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One month until my birthday! I've certainly been faced with the challenge to grow gracefully here in India. I'm starting to warm up to her as I realize that it's just not going to be an easy trip. She's going to chew me up and spit me out as something new. No exaggeration, every single day has been a new adventure. It's still an awesome experience though- I wake up to the Ganga, food costs less than $1 most days, I've got a plethora of good friends...

Rishikesh is a dry town and meat free. Orion and I hadn't even noticed that until someone mentioned it. We so quickly had taken it for granted that we could walk into any spot and have a sober conversation or order almost anything on the menu and get it vegan. It's been wonderful.

So after all my financial issues with getting robbed, India decided to change their currency overnight. The goal is to get rid of "black money", but the process is far from seamless. We woke up one morning to find that our money was essentially just paper and that all ATMs and money changers would be closed until the new currency arrived. Figures that I western unioned myself money right before this happened and now I can't pick it up. Long story short, even if I had my ATM card right now, we have almost no cash. Enough to eat thali (traditional lunch with refills) once or twice a day for another day. Everything else has to be done on a tab or with a bargain. So no meeting people for tea, shopping, mailing letters... just a lot of talking, reading, writing and reflecting by the Ganga.

It's all a huge lesson for me with money. I was raised to believe that without it I'd die. The stuff in between was short and irrelevant, because my beliefs now have me panicking that I'm going to starve to death and die in the gutter. Reality is, of course, so far from that. It's a big process of trusting the universe to provide and to not just let me die. Hard as hell, but I'm doing okay most of the day.

Before this money stuff went down Orion and I participated in a super intense and fun Sunday. Our new friends Natali and Mango host Rebirthing every Sunday morning and a Cacao dance ceremony each night. We did both. I love dancing! It's terrifying and most of the time I feel awkward in my body and pretty inhibited with my movements, but when I find the space to let loose I love it! Even Orion danced. And we both danced with other human beings, a huge step for us each.

The night left us vibrant and buzzing and expansive, so the entropy of coming back to "normal" the next day felt like a jolting contraction. All is well though, just more lessons. We made some amazing friends in the process as well.

I got a new journal and have been writing every day. When something comes into my monkey mind and tries to steal the show I get it on paper ASAP and find that it has so little to do with the current situation and more to do with a long time cycle of thoughts I've adopted. Most of them are pretty self defeating and ugly.

We have also both received kambo treatments (google it, and don't worry mom) and visited a Vedic astrologer. The dude was a wizard! He reads your charts and just spouts out truths about your life and then shares some of what is to come. It's an odd thing to hear the future but I believe in free will and that I can still shape it. The kambo guy has become a great friend too.

Well, time to go find something else to do for free. While the USA is rioting Trump's election, India is trying to figure out how to buy food.

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Photos

Kambo marks
Almost gone now

Drinking cow
She drinks for about an hour at a time