Escape from Samsara

Monday 15 December 2008
Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwanthari Ashram, Neyyar Dam, Kerala – Verkala, Kerala

So I have a fairly restless night's sleep. Someone wakes up at 4 to leave, then everyone else wakes up at 5. We're lying in as it's our last day and getting up at 5.30 to chant incomprehensibly for an hour doesn't seem worth it. I miss the meditation but that doesn't seem to be the main focus here. It's all about the chants.

As we're lying in we're actually breaking the law – attendance at all sessions is compulsory – but we're yogic rebels and we don't care. As a result, at about 7 someone comes round and wakes us up. They ask us when we arrived (presuming we didn't know the rules), Evan quickly answers that we are leaving today and that seems to resolve the situation.

When we arrived Evan mentioned that the place reminded him of a boarding school, and in a way it is a bit like that. You sleep in a dormitory, you all eat in a big hall, there are bells denoting when different sessions start and finish, if you stay for a long time you have duties to perform to clean and maintain the place, and you have to get a special pass and sign out when you want to leave the premises and go into town. However the beautiful setting, the fellow students, the location and the curriculum set it apart.

After waking up properly we go for our last yoga session. I manage to do the half headstand for the first time with some guidance from the teachers which is cool. I'm feeling a bit tired though so I don't put as much effort into it as I could yesterday. I have the “crow” pretty much down though. On the way out we can hear the lions roar from the sanctuary across the lake. Once again the yoga leaves me feeling awesome. We buy a book that has the details of what all the different moves are so I can do this at home too. I'm glad to have visited here as it gives me a new yoga sequence to play with, one that is about half the length of the sequence that I had been taught in a class in London.

So we pack and leave and take a rickshaw to Verkala. It's a good distance, at least 50 km, and doing it in a rickshaw with two people plus luggage is a bit of an interesting challenge, though my no means the most uncomfortable I've been on this trip. We stop halfway through so Evan can buy some chai tea, though afterwards we find out that it's only the tea part of chai tea, and he still needs the chai part, but he finds that in Verkala.

I actually fall asleep on the way, which is a bit of an achievement given how much the rickshaw moves around, how cramped it is and how bumpy and poor the roads are. Eventually we arrive and sort out a hotel to stay in, then go out and explore the town.

This place has a beach, but it's pretty small, probably two or three hundred metres long. It makes you wonder why this place is a resort, but I guess it must be because it's the only beach for quite a few miles around. The waves are nicely choppy and there is a bit of a rip current. The beach is backed by a crescent of dark red sandstone cliffs about 8 to 10 metres high. At the top of the cliffs are a row of restaurants and shops, and behind them the huts and hotels.

It's very much a developed tourist town, but in a fairly good way. It doesn't have the size of the beaches or the laid-back, everything's-made-out-of-wood, hey-I'm-just-living-in-a-hut-on-a-beach feel of the best beaches in Goa, but it isn't developed badly and is pleasant to look at.
It also seems that half of Tibet is here as well. Every shop seems to be selling Tibetan goods, most of the workers look Tibetan as well, and there are plenty of signs in the windows of the shops saying things like “Free Tibet” and such. Why they have all come here in such concentration is a mystery. I guess it's warmer in Verkala than Tibet, certainly at this time of year.

So we have lunch and then jump in the water. There's a bit of cloud around again today. The water feels cool at first but is actually fine. There's a large sand bar underwater here, so as you walk out the water reaches your shoulders and then as you walk further out it becomes more shallow again so the water's just above your waist. We splash around a bit and I do some swimming.

In the evening we head to a restaurant and have some food, then go to the local bar that's open late but as with everywhere in India (except Mambo's) only plays music at low volume. We chat and drink a bit and I start to feel tired and want to go home.

Just then a nearby table asks us to define the difference between irony and sarcasm. This propels me into my second wind and we start chatting to the other table. There's four Aussie guys and one German girl. Yet another German girl. I try my German on her again and it's all good. At one point one of the guys inadvertently comes up with the best pun based on Goa / Goan that I've heard of – unfortunately I've forgotten it by the morning.

During a lull in the conversation I start up “Pirates versus Ninjas” and end up improvising a story on the day in the life of a ninja, which cracks up the table and one guy thinks it's a routine from a professional comedian that I've nicked.

So the end of the night comes and we all go home, unfortunately alone, and it turns out it's only 5 o'clock.