Happy Krishnas

Before going to Mysore we had a little stop in a mountain city called Ooty, as we met some people who suggested us to see the place.
Ooty is a rural village, plunged in nature, which revealed to be a very cold place, and we didn't expect it, of course...we had to wear very heavy clothes and the temperatures were around 0 to 5 degrees.
Nevertheless, Ooty was a very nice place to stop for a couple of days.
This is one of the many temples in the village, showing many hindi deities all next to each other.


The landscapes were nice and we wandered around the city eating kilograms of homemade chocolate, the speciality of Ooty...
After freezing for 3 nights, we decided to move on to Mysore, though.

This is the outside of the very famous Maharaja's Palace of Mysore, residence for the maharajas in Mysore. Unluckily, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the palace.
The palace is of pretty recent construction, which took place about 100 years ago. The inside is shining of gold and marbel, very luxurious and astonishing.
There are many places and buildings to see in Mysore, but the ones which were most charming to us are not touristic attractions.

Two guys took us with their rickshaw to the old town to show us handcrafts of Mysore.

This place is a bidi (indian cigarettes) factory. Bidis are rolled in leaves, every single one is made by hand and one employer is able to produce about 4 thousand cigarettes a day.
The Indians love their bidis: they are cheap, healthier than normal cigarettes and the fabrication produces many working places. That's why our guide called this cigarettes "a gift from God for the Indians".

Mysore is also known for its wood works. Besides many furniture factories, wood is used also for art. This man was creating pictures out of several species of wood, putting them together like in a puzzle. The result was very surprising!
The picture you see contains no colour, nor any kind of paint, it's entirely made out of wood.






Another fascinating place in Mysore is the Devaraja's market.
Once you enter it you get blinded by beautiful colours and guided from one sweet smell to the other.

This powder colours can be used as body painting, cloth painting or simply on paper...
The Indians use this colours to paint their forhead, as ornament, for religious purposes and many other unknown aims.
We loved them and, obviously, we made each other the same present for Christmas ;)



The fruit and the flower part of the market....
Flowers are used as hair decoration for women and to produce oils (for perfumes, massage, as anti-mosquito...or for getting high- you could find pure marijuana oil..just in case you wanted, of course ;)


From there only one smell could get even better: sweeeeeeeeets!

This brick-looking things are sweets.. very very sweet. They mostly contain brown sugar and coconut.














Unexpected, Christmas came by...also here, in India. We did our best to maintain some traditions from home, as you can see. There were presents, the chrismas tree, a big dinner...and a big food intoxication for Filippo...:(
Luckily it's over now. Tomorrow we move on from Mysore to a place in the south of Bangalore - we will try to find an Ashram, which our beloved yoga teacher Sajee suggested us ;)

10 things to do before you die...

We had a long trip from magical Hampi to Kerala. One Rikshaw, two trains, one ferry...after 30 hours we arrived in Cochin and setteled down in Fort Cochin, a little island. The trip wasn't too tiring, though. We had sleeper places in the train (as shown in the picture) and some nice views during the frequent stops.










Cochin had the first communist governement in India, which made a big revolution, leaving back educated, friendly people and very few poor.
It was very surprising at first sight to see Che Guevara's face in India.









Kerala is also famous for its spicy, rich kitchen...









...so Karolina decided to learn how to prepare some of its specialities. Here trying to turn a dosa (which was delicious, although bad shaped)


...After a couple of days we realized that the city was actually becoming very boring, not much to see, and even no places to go out to eat.

But there were some highlights, here the first..


This guy, sitting in the street, asked us 50 Rupees (80 cents), to hypnotize :) this two cobras with his flute. This seemed to be his job, as he couldn't walk properly. We asked him if he was ever bitten by the snakes and he answered: "Yes, but put ayurvedic medicament, no problem!", and he showed us the scars on his hands. He also let us sit next to the cobras, but only one of us dared...







The other highlight and the actual reason for which we stayed one week in Cochin was an incredible Yoga course. Our Guru, Sajee, impressed us with his knowledge, good sense of humour and lifestyle. Not to forget: his leg behind his head while standing on the other...and smiling :) The course was a combination of meditation, pranayama and basic yoga postures. But basic in India is a bit different...

By now Filippo can do the scorpion without Sajee behind him. We made a big phisical progress and enjoyed a lot.

On our last day in the city, we went on an excursion that the Lonely Planet guide sets in the top 10 list of the "things to do before you die" : The Kerala Backwaters.
Starting on a houseboat, we discovered the bigger canals...

We saw the work of the locals, like brick making, fishing, collecting grass for building houses, making local beer from palm trees (which we bought and we 're going to drink tonight, next to the fish straight out of the sea....mmmmmm)















In the middle of the excursion we had delicious Keralan lunch, including pineapple curry - heaven in the mouth. All served on banana tree leaves.

Then (after a short swim) we changed to a smaller boat and continued our trip through tighter canals. The nature there is phantastic and wild. See paradise?...Kerala!




















Tomorrow we leave to Mysore, see you from there...

Holy Hampi

Hampi, our first holy city and holy experience, no alcohol and no meat for 7 days.
Hampi is a heritage city, protected by the Unesco. The city is an incredible mix of street life, cow shit and beautiful, very very old monuments, most of them discovered under the ground 2 centuries ago.
We took off on bikes to discover all those temples and statues, and here some impressions:



this used to be the public bath...












Krishna Temple...












...and Queen's Bath.












In Hampi we were all the time surrounded by children..every child is attracted and fascinated by western (white) people. They asked us for every kind of things, like for a school pen, for buying their stickers of indian divinities or a book guide of the city, or simply they wanted to appear in one of our photos-shake our hand...

school pen action...












posing for photo action...












being friends. (He' s not a child:)


















Our guesthouse was really nice, besides one fact. A cute and charming little girl used to wake us up every morning at 7, crying, screaming, laughing, screaming... Never seen such a spoiled and such a sweet child. what a combination...?!













One of the most beautiful, freaky and "i don' t want to go away from this place" temple we saw is Hanuman Temple, dedicated -of course- to Hanuman, the monkey god.
To reach this place we had to take one of this strange boats..













Caronte...










During the route we saw a lot of hidden temples and statues, that fascinated us...

(Where do all this stones come from?)



Shiva's symbol.













Then we had to follow a woman, who was going to work - she led us through plantations and fields. Just beautiful!

mmmmmmm....












So we reached Hanuman Temple, after a long long stair way.
Of course this holy place is full of monkeys, that are very used to people...

Tanja has been attacked, and Filippo didn't want to go away from there anymore...









What about food? Here a sample of breakfast and the way of eating it.

hot, spicy and full of oil... eaten only with the right hand (the left you use instead of toilet paper).
And for the end some other nice scenes of Hampi. Tomorrow we go to Cochin (and we will not arrive tomorrow, oh no...)

Holiday from holidays

Goa...we arrived in there, happy about living at the seaside, but what we found was much more comfortable, than we could have had expected. Arambol looks a bit like a hippie commune, western hippies, of course. Filippo found a sitar teacher in the first days and so we decided to stay some longer in this place. The stress from the travels before disappeared very fast - Goa is specialized for making life comfortable to tourists. A bit like any western seaside, maybe, but much more beautiful and calm (shanthi shanthi). Just behind our guest house the magic park (palm park in which they make yoga& meditation sessions, etc.).

Prem (the sitar teacher), his brother Praveen (tabla teacher) and Alpesh (our spiritual guide ;) spent with us every day, telling thousand of stories ( all with a moral or at least funny), cooking with us (we made chapati).


Here we present you proudly Prem:








And in this picture you see Praveen (left) and Alpesh (meditating) in one of the often organized jam sessions at sunset on the beach.





















We found an incredible place...behind big rocks, on which Filippo (which appeared to be a reincarnation of a monkey) went to meditate...

...the sweet lake!

The sweet lake is located between the mountains and 10 meters from the sea.



We found by chance a "mud river" walking through the wood behind the lake, which apparently is an attraction for many Indians and foreigners because of the particular mud you find there. Everybody goes there to cover his body with the mud... they say it' s very healthy..
We tried!
The skin was like baby skin afterwards.


















Besides bathing in the sea and in the lake, we spent most of our time in the beautiful "german bakery", a very nice bar at the beach... we enjoyed our free time and had much fun with the waiters :). On Saturday we went to Anjuna's night market - a very colorful place with beautiful stands...



















and live music (this is a Punjabi group).
In Arambol we met Tanja, a very nice girl from Russia, who is traveling with us for some days now.
In the moment we are in Hampi and we enjoy a lot. Every day we take many pictures, so the next blog entry is to be expected soon.

P.S. Terrorism attacks didn't effect us.
P.P.S. It's 35 degrees, sunny and the moon smiles at night.