Rishikesh yahoo! yoga

---

eeeeek! We really love this place we want to pinch ourselves! Yesterday we finally arrived in Rishikesh, which is a few hours north of Delhi. We saved ourselves the city adventure and took the train straight here. "straight here" wasn't so fast that's forsure. After a freezing cold night on the train, and 10 young loud Indian boys shouting, laughing and smoking in our sleeping faces all night we arrived to the heart beat of yoga.

The Ganga here is something beautiful. It's clear blue and there's rapids and it reminds me of the rivers at home in Canada. Almost so much as we want to go for a swim (maybe only Jen...) There's cool pedetrian suspension bridges that seperate us from the rest of the town. This is another holy city, it's allot like Varanassi but much cleaner, but even still with the "stupid hippies" (no offence) still walking barefoot.

Yoga classes commenced today, 4 hours of it to be exact! How wonderful is that. We have two very different and amazing teachers. One of the classes is at the Shivananda Ashram, they have a beautiful yoga room that overlooks the Ganga. Chanting, and incense waft in throughout the class as my instructor pulls and pushes me in the right alignment- and YES I am going to be able to finally do a head stand. Allot of asanas that didn't feel right at home are feeling great here, just being moved in the right guidance. a good spiritual teacher-this is key to success.

We had our first "freak experience" today! I think this guy was actually schizophrenic more than anything. He asked me if I wanted to see a "love heart" (I thought at first he said "love hug" and I'm thinking nooooo way - right after I was made VERY uncomfortable having my picture taken "slyly" by some Indian men who didn't even ask if it was okay...this picture thing is an everyday occurance- I am famous or something! I actually don't even like it because I think it's like "look at the foreigner, cool, look at it, it has fair skin" (don't mean to offend but this is how I feel) love heart, that's where I was. This crazy Simon (his name was Simon Dew from australia and looked exactly like Simon Bew-it's his evil twin- for those of you who know who he is) proceeded to show me his "love heart" blister he apparently received from beating up some guy who "let's just say gives drugs to girls and fucks them" hmmmm. His story was weird from the begining! Anyways, our conclusion is he has no money and so got kicked out of the restaurant we were at while waving his hands in the air telling us they won't serve him because he practices witchcraft - and then said "deport me"! Wow please...you had to have been there.

After this event we were blessed by a snake charmer with TWO snakes! He played a beautiful flute and the cobra and another snake wrapped through his arms and flute and around his neck. I have some really great pictures of this whole experience! I proceeded to approach him after his show "you want to see snake, it doesn't bite" ummmm no thanks! I ended up buying a beautiful silver earing like the tear of Shiva he banged out himself-I am collecting jewellery with a story-so far I'm doing pretty good I'm going to have to send stuff home soon!

our health is much better. thank you for keeping us in your prayers. i hear there's tons of snow back in those beautiful mountains. so keep getting face shots for the ones we aren't able to have this winter!
namaste~tashidelek

---