garbage trucks ... come&get it! The garbage everywhere is garbage in public areas. The houses in India are all behind a tall fence with a gate. Behind that ... read more

Firstly, thanks for the e-mails of concern regarding our whereabouts when the earthquake hit Asia. We were still safe in Nepal and didn’t even find out about it until we flew back into Delhi the following day. According to the BBC, the tremor was felt as far away as Delhi, however the main areas affected were Kashmir and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Arriving back in Delhi was no treat, and after finding ourselves in a couple of ‘questionable situations’, we decided that the sooner we got away from the heat, noise, and smelly smog of Delhi, the better the chance we would leave with our sanity intact. Our original plan had been to head to Rajasthan, but the true Canadians in us started to break through and we strangely started to crave cooler temperatures. So in ... read more

That's it. The last gong has gonged and I returned to real life after 10 days of vipassana. Such sweet golden sound... (though probably even the honking of a truck would have sounded lovely had it symboled the end of meditation sessions). All in all it was a very interesting experience, though it definitely wasn't life changing (one important thing I learned is that an hour is alot of time and that two hours is even more). I tried to think how to describe the atmosphere in the course, what it is most similar to in the outside world, and I came to the conclusion that it most resembles a group of hattifatteners (for those of you who haven't read Moomin books - go read them!). Everyone walks around expressionless (though after a couple of days ... read more