travel

I think I’ve become too relaxed

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Never thought I’d utter that statement but in 3 months of being away and most of my travel having been overland I’ve almost missed 2 flights!

And I’m a early bird to airports usually. Mainly because I’m habitually late for anything non work related in my life so have to compensate but I compensate well and I’m usually there as much as 3 hours in advance a lot of the time (much to the dismay of anyone normal travelling with me). And I get pretty twitchy at the airport about making sure I’m in the right place, at the boarding gate early enough etc.

But some have I have now almost missed two flights and the only reason I can think of is that I’m just no longer that tense. All the time. About everything.

The first flight I almost missed was because I didn’t stress when having to queue for ages to check in, even though I was aware it was getting to an hour before my flight as I figured loads of normal people don’t check in till 40-45 mins before, it’ll be fine.

Not so. Just as I got to the front of the queue an attend walked past, said where are you going, then “it’s too late, check in has already closed”.

I think the look of sheer shock and horror on my face must have helped as he reluctantly agreed to let me check in if I went quick and ran. So I did and was fast tracked through everything just to then spend 40 mins sat waiting at boarding gate where, once you go in you can’t go out. Totally pointless.

The second was yesterday where, whilst waiting at my gate I decided not to anxiously check the departure screen every 5 mins for updates and just read my book instead.

They changed the gate.

The announcement wasn’t in English.

I didn’t realise something was wrong till they’d already go to final call for boarding!

Maybe I need to hold onto a little bit of that old tension just specially for when at airports!

Making lasting friends in 10 min

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One of the favourite people I’ve met so far on my travels is someone I met for 10 minutes. In a bar. Whilst wasted. And I mean properly wasted.

But she is one of my favourite people from my travels so far and we still talk at least a couple of times each week.

It’s so unlike how we usually form friendships in normal life but I love it.

I’ve spent days travelling with some people who I know I’ll never speak to again, but someone who I randomly met in a bar for 10 minutes, sure!

Another couple of my favourite people from travelling are two people who I literally just went out and partied with one night. We were in places where it was too loud to talk almost the entire time so we barely spoke. But you just get a feeling from some people so quickly, almost like “yes you’re my type of person” and you know you would chose to hang out with them rather than just doing it through circumstance.

It has nothing to do with how long you talk to them or how well you know them, you just get it.

When was the last time you lay down and just listened to music?

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I’m not talking about listening to music while reading a book, tidying up around you, eating or dancing around your room like a maniac (my personal favourite), I mean literally just lying there and listening.

I’m pretty certain everyone does it as a teenager as some point, I certainly did. But I stopped.

I stopped so long ago that until last week I hadn’t just lay down and listened to music in, well, probably over a decade.

But I did last week, and it is such an incredibly enjoyable activity that I can’t believe I haven’t done it in over 10 years.

It was one of the most relaxing things I’ve done in ages (bear in mind I did 2 hours of meditation everyday for 4 weeks at yoga school and am still saying this). I think the reason it was so relaxing was in exactly the way it was the opposite to meditation. Far from getting me to clear my mind of thoughts, it actually just gave me time to think and let any thought come into my head and go with it. It was also so enjoyable as for the first time in ages I properly listened to the music that was playing. I actually focused on it rather than it being a background activity which it so frequently usually is for me.

I now can’t stop listening to music as an activity in itself. My kindle was abandoned for the whole of a 4 hour bus ride yesterday, just listening to music instead.

If you haven’t listened to music, and I do mean just listened in years give it a try, even if it’s for only 10 minutes.

You won’t regret it

It’s 5am and I’m awake, fully awake

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I don’t have to be up for hours but I can’t sleep and for one of the first times in my life, ever, I have decided to get up rather than just lay in bed getting annoyed. I’d already been doing that for an hour anyway.

So I’m now sat in the hostel common area which is pitch black and has two of the people who work here sleeping in it. The only thing I can actually see are about 10 mosquitoes circling me. And I’m in a malaria zone so that really isn’t great.

My dorm wasn’t much better on the mosquito front anyway though so I guess it doesn’t make that much difference.

I don’t really know why I’m awake, it’s certainly not stress induced insomnia. I haven’t felt that in a happily long time.

There are just so many thoughts going round my head right now.

I’ve spent the last week with two of the most interesting people I’ve met on my travels so far which I’m pretty certain has largely got something to do with it.

The longer I’ve been travelling the more I’ve found myself thinking in general about nothing and everything all at the same time. Not even necessarily about particularly profound things but definitely considering more what it is that does or doesn’t make me happy. Since I can affect that pretty easily now. If I don’t like something I can just stop doing it, if I’m not happy somewhere I can just move.

And I think that’s what I found so interesting about them, they were both in their own ways equally as interested in what makes us happy and had clearly at some point in their lives had the realisation where it, for whatever reason, properly hits you that this is actually it. This is all we get. This life. So if you’re not happy with something you’ve got to change it. And if you want to do something you’ve got to go do it.

One had even been going round the world filming a documentary on what it is that makes people happy (you’ll be able to check out their project soon on The Wonder Junkies).

Since I’ve been away I’ve actually found it’s the simplest things that make me happy and really surprisingly for me they’ve actually mostly been based in nature.

I say surprisingly as I’m not really someone who spends lots of time outdoors normally or goes on walks just for the sake of it. I’m usually far too busy for that shit (how ridiculous is that!).

But now I’m not and sitting looking at a view from the top of a mountain, watching a sunrise or just staring out and looking at the sea have been some of my most amazing moments whilst away.

Because the world is actually pretty cool if you look at it properly. Like really look, just sit there and get lost in what you’re looking at. It’s fucking amazing.

The bags, oh the bags

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Don’t bring it if you can’t carry it.

Seriously, I mean it. If you can’t lift your own suitcase even the smallest amount, don’t take it on holiday and DEFINITELY don’t take it travelling.

It’s bad enough that it’s a suitcase in the first place if it’s so big you can’t fit it down the aisle of a bus, boat, train or whatever else you happen to be on since that just makes everyone else have to wait. But at least if you’re going to do it, MAKE SURE YOU CAN LIFT IT.

I’m not even talking about being able to lift it above you head or anything fancy like that, just off the floor. That seems like a pretty essential requirement in my mind, but clearly not to a surprisingly large amount of people if quite far flung backpacker places.

In the space of a day I met one person with a wheelie bag that was 3 quarters the height of them and another with one that didn’t look as large, but that I later found out weighed about half as much as I do and I’m 5″8′, I’m not exactly petite.

I mean seriously. That’s not even like its a little bit too big or too heavy for you to lift, that’s just ridiculous.

One of the girls couldn’t even seem to get enough strength to wheel it let alone even lift it half an inch off the ground.

And yes I do hate that all the people I’ve seen doing this are female. I almost feel the need to chuck out half the stuff from my 15kg bag so I then have a really small one to help counteract the stereotypes that they’re causing to be formed.

The Cult of Yoga – Yoga Teacher Training Week 1 Cont.

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I wonder how many yoga cults there are as a lot of the teaching and what we’re doing feels a bit cult like.

We’re being taught a lot of things about the philosophy of yoga but most of it is very akin to the type of things people were told years ago to explain functions we see externally of the body because people weren’t able to see inside or didn’t understand the different processes at the time.

We’ve been being taught about chakras and nadis and koshas all of which aren’t visible but are apparently real none the less. We’re given no reason for that belief though, they just are.

I do believe that our bodies are capable of a lot more than we use them for most of the time which is part of the reason why I do have an interest in learning more about yoga but the ways in which it is being explained that our bodies are capable of more, or how we can activate that capability is for me akin to someone having looked at the body from the outside years ago and then made up a story about how it all works inside. No justification is given other than, well that explains why x happens.

For example, we were told the other day that we have a certain number of breaths in our life. The justification being well dogs and other animals breath faster and they have shorter lives. Yoga teaches us to control our breathing therefore we will live longer if we become a yogi in the sense of dedicating our lives to meditation.

I then asked how old the oldest yogi therefore is, as surely if the theory is true they’ll live much longer than any average person, only to be told the yogis will have died before that point anyway so their soul can be reunited with the supreme being.

Oh ok then. Silly me, I’ll just believe it then.

Which is what most people seems to be doing though. They’re sitting nodding along saying they can feel this energy or that as we chant to some undefined supreme being making it feel more like a cult by the day.

The complaints – Yoga Teacher Training Day 1 Cont.

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It states pretty clearly on the website of most yoga schools in Rishikesh that the food will be plain and healthy as you know, it’s a yoga school and that’s the food they believe you should be eating.

It’s also a yoga school in Rishikesh where part of the experience is supposed to be disconnecting from the world a little and giving yourself time to clear your head so you can learn to meditate properly etc. (something I’ve also always not understood/been able to do).

And yet at the first meal people were complaining loudly (in ear shot of the cooks, which is just a bit rude) that the food was so plain and disgusting and how were they going to supposed to eat this for a month. Ummmm maybe coming to a month long yoga course in india where its clearly stated that the food will be plain maybe wasn’t the best plan then, especially if even just one meal like that is apparently so much of an issue.

And then there were those who were so upset about the lack of wifi (it was broken) you would have thought someone just stolen something from them. Some of who were then advising others they’ve just got to deal with the coldness and suck it up (northern india’s pretty cold in January). I’d say keeping your body at a warm enough temperature is more of an essential life requirement than wifi really and if the lack of one was going to be sucked up, it should probably be the wifi. But maybe that’s just me.

Feeling like an outsider – Yoga Teacher Training Day 1

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We were free for most of the first day and so a number of us walked into the near by town at which point someone mentioned there was a Satsang (not 100% of the spelling) about to happen at one of the ashrams from a famous Brazilian Guru. Part of me was thinking “won’t we have enough of this in the next month anyway, let’s enjoy the free time” but I decided to go anyway, with no knowledge as to what it actually was that we were going to.

Turns out it was a session in which there was music which could be sung along to like mantras and then the Guru reading questions from people and giving his advise. The chanting at the start before the guru arrived was quite fun. It was the part when the guru was there that I was less sure of. He sat, and read a letter from someone saying they were depressed, didn’t have job or friends and what could they do. His advise to me though just seemed like almost platitudes or like an unqualified attempt as psycho analysis. There didn’t seem to be any particularly enlightening or enlightened information imparted but yet all those around me were furiously scribbling down notes and/or crying as he talked.

That made me feel quite a lot like an outsider anyway for just not understanding why everyone was so enthralled and emotional about what this guy was saying when quite frankly I was bored. It’s not that I was fidgety and needed to be someone, I was more than happy to sit and relax but what was being said was no greater than the advise I or anyone of my friends would give someone if they came to one of us with the same problem.

I then got back to the school. keeping my opinions kinda of quite, just in case, to hear people saying that they’d found it so powerful and uplifting and had even started crying just as the guru walked into the room as his presence was so powerful.

I had to leave the conversations as I just didn’t know what I could say without lying, offending a lot of people or most likely doing both at the same time!