First week in India!

Hari Om!

This has been an awesome week! My first morning in Mumbai, I walked outside and the first thing I saw was a cow in the middle of the street :) I went to Elephanta Caves, which is an island off the coast of Mumbai with lots of stone carvings in the caves. There were lots of monkeys on the island, and they were very cute, but kind of crazy. One of them ran up to a lady, jumped towards her, and grabbed a bottle of soda out of her hands. The monkey ran off a little ways, opened the lid, used his foot to prop up the bottle, and drank the soda! It was a strange sight.

It was a 5 hour bus ride to the city where I am doing my yoga teacher program. On the bus on the way to Nashik I saw lots of random things, like houses made completely from straw, and more houses made from sticks (and yes, there are brick houses too, hehe). I saw guys peeing in the streets, little kids staring at me from other cars passing by, and lots of animals everywhere!

In Nashik I am staying at Yoga Vidya Dham, which is an Ashram in the countryside. It's very peaceful there, and it's a nice break from my normal life and from the hectic Indian cities. I get to see the sunrise and sunset every day, and the stars are out in the sky when I wake up and when I eat dinner! The landscape reminds me a little bit of Utah, with mountains that are rounded instead of jagged, like in Central and Southern Utah.

There are lots of snakes here, and I was so excited to find out that there are cobras here! (If we see one we just tell the teachers and they will catch them and release them far away). I saw one snake the second day here, but it was just a non-poisonous one. I also saw a scorpion, toads, ants that are so big they're scary, and a tree full of lizards! Yesterday during class, someone ran into the room, telling the teacher "snake!!!" So our teacher sprinted out of class and went to catch it. When he came back to class he was carrying a jar with a COBRA in it!!! I was so excited that I got to see a cobra!!! It didn't have it's hood raised because it had calmed down, but it was cool. He released it that night, 30 miles away.

We completed our first yoga exam yesterday as well. I think it went great, and I am so happy I'm here. I'm having a little bit of a hard time because I got a hairline fracture in my wrist about 3 days before coming to India... It's hurting pretty badly. But I've got ointment for it and I'm going to find a splint for it today :D

Tomorrow is the Festival of Colors (Holi, the biggest festival in India) so I'm excited for that!
So, today was just a quick post... I wanted to let everyone know that things are going well! I'm sending my love from India!