Part 2 of “Get That Gecko Out Of My Room”

The sunrise from the car my first morning

Holy Cows outside of a market in Rishikesh

So far so good!!!!  It took about 20 hours to get from Amsterdam to Rishikesh, which included a 7 hour drive from the Delhi airport to Rishikesh Yog Peeth immediately after getting off the plane.  Upon arrival in my room, I was keenly aware that it was time for some Karma Yoga (in the form of cleaning).  So out into the wonderful world of shops, rich Indian culture, cow poop and flies to purchase the supplies I needed.  Good times.

Feeling some relief after cleaning, I started unpacking and thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to plug up my laptop so I can listen to music…well that resulted in two unfortunate events: one, I blew the electricity in my room; and two, on my way out of my door to admit my ridiculousness, a freakin’ gecko ran into my room (it turned white to match the white marble floors except for its little black eyes – you’re not fooling anyone, little gecko) and then it turned around and said to me: “Nice to meet you, we’ll be roommates for the next six weeks, chump.”  So, I now had two issues to discuss with the fine folks downstairs.  Getting the lights back on was a snap…getting the gecko out of the room turned into a small ordeal ending in me screaming (at a hushed level of course) and doing the “Please don’t crawl up my yoga pants” dance outside of my door (what is the point of that little flair at the bottom of yoga pants anyway?)  In any event, it was a lovely sight.

                                                                                                                                   

Why is this Part 2 of “Get That Gecko Out Of My Room?”  Well, last year my mom and I stayed in an amazing, old hotel outside of Jaipur and there was a gecko in the room when we arrived.  I was fine with it (so I said at the time) because the room was huge so I figured he’d go to his space and we’d go to ours.  My mother was having none of that and so began the first saga of GTGOOMR (I’ll spare you those hilarious details).  In retrospect, I was probably fine with it because my mother was there…. Part one of “Where’s My Mommy?”  We shall see.

Classes start tomorrow at 5:00am (not 6:00am) and with good reason - it is about 105 degrees here during the day!

Interesting aside if you have some extra time:

For those of you who have flown into the New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport before, you’ve probably come to expect the hectic scene one encounters upon exiting the airport.  Hundreds of cars (so it seems) coming to pick up family members, panhandlers looking to take your luggage to your taxi or at least help you get it in the trunk, and myriad taxi drivers looking for fares and picking up fares.  Although this can understandably be very overwhelming for some, I found it to be a fun, super-sensory experience.  Well imagine my surprise when I walked out of the terminal on Friday night and found a quiet, pristine setting of, what is in my memory: white marble, palm trees, and beautiful lighting.  Taxi drivers were lined up in a very orderly fashion, chatting it up - many of them in white uniforms, and most of them holding signs with the names of their fares…WTF happened!  I was just in Delhi last year.  Are you kidding me?  So it goes….