Other than having to sit next to a faulty (stinking) toilet from New York to Dubai, the flight was good. I did think about my bed a few times. I’ve hardly left but I miss it already.
When we touched down in Trivandrum it was three-forty in the morning. I filled out the landing card, made my way to Immigration and was quickly waved through. My driver was waiting outside holding a piece of paper with my name neatly printed on it and I quickly walked over to him.
On the way to the car I stopped at a kiosk and bought a bottle of water. Mohammed (the driver)waited for me; then we walked to the car together. We hadn’t gone far before I realized that Mohammed was up to the job. He knew the width of his car and the width of the road, and even if only by an inch, he avoided the oncoming traffic. He also avoided running over any of the pedestrians that kept cropping up on the side of the road. I was so impressed with his driving abilities that I leant back and let the sound of the windscreen wipers lull me to sleep. Even the occasional dives into foot deep puddles did not completely wake me up.
We made good time and covered the sixty miles to Amritapuri in less than three hours! When we drove through the Ashram gates at six o’clock in the morning, it was still dark. White clad visitors and ashramites alike were coming out of the Temple after morning chanting.
The International office was still closed and so I could not check in but I was assigned a temporary room from the Indian office.
“But you must go and register at ten o’clock,” the young Indian man said, as he handed me a card with the room number. Mohammed helped me with the luggage, then left.
The Ashram was exactly as I remembered it from my first visit in August 2006. And my reaction was the same: What am I doing here? I want my husband, I want my children. And there lies the crux of the matter; I am a wife, a mother and a seeker. I am all three, but right now, without my family, I feel like an orphan.
I’m so glad that Bruno came with me.
By Midday I moved to a more permanent room on the ninth floor with views of the backwaters and from the landing I can see the Arabian Sea a few hundred yards away.
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Silvia, my roommate is a sweet girl from Barcelona, Spain. She has been traveling around India by herself for three months. She doesn’t speak much English, but in Spanish she is a philologist.
A pigeon woke me up early this morning. After a while of trying to ignore his wild flapping, I got up to chase it away and found him pooing in the sink and by the look of things, he was suffering from a bad case of Delhi Belly.
“Oh sh…t! Silvia…Silvia,” I called.
“Que, what?” she murmured half asleep.
“There is a pigeon and he’s done a poo in the sink.”
“Ah, la paloma,” she laughed, and after chasing the paloma away, she cleaned the sink. I like Silvia.
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I am going to have to buy a smaller suitcase today. The one I have is too big and too heavy with things that I will not need until we get to Calcutta at the end of March. And as I have to carry everything myself, I am told up to four flights of stairs at each of the stops, I am rethinking about what I really need.
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While waiting for the shop where I could buy a duffle bag to open, I went to a tea shop just outside the Ashram, where over a cup of Masala Chai I talked to Gill from Switzerland. He is spending six months in India as a volunteer, teaching.
I have another roommate, her name is Mary and she is Irish. Like Silvia she also traveling around India by herself. She arrived this afternoon and she has taken the bed above mine. I know that my son Robert will be jealous to know that I sleep in a bunk bed.
I have to go now and repack my bags. We leave very early the day after tomorrow, but the bedrolls and larger bags are being loaded onto the buses this afternoon.
Our first stop will be Kannur, North Kerala, a twelve-hour bus drive from Amritapuri.
I have to write online and there are people waiting to use the computer after me, so don’t be too surprised if the writing is not very good as I have to be quick.
Ok, that’s it for now. Goodbye from Amritapuri.
Esmeralda
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