August 1st 2008, Gokulam, India

Today was a great day. It is a new moon today, which enabled me to sleep in a bit. Then got up did my pranayama practice and had a leisrely breakfast. I moved to my new house yesterday. I am not so find of this house for 2 reasons. 1. My last apartment was really big and nice even with its electricity problems it was still quite nice. This place in in a family's home which lacks privacy and the comforts of walking around in a tank top in the peak of summer in India. Oh well, it is only for 2 weeks so I can survive and it is cheap, $71 for 2 weeks. Then I move into a nicer place with internet and more privacy. So I am happy.

Thomas, a lovely fellow from Nottingham, had the idea of walking around the lake in Mysore today. It was a beautiful day, cloudy with patches of blue sky. Not raining though which it has been doing quite a lot this last 10 days or so. We headed out around 10:30 and walked until 3. It was so nice just to explore.

We stopped for lunch at a wonderful place called the Green Hotel. People say it is expensive, and it is more expensive then other places but the food is simply fantastic. We had Palak curry, dal Palak (palak is spinach), roasted veggie paneer (divine), aloo parath (potato chipati), lime soda (soda water with fresh lime), Briaini and a couple of other things that were equally good. I just can't remember the names. The food is so good here. I have not gotten sick either. I am sure it will happen at some point. It happens to everyone. So far so good for me though.

The Green Hotel is a really nice place, it is a converted palace and all the proceedes go to charity. They are also working to help the plight of the Untouchables here in india. The Hotel trains them new skills like cooking, which is kind of taboo for an Indian to eat food prepared by this caste of people. They are trying to show that they can be trained to do other jobs and nothing bad will happen. The hotel is scheduled to open a coffee shop completely run buy those who were formerly street cleaners. If you are unfamiliar of the plight of these people read Ghandi's Autobiography. It was what was his main objective to change. Still 50 years later it is a problem but there are many groups slowly making progress. Anyway, this hotel is one place doing so. They employ and train them and then put them to work.

The hotel also uses only locally grown fruit and produce and all of the china is made locally too. It is a cool place that I like to go to because I believe that they are at least trying to make changes on how things are done here.

After lunch we went started to walk back to Gokulam. With Thomas as our guide we felt we were in good hands but after a few kilometers we all felt that we were heading in the wrong direction. Except thomas, of course. Finally, Lise asked a passing rickshaw driver the way and we realized that we were quite far away. We had to back track a fair bit. Thomas was convinced that he was going the right way so we just took the leading job out of his hands. We walked through a large field to head back and there were cows there. There are cows everywhere here but today one in particular started to run towards us. Jill totally ran behind me. I said thanks for putting me in front. It was funny, her reaction. It is a bit daunting when a huge cow with horns starts charging you. I don't blame her at all. She was just quicker then me.

We asked another woman who did not speak any English, except to say "go straight" and waved us forward. After about an hour of this, yes we were an hour out of the way our dogs were barking. So we hailed a rickshaw. It cost about $0.70 to get back to Gokulam and it was money well spent.

Then we went over to a friend's place had a light snack for dinner and watched a movie. It is the first TV or video I have watched since being in India. It was nice as I love movies. The movie was "Children of Men". It was very strange and dark but I liked it, I think. I am still pondering that.

I am happily off to bed right now, so very sleepy. It was a great day. I need to walk more often like that. It makes for such a great adventure.