Oh my gods!

So, not that I'm turning hindu all of a sudden, but I think it's a rather awesome religion.

It's one of the worlds oldest religions and is completely non-organised and unofficial and is the predominant religion of the Indian sub-continent. It has, however no definitons and no founder between the many branches of hinduism practiced by over 900 million people in the region.

Do you ever have to que to go to church at home? No. that is just silly.

But you do have to frequently que to get into one of the thousands of temples that are spread across the land. From little concrete boxes with a poster of Vishnu to a 6 foot statue of Ganesh in ancient old heritage, UNESCO sites.

A simplified summary of the main themes of Hinduism, although very fuzzy edged, are:

Dharma - ethics/duties. Can be translated to "law" or "the teachings of the Buddha"

Samsāra - The ever continuing cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth

Karma - We all know karma, our action and subsequent reaction

Moksha - liberation from samsara, the release from a worldly existence

Yogas - of infinite practices from meditated hyperventilating through your nostrils to no less than athletics!

So although there are hundreds and hundreds of deities they are not actually "individual gods". They are, rather, different representations of particular aspects of the one god, the creator known as Brahman.

So here are a few of my favourites and the more well known ones.

The Three Infinities:

Brahma, who grew in a lotus of the naval of the sleeping Vishnu.

however, he is The Creator, and we can thank him for the daily alteration of day and night.

Vishnu is The Preserver and protector of creation, He is an emodiment of mercy and goodness. He also maintains the cosmic order of Dharma.

Shiva is The Destroyer and basically follows Brahma and Vishnu around destroying the earth which Brahma tirelessly recreates. He is responsible for both negative change such as death and destruction but also in the positive sense of new beginnings and shedding old habits. I like him, he's crazy.

Ganesh is the Remover of All Obstacles and lord of existing beings. Shiva, creator or, you could say, father, cut off his head after Ganesh forbade him entry to see Parvati, one of Shiva's lady friends. He later replaced ganesh's head with an elephant head as the was the only thing available!

Goddess Sarasvati is the wife or Consort of Brahma and possesses the powers of speech, wisdom and learning. She has four hands representing four aspects of human personality in learning; mind, intellect, alertness and ego.

Lakshmi is the Consort of Lord Vishnu and is the goddess of Wealth, purity, chastity and generosity. Many businesses in India you will see ("Lakshmi Saris - best material in town!" etc) are named after Lakshmi for good luck.

Kerala continued

So, after a long time with no blog activity it's pretty damn daunting to try and catch up but I will try in dribs and drabs!
I will start where i left off. In the most affluent, most highly educated and most successful communist state in India: Kerala.
I think the backwaters is in that book "1001 things to see and do before you die" or something along those lines. So of course we did. We stayed around just long enough to do the touristy things that books tell you are nice and touristy. Sometimes when travelling you do get drawn into the tourist traps because, even if you're a self catagorised "traveller" or "backpacker" who wears local clothing and only eats in the small back alley cheap places where no-one speaks a word of English... You are really just a glorified tourist. That is how the locals do, and always will, see a foreigner. Also, as we found in Tamil Nadu, a neighbouring state of Kerala, the off-beaten track isn't always so great. In fact, sometimes travelling in these less-frequented-by-tourist-places makes you want to hit the vacant faced tamil bus conducter who has just pushed you off his bus because your bag is too big.

So Kerala is nice and touristy.
So are the backwaters. Although the ethnic, serene and sunny canals peppered with palm trees and old leathery fishermen are no less than breath-takingly idylic, I, personally, found it difficult to ignore all the other pink faced, cannon weilding "travellers" gliding quietly past you. All of us trying, almost viciously, to imagine we are the only foreigners to have found this exotic and undiscovered land.
The locals think it's funny, to them the backwaters are just their neighbourhoods. the canals their streets and the canoes their bicycles. It's probably the equivalent of a whole load of strange foreigners cruising down the back streets of Leith on the handlebars of some-ones bike.

The tourism was different, it definately doesn't cater to budget backpackers and many people we met there were older, more affluent travellers who hired private drivers. It's hard to budget. I felt kind of out of place, coming from Om Beach in Gokarna with my baby dreadlocks and Aladin pants. It was a bit of a culture shock after months and months of living in the fake little hippy enclaves full of djembi drums, old dutch men/rastafariens, plastic seated cafe huts and fried rice for 50p.
In kerala it was either the pretty basic dhabas or the strictly for tourist places with, granted, awesome food and atmosphere but a rather prestigious, colonial feel where the bow tie clad waiters, calling everyone "madam" and "sir" (I am not a madam!) were so intensely focused on looking posh it took several attempts before they saw you were waving.
It was beautiful and very easy to travel in Kerala but I've never felt more like a "tourist".
Bite size chunks of their culture are whitled down and served on overly authentic platters. The Kathakali dance, one of the major attractions in Kerala and a deeply imbedded part of the culture and religion is shortened from a deeply symbolic, 12 hour religious ritual - usually reserved for hindu festivals - to a half hour, visually pleasing dancy thing where all we really understand is the shiny costumes and crazy face paints.

whatever, it was pretty awesome and was a nice little rest before the crazy stress inducing adventures to follow... dot dot dot

My spots!

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My new stick

I'm getting a bit over excited about this but I just bought this stick today and it's amazing.
Basically it's a tribal instrument from the Uttar Pradesh region up North and it's a hollow bamboo stick, about one meter long.
You swing it with an intricate twist of your hand and it makes the most beautiful whistling sound that varies by how fast and in which direction you swing it in.
It's called a wind flute and I'm going to attempt to travel to the other end of india with it in my guitar case.

Oh yeah, and my guitar, it's not so happy.
It was already pretty crappy, i bought it second hand from a guy in Macleod Ganj but I'm going to try and make it back to his shop before I leave india and be like "cheeers, here's your guitar back, sorry about the various scratches, dents and mysterious cracks..."

It's all music to my ears.

Oh, I'm also pretty stoked right now as a just had 2 pints of beer out of a really nice and stylish teapot.
I will explain...



later.

Kerala - South India

So yesterday I was just wandering around town, had walked up Rose street and was walking down Princes street parallel to it when I met a guy from Livingston.
Tonight we're going to go for dinner on Napier street down Elphinstone road.

Guess where I am.
It's not Edinburgh, believe it or not.
Nope, not even Scotland.

The Scots obviously got around a bit...





Anyway, Kerala is beautiful. A bit odd, it seems to be a melting pot of the world...


More to add!

Karnataka

The view of Hampi from the Hanuman temple
Hanuman monkey temple
Hampi main temple
The blessing elephant hard at work
My little slice of paradise - Om Beach, Karnataka
A parked cow
Calum enjoying the local food
Boats are the way to go
Another parked cow... on a beach
My last few miles through Goa
City beach - Gokarna, Karnataka

Culture shock *Warning - rant*

Gone are my beach bum days.

So me and Calum left the surreal dali-esque landscape and Indian hut cafes of Hampi and, after some poking about with our railway bookings managed to get trains all the way to Kochin, Kerala, with a day in Bangalore.
Well, I've been mostly spending my time on beaches and in villages and small towns for possibly too long and when I arrived in the technological and student capital of India (25% of Bangalores population are students!) I felt very out of place.
It was all so modern, women were walking around in jeans and smoking (blasphemy) and there were sidewalks and traffic lights!!!
McDonalds and subway was everywhere and the price you would pay for a full meal and chai up north was just enough to get you a Grande Latte in Coffee Day (ah but real coffee is amazing!)
The real shock for me though was when we decided to go to the mall for the sole purpose of buying an i-pod. I had almost been going crazy since me and my i-shuffle parted ways and decided something had to be done about the lack of music in my life. Also, at least the taxes on i-pods here are less than home!
I find myself hating shopping centers though. The shiny, clean, perfection of everything makes me feel inferior and insignificant, advertisements for perfect skin, the latest model of I-don't-even-care and skinny mannequins sporting what to be seen in this season makes me feel depressed and self-conscious and everywhere there's a subliminal message of "buy, buy, buy".

Now this all sounds a bit strong and pessimistic seeing as in my younger days I spent plleeenty of time in a shopping center (and not even a very good one!) after all, they are handy things sometimes. If you need a new i-pod for example. But i guess my perception has changed slightly in the last 3 months of travel... Don't ask me how yet, I doubt I have enough insight to answer truthfully but in my introspective moments it is something I shall be thinking about!
Anyway, I split the cost of a new shiny i-pod with Calum so really, I'm being a little hypocritical When I say I'm so against consumerism. I'm a westerner, I grew up with the consumer root firm within me (well, maybe not so much as some people in my society I dare to say and hope is true) every advert we see on TV, in magazines, on posters, etc, hits home to our sub-conscious minds that if we were skinnier, more tanned, had more money, shopped in monsoon and owned the new nokia model that can do almost everything except perhaps make phone calls, our lives would be perfect. Just like the model we see plastered up the billboard along the grey, monotonous streets where faceless people trudge along in their joyless little bubbles of imperfection.

bullshit!!!!
Anyone who can think for themselves are beautiful in my eyes.




*Ahem*
With my mind going off the track of what I originally intended to write in my blog I may end this post quite soon or just surrender completely to the ramble/rant dialogue that seems to pour so freely through my fingers...
Whatever, if I intended to write something perfectly formed and meticulously edited I don't think I'd ever have the energy or spirit to approach a keyboard. I'm also not asking anyone to read my rambles. They're just here because I enjoy forming my thoughts into words sometimes. Why not?