my yoga journey: 13 Dec 08: Good-bye Mysore, Hello Lonavla

My trip from Mysore to Lonavla was smooth. The sacrifice was a good night’s sleep because I left Mysore just after midnight. 3 hours by car to Bangalore airport, 1¼ hour by plane to Pune, followed by an hour on the local train to Lonavla.

There was the usual confusion at the train station. After meeting my friend Don, we lined up at the reservations counter, with a sleeping man lying smack across the middle of the queue. He was all wrapped up in a blanket, with his face covered. At one point, he woke up, looked around at all of us then promptly went back to sleep. In typical Indian fashion, the guy at the counter told us, ‘No reservations possible’. Of course we found out later that other people managed to get reserved seats.

After beating away blatant queue-cutters (Don told one guy off but was completely ignored), we got normal tickets without reservations. The next task was to find out what time and which platform the train would be leaving from. Pune station did not have boards showing arrival and departure information. And even if it did, the information would probably be incorrect. Since Indian trains are invariably late and you always get a different answer every time you ask, we asked several people before confirming we had the right platform and train. Not surprisingly, the platform was different from what the guy at the counter told us. And the train was fifteen minutes late.

Getting a seat on the train was another challenge. It was an over-nighter from Hyderbad, so it was packed with people. Plus we were both laden with backpacks, yoga mats and smaller daypacks. So, giving a little leeway to the elderly, we pushed our way onto the train. It turned out ok in the end as enough people got off at Pune to leave the train comfortably packed.

Despite the chaos and having to ignore the many beggars, I love Indian trains. You see all sorts of people on it and vendors sell everything from chai to veg omelettes to key-chains and those sticky spiderman toys being sold outside Orchard MRT.

After getting off at Lonavla, we followed the locals taking the shortcut to awaiting rickshaws (If you look in the middle of the attached picture, you can see people walking where we did). We climbed down from the platform to cut across the train tracks, rather than using the overhead bridge. The Singaporean in me naturally balked at ‘breaking the rules’, expecting someone to stop me. I have to revert when I go home, if not sure ‘kenna’ fined, or caned.

Lonavla auto drivers are evil compared to those in Mysore. Use of the meter is non-existent and they charge exorbitant prices. Even if you walk away, they don’t care. The amount of money is nominal, it’s their attitude that annoys me.

Lonavla is a small Indian town. It reminds me of what Mysore would have been like years ago. It’s supposed to be a weekend getaway for people living in Mumbai. From what I’ve seen of the noisy, ugly town, I have no idea why. One attraction could be the ‘chikki’, the local sweet that Lonavla seems to be famous for. Every other shop is a chikki shop. Chikki can be soft or hard and it comes in all sorts of flavours – chocolate, coconut, mango etc. The traditional one is with groundnuts. The common denominating factor is that it’s usually way too sweet. The only thing I will eat is fudge from Cooper’s, especially their chocolate almond fudge. People (mainly from out of town) line up even before the shop opens – reminds me of the doughnut queues in Singapore.

The only thing I have seen catering to Westerners is a Coffee Day which has opened up in the past year. It remains very empty compared to the local restaurants which are packed with people. There are no supermarkets or ice-cream parlours … yet. I only go into town to get fruit and other incidentals. As soon as I get in, I want to escape back to the relative quiet of the yoga institute.

One positive thing about town is my fruit man. His fruit is very fresh (a rarity here) and he doesn’t offload over-ripe fruit onto us. He inspects each fruit first and is very specific in asking when we are going to eat it (today or tomorrow?) and whether we want small, medium or large oranges. The other day he didn’t have any Fuji apples so he got them off his neighbour. He was not pleased because the apples were sub-standard; he actually rejected almost half of them. The guy may be my only favourite man in Lonavla town. I miss my Mysore men.

The institute itself has a Yogic hospital with a Naturopathy and Ayurvedic centre. My coursemates are going crazy getting treatments, from massages to facial mud packs to getting herbal oils dripped onto their foreheads and into their ears. The other day at least five people came to class with their ears stuffed up with cotton wool. Today, one wore sunglasses until it got too dark for her to see anything.

There are forty-one of us on the course and like Mysore, it’s truly international.

We’ve got Americans, Canadians, Australians, Ukrainians, Israelis, French, Indians, English, Portuguese, a German, a Korean, an Austrian, a mainland Chinese, a Filipino, a Scot.

United Colours of Benetton

The only thing that Mysore had a lot of which is lacking here are Hispanics. Quite a few of my coursemates are older too which is a nice change to the youngsters in Mysore. Mr Uppal, an Indian man in his 70s, has been Tiwariji’s student since 1970.

The Scot asked a wee question the other day. The lecturer’s response … blank face followed by, ‘I do not understand’. The reverse is true. Blank foreign faces when the lecturers speak super-fast with thick Indian accents. It’s hilarious for me because I understand both sides most of the time. Interesting how a Ukrainian had to ‘translate’ a question from an Aussie for my Indian teacher. All were speaking English mind you.

Three of my coursemates attracted a lot of attention on the train to Pune. They were a blonde Canadian lady, a Filipino guy with long hair and whiskers (looking very Mexican) and a black British lady with her hair in braids. If I had been there, we could have posed for a United Colours of Benetton poster.

One thing I’ve loved about my time in India is meeting such diverse people. It’s been educational to see what other kind of people that exist in this world. Just when you think you’ve seen them all, someone different pops up. There are many offbeat weirdos but I stay away from them. The people I’ve gravitated towards have a few things in common – a largely sensible outlook towards life and a passion for food. Coincidentally, they all seem to own cameras. Perfect! You wouldn’t see any of these pictures otherwise.