Day twentynine: Sleep

Tagged as: ashram, meditation, yoga

March brings with it my first day out­side the Ashram, with Lighthouse Beach in Kovalam cush­ion­ing my return to the real world. After 28 days of vedan­tic life per­fect­ly syn­chro­nized with the cal­en­dar dates of February, my month, the month of love, I’m now on bor­rowed time. My sec­ond-to-last day in India is the begin­ning of the end — and of a new beginning.

Our hotel room was com­fy and unbe­liev­ably cheap.

8:00 a.m. Last night I fell asleep to buzzbuzzing mos­qui­toes and this morn­ing I wake up to wish­wash­ing waves, slow­ly, reluc­tant­ly, unsure when or how I’d like to start this new day, month, life. Corinne’s not here; through the cob­webs of drowsi­ness, I vague­ly recall see­ing her tip­toe out of our room.

I fall back asleep.

10:00 a.m. Coffee and Salman Rushdie. Corinne appears to hand me my break­fast (a banana wrapped in a news­pa­per — yum­my) and says to meet her on the beach when I’m ready. After upload­ing some pho­tos from my phone, I trudge back to my room and prompt­ly fall asleep.

1:00 p.m. Now I’m up. I stroll down to the beach and find Corinne. Three chap­ters, two Diet Cokes, and lots of fruit lat­er, we’ve had enough sun, sug­ar and caf­feine to make up for all our days at the Ashram twice over. We get back to the room and prac­tice pranaya­ma and the 12 basic asanas (for­get­ting to do our sun salu­ta­tions). Shower, change, and off to din­ner at Fusion.

Corinne is sun-stroked but after she gets some calo­ries in her (cour­tesy of two glass­es of juice, a cook­ie, and some salt­ed cashews) we order some pas­ta Genovese (not bad) and some Fish Malabar Meen Curry (the best I’ve had on this trip). Completely full and ridicu­lous­ly sat­is­fied, we walk along the beach and sou­venir (win­dow) shop before mak­ing our way back to the hotel.

10:00 p.m. Once again the mos­qui­toes buzz between me and a good night’s sleep, so I spend many hours toss­ing, turn­ing, and upload­ing pho­tos from my phone.

I watch the beach over an inter-nap coffee.

Fruit ladies are very per­sis­tent, but the fruit is good.

The beach had more locals than tourists.

Local fish­er­men earn their keep.

An ele­phant munch­es on Corinne’s brains.

I hate key­cards! Modern hotels should bring back the bolt.

Our pal Nissan naps in the hotel hallway.

I watch her for hours as I try to sleep.

Corinne was on a mis­sion to tan.

We pre­fer this place to the more pop­u­lar Varkala.

We chose this place for dinner.

I won­der how old this guy is.

Corinne was tanned but bad­ly sun-stroked.

This juice did the trick.

Fish cur­ry din­ner was yummy.

India may not be the best place to have pas­ta, but it was OK.

I love this guy!

We avoid­ed the small white ele­phant in the room. :)

Corinne got this papi­er-mâché ele­phant for my parents.

We win­dow-shopped because most of what we liked was too large to carry.

DAY TWENTY NINE SNAPSHOTS • Click on each image for a larg­er view. 

Snapshots tak­en on my phone.