It's not me, it's YOU India. (Top 6 Mysore Must-Haves)

If you are having a break-up fight in your head with a whole country, you know you are in trouble or at a turning point.

I'm stomping up the stairs, sweaty from walking around in the heat because my scooter hasn’t come when promised for the second time, I can't get food despite being cashed up and surrounded by a million cooks... "but not right now Miss. Sleeping!", and I'm getting ready for round 5 with the most temperamental washing machine in Southern India. Apartment residents use the rooftop 'laundry' which consists of a few strung out washing lines, about 15 pegs that 4 groups share creatively, and no shade and of course what Sanir from Bombay (my grumpy downstairs neighbour) and I now call The Stupid Bloody Piece of Shit Washing Machine that we battle with and curse over together which we thoroughly enjoy. Of course, now we are pretty good friends. He is hanging out for 12 weeks while his wife does yoga teachers' training and like me is in a domestic routine of hanging out, riding around the neighborhood, washing, watching telly, eating, talking to strangers, doing jobs. Being grumpy is perfect for doing washing, especially the thumping-the- crap-out-of-your-yoga-pants-on-concrete-slabs kind of washing because it feels so good to vent, and now I know why Indians’ clothes are so clean.

But for mental health my three options to get through my inner fight with all the shitty little things about India getting on my nerves are 1)pray 2) lie down, or 3) both. I take option 1. It goes something like this:

"Oh God. Please help me with my attitude. It really sucks, I wish I was a better person and all that but my specific point is ...because I know you are busy, that if I don’t get your help to change my perspective on all the shit that is not working out, like in the next hour, I am going to be the Screaming Hungry White Woman of Mysore Rooftops. And that is not how I would like to be remembered. God, my attitude is 'I should get what I want and should ask questions' but realise these don't really have answers because they are my questions, no-one elses' responsibility to answer and God, help me to shut up. Getting what I want is so close but so far away. Help me be content with confusion and patient while treading fucking muddy water. But mostly - and this is the big one - help me to trust people more. Please help me be like Keanu in the Matrix and discover a new reality (but can you make me look a bit smarter than him). Finally, thank you God for the guy who makes those buttery chocolate coconut balls because if I’m not premenstrual right now, then when I actually am, they are going to save me and everyone I deal with from a big, fat headache.

Amen.

P.S. thanks for making the extra pegs appear today in the crazy laundry space, because that’s one less thing I have to go buy in my "serviced apartment" that is neither serviced nor an apartment.

Ok, so I'm not going to change India. I can mutter and eyeball and tut all I like, but I've gotta trust the locals more. They are telling me how it is in their own special way. Indians are very honest, not deceptive, not mean-hearted. I’ve been here before – struggling against cultural differences and my expectations while travelling – it’s the toughest thing but it does sort out by about week 2 with varying degrees of ‘same shit, different situation’. I realise how how awful tourists must appear to communities where people don't have the opportunity to get outside their 'normal'. Feeling a little ashamed for the luxury of self indulgent moaning, I clean my own bathroom, and wait until someone in India is awake and ready to cook. Unbelievable.

Getting settled is a big part of being grounded enough to get the most out of my yoga practise, for me anyway. The feeling of being settled is a total skill that I've had to get better at in the last 4 years. It's not something you are given by someone else, you have to create it yourself. It’s taken me 5 days to finally get sorted, settled and identify what's missing that I need - a good cup of plain black tea. An apple. Fresh milk. Here's my top 6 must-haves to settle down and enjoy yoga life in Mysore:

1) Money

Getting cash out is straightforward - I can just use my domestic Commonwealth Bank debit card at a local ATM. There are no Cirrus signs on the local ATM, no indication you can use other international bank cards, so this was a nice surprise, no dramas. I bought no rupees over and changed a bunch of AUD with a money changer locally. The black market is active and cheaper than bank fees.

2) Food 

Mysore is Hindu so vegetarian is the norm. I’m not vegetarian, but found options at western style cafes. Going out to eat 3 times a day can be exhausting if you are walking in the heat, and sometimes it's nice to just be able to stay home. Fruit is fresh and plentiful in the First Main Street, Gokulum. Vegetables are plentiful but quality is ho-hum, depending where you shop. Sanir gave me the number of a young woman locally and she cooks for yogi bears in the neighbourhood for 100R ($2 AUD) a meal, lunch and/or dinner, and delivers. What’s not to like? I am very grateful to have found her.

3) Wheels

There is nothing more liberating than riding around on a scooter in a foreign town among the tide of local traffic. You love it or hate it, but I love it. It's the only way to really see a place fast, each trip you see about 50 new things, down streets, in houses, clothes, fare, places. Scooters are around 3000R or a bit less, you may have to pay a deposit. Go to Shiva (the Facilitator) in the pink house on 8th cross just up from the main shala. There are a lot of lazy, well-fed street dogs around his place - a measure of the man's character. Nice guy.

4) Sim card

To text and communicate with people here to get things you need, make arrangements to meet. Locals won't text you on international numbers, too expensive. If your phone is unlocked with your provider head to the First Main Road Gokulum with the cluster of shops and look for a guy in a red shop with Sim signs. He will replace your Sim with a local one for about 200R and then you buy 200R of phone credit and Internet access. Txts are 1 R which is 2 cent AUD. Cheap!

5) Expectations of accommodation

In tourism here there is no ‘standard’ or industry website that advertises accommodation options that you can openly compare like in regional tourism websites in Australia. Value for money is not consistent. What you get for $500/month AUD can range from 2 bedroom apartment with balcony and separate kitchen ($300 US), to a nice new, one bedroom apartment, with no real cooking gear and a fan, A/C extra $20 ($560AUD). Not that you need a lot of space, or AC in June/July. ‘Hotels’ are often used to refer to restaurants. 'Serviced apartments' means I have to negotiate with the cleaner what I want and how often, according to the manager here, who didn’t want to step in. Hmm. A bit awkward but negotiations are all about relationship building, and staying cool, smiling, head waggling, easy does it. People just want you to be happy and will keep asking if everything is OK? Very sweet actually.

6) Meeting a regular visitor to Mysore

I met Jennifer who's been coming here for 10 years to study with Sharath and Saraswati. She's a yoga teacher in San Fransisco, and has been invaluable at giving me tips about getting water, the places that do fresh milk, or coconut milk, the places to go for a beer, (thank god! A yogi who is not a complete saint) she showed me about how the traffic works and being assertive on scooters. She's a road cyclist and bonkers but I love her because she rides her bike around the major hairy 'ring road' and up very steep Chamundi Hill. It's just nice to have at least one person my age/culture who lives just across the park who I bump into in the neighbourhood and ask my questions.

It's Not Magic.

Day 1 in Mysore has been amazing. I cannot believe I am actually here and tomorrow morning I start my first Mysore style ( self led) yoga class in the main shala.

After a day of getting sorted, I’m finally sitting on my 2nd floor balcony at 6.30 pm and the sun is going down behind palm trees and the sounds of the neighbourhood, 3rd Stage, Gokulum meet me. Kids playing cricket on the vacant block, mums picking up kids from after work care across the road, street dogs barking, incessant horns blaring on the Main Road in the distance. Someone’s tv blaring, old women in bright saris strolling the street and old man in a white tunic with his younger companion stopping in the street to stare up at me. I think I met that old man outside his house, today. We talked about yoga, as I have with every second person, mostly locals strolling on the street who smile and nod and have seen it all before in this genteel suburb of the modestly wealthy middle class.

I’ve been getting set up all day and reading Shantaram between waiting for others to chatter about me and work out how they can help this ‘old lady tourist’. Yes, I was actually called that in the most affectionate way by Manju who fed me breakfast; my first dosa masala pancake with coconut mush with green chilli and hot sweet chai. That sorted me out. 

If you are a non-vegetarian, Mysore may be tough.

I could focus then on talking money, staying in good humour, remembering I might get moved again. And, thinking to get through the day communicating, what is absolutely necessary? This is a culture where you don’t want to be too difficult for anyone, it’s already hard enough with language and cultural barriers so getting along and politeness is a big thing.  Surrender and letting stuff go, like being short changed. Insert head waggle here. With this many people, it’s be the only way India works.

Literally next door to me is Saraswarthi’s shala, Pattabi Jois’ daughter who I’ve come here to study with. Well, 'study' is a loose term. Get yelled at across a room by, probably. A thrill ran through me as I realised, wow, that’s it. Isn’t it wierd that I’m a bit in awe of a 70 year old Indian lady who I don’t know who will hardly remember me if at all, and the only time we’ll have contact probably is when I’m not doing something right?! This yoga thing is nuts, eh.

I walked around Gokulum at 8am a bit foggy from only 5 hrs sleep since arriving at 3am. Enjoying the coolness, the shade of the flame trees, the peaceful waking up sounds. Looking at the washed driveways of houses, freshly chalked with these funky hand-drawn mandalas of all types, each one unique to the household. The morning rituals, so beautiful, mostly women out and about the porches, washing and sweeping steps. 

Pavement drawings

And then I was on 8th Cross and I know this is the street of the main shala. And bam! Suddenly  there it was, in front of me, a very ordinary building where a lot of people have come to practise and transform just a little bit more. I took a breath and everything inside me smiled and went 'Hmm. So this is where I'll be sweating and breathing and bending.'

The entrance to the main practise room.

It’s an honor to be here, like being handed both ends of a thick piece of rope. On one end the rope is me, my practise but the rope goes back through time, connecting my practise to my teachers in Adelaide, and their teachers, back to this place, to Sharath and his mum Saraswathi and her dad Sri Pattabi Jois who authorised my teachers, and onto Guruji's own teacher. And being here is like my turn to hold the rope.

Being here is like washing away all the thinking, imagining, internet searching, YouTube videos and yoga permutations. All the noise is gone. All the romance is brushed away by the quiet clean-floored reality and normality  of the shala, the potted plants, the empty sandals on the steps, the quiet study of students upstairs, the wall of family portraits and old black and white pictures of Saraswathi and Manju doing asana all those years on the road with dad, colour photos of Sharath holding his daughter. It's like being in the Jois family home. It's not magic, it's real. 

And now I can relax and be real in this reality and that's why I came here. To go one more step in making this practise mine. Real for me. It's not magic, it's not fantasy, it's real and it rocks.