The Journey

Lunch was good but too spicy and after a couple of mouthfuls I set it aside. I didn’t want to drink more than one or two mouthfuls of water, this close to departure. We had been told that every four hours during the twelve hour journey we would stop for C & P (Chai & Pee). I would rather be hungry than suffer because of a full bladder.
The nine buses in the courtyard were ready to board. I scrambled for the nearest bathroom but it was just nerves.
“Get on the buses,” Pryan called out, clapping his hands.
I found my bus and climbed on board. Following Amma’s car, we left the Ashram, a convoy of nine buses. The coastal road was lined with the local villagers come to see Amma off on yet another tour.
The realization that I was travelling with one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time, brought tears to my eyes and it was a few moments before I could swallow again.
From my window seat in the second row of the bus, I concentrated on the world outside and did my best to resist the conversation attempts of the woman sitting next to me. Italian like me, we had bumped into each other at breakfast on my first day at Amritapuri,
“Oh we must sit together on the bus,” she had said. “Tell them when you register for the tour.” But I didn’t; I didn’t want to be tied down to anybody and when I registered I just said that I would like to sit at the front of the bus. Unbeknown to me though, she had requested that we sit together. And we were, at the beginning of this fabled journey, facing my first challenge.
“Eshmeralda,” she would say in her Neapolitan accent. “Open the window, it is hot. Eshmeralda, close the window, it is cold.” This was interspersed with repeated attempts to know all about my life. Whenever I could, I took refuge in my neck pillow. She wasn’t too bad though.

On the other hand, Nova and my family will be happy to know that the two seats across the aisle from me, are occupied by the bus doctors, a nice German couple.
We reached Cochin in just under four hours. It was very dusty and I reached for a dust mask, but took it off as soon as I’d put it on - it made my face too hot.
We stopped at Amma’s school on the outskirts of Cochin for our first C. & P. I found a loo, but I had drunk so little that I almost didn’t need it. When Chai arrived, I only took a small cup but did enjoy the banana fritters that were offered. Within twenty minutes we were on our way for the four hour stretch to the next stop, only at that stop there was dinner instead of Chai. Again, it was delicious but hot, as in spicy, and I had two Luna bars instead. I didn’t want to drink for fear of needing the bathroom long before the next stop – we still had four hours before reaching Talassery, then one hour on to Kannur. The whole day I had drunk less than half a litre of water and the doctor told me to make sure I’d drink the rest of the bottle when we got to our base, and to put electrolytes in the water.
Hot, sweaty and sticky, I climbed on the bus for the third time and settled down for the last stint on the road for the day. Dozing off as soon we drove on, I almost didn’t notice when we pulled into the courtyard of Amma’s school in Talassery. The school’s classrooms were our bedrooms for the next three days, and mine was next to the bathroom. I was the first of the eight women sharing the room to claim my spot on the floor. As a real estate agent in “real life”, my first priority was location, and I chose an area near the door that had two upturned desks that I thought would be very useful as “bedside cabinets”. With the yoga mat and the Thermarest mattress unrolled, I set about trying to fix my mosquito net. Before I knew it, one of the other women had a clothes line running across the room and she used that to fix her mosquito net. I was not close enough to do the same, but she did let me hang my towel on it. In the end I used the upturned desk legs for the top end of the net and draped the other end over my duffle at the foot of my “bed”, which, with the Thermarest, pillow and sleeping bag, looked quite cozy. After a refreshing bucket shower, I called it a night.

Well, there is a saying in Italian, which roughly translated goes like this: Between talking and doing, there is a sea. Lying on the stone floor, albeit with a yoga mat and mattress, was very different from writing about it from the comfort of my home. But I was here now, on a mattress so narrow that it could not quite take me, let alone Bruno, and somehow I had to make myself comfortable enough to sleep.
“Oh Lord,” I prayed. “Help me through this.”
I slept on and off until about six; then I got up and started writing. I’ve since had three cups of Chai with Chappati and Uppama for breakfast, a wheat and vegetable concoction.
In the afternoon we will go to Kannur for the beginning of Amma’s program and if you want to know what Amma’s programs are about, I suggest you rent the film "Darshan". It is a documentary about Amma, or, as she is known in the media, The Hugging Saint.
Well, I'd better go now, my feet are swollen and I need to move about a bit.
Until the next stop (if I’m still alive)!