Chamundi Hill

Today was the moon /rest day so we decided to go up to Chamundi Hill. Chamundi Hill is where the Chamundeswaari temple is, which is a huge temple for the Goddess Chamundi, plus also a few other smaller temples. It is a big tourist spot, and even though we left Gokulum at 7:30am there were still several 100's of people there when we arrived. Lots of buses and field trips, mostly all Indians, few westerners were there. Chamundi is an aspect of Durga or the goddess energy - she is one the more fierce of the female goddess having slain some demons to achieve her popularity. We drove the scooter up the road, and Fiona and Andrew took a rickshaw. There are two ways to get into the temple, one is the free line which wound all the way around the temple, and the other was the paid line which was much short - so we paid 20 ruppees to go into the temple and waited in a line for maybe 20 minutes, went in and got blessed by a priest in there (no cameras were allowed). It was really chaotic - and people like us who didn't know what to do were probably part of that problem - there were lots of kids, families etc. The priest stay behind the partitions and you can hand them offerings like money, or flowers and they seem to be constantly involved in performing tasks having to do with Chamundi who is back some ways sort of through smaller and smaller door ways if that makes sense.

We made it back down to town for lunch, and then back to Gokulum by 2pm - which sort of ended up being our day.

Tomorrow we have led primary at 6am - I know that some of you are reading my friend Jonathon's blog - and maybe you read what he wrote on his last post that he "loves the led classes because Sharath walks around teaching and Saraswathi adjusts"... hmmm - he and I must be in different classes! The led classes here are my least favorite - and I really have to practice my yoga if you know what I mean in order to even go to practice my yoga! As I mentioned in an earlier post which was I think after I'd been here about a week - and at the time I'd still not gotten one adjustment, nor had any interaction with Sharath or Saraswathi - you remember - well I still have yet to get adjusted in any postures. Now that said every day one of them helps you after you've done drop backs with the 3 drop-backs hands crossed over chest, and then the attempt to grab your ankles deal - and on Thursday after Sharath helped me with this he held his forefinger and thumb together in front of me about an inch from each other indicating the distance my fingers where to my feet and said, "on Monday you take your ankles". And so it goes...

So I have more to say about that, but this post is already getting kind of long and I need to read a little and go to sleep. I hope you enjoy the pictures and you have a wonderful weekend.

Much love...