jcooke

I've started my Thai massage course 2 days ago
The place was really hard to find and my taxi driver was lost luckily i found 2 Nepali girls who spoke pretty well English and helped me out. we found the place even though there is no sign saying that it's the ''Healing hand center''.
I was brought to my room which is pretty nice and he told me OK see you tomorrow and that's it it was only 6pm .but i asked questions like so do we all eat together with the other students what time do i have to be there tomorrow morning... so we finally spoke a bit had a tea but it felt kind of awkward.I wantsed to have more infos
In the house leaves an English guy and another one from Canada who both met Nepali girls after 2 and 1 month and married them ....crazy....
they leave here but we barley spoke or anything and then there is a student from Belgium who i met he showed me the surroundings and we went to dinner together
The teacher ,Raoul, a Indian born but adopted by a Swiss guy and leaving in Nepal married to a girl my age(he's 38 years old)has two children and is a healer, shaman and and Thai massage teacher he leaved for 11 years in Thailand .he's home is huge i think that daddy from Switzerland is providing some funds for the construction of it .We can have lunch at his place and that's pretty handy
today is Shiva's (the god) birthday so we are celebrating it at Raoul's place tonight .apparently birthday or not he does some big cooking and a party every Saturday night
So i am getting to know the place and the people better now
In the morning i attend the one month class just looking or being a guinea pig
And in the afternoon it's my class i am the only 5 days student so it's kind of a private course even though the other student attend it too just to see the basics once again
Everything is very interesting ,it's pretty hard to learn and to give a Thai massage but I'm learning .it's a lot of information but i film it so i can review it and practice
The place is a bit a mess in the sense that the class are very informal nothing is really planned but i still have my courses so it's OK .For ex they don't give any documents on the different position we have to write everything down .which is hard because you have to describe a certain position and Thai massage positions are sometime complex
But Vincent the guy from Belgium has written everything very well so I'll just have to photocopy it ,lucky me
Saturday is a special day because the old student don't have a massage course but the teacher Raoul, talks about a topic like how to heal this or that and this morning was great he talked about how to plan to have a baby what kind of exercises to do how to behave towards the woman what to eat and what is prohibited it was great and i thought it was a shame not to have this kind of teaching in the west the principal goal was to have a perfect delivery not painful not to long and in the best conditions .
I am really happy with the course even if at the beginning i remember i was cooking for myself on the first night and was thinking why on earth i decided to take thai massage course in Nepal ,strange idea no?
And well actually ,Vincent took classes in Wat Po, Thailand and told me that it's way better here because it's so popular over there in thailand that they don't take time for you and it' like being in a factory
And the teacher here is quite famous and he's very good.
So everythingis good around here
It's good to have a nice place to stay at being busy all day and meeting locals
et voila

Of course it had to be epic.
The trip from darjeeling to the border went perfectly, going through immigration was fine and a dude comes to sell us bus tickets for kathmandu in the immigration office telling us that we should hurry up to by tickets because the last bus leaves in an hour.So we tell him to call his agency and to book 5 tickets .The other guys i was travelling with stopped half way in a national park .So at their destination stop they got out of the bus and then everybody in the bus looks at me has they see that i am not going down with them .so i ask them if there is a problem and they are just surprised that i am travelling alone then a guy asks me where i am going and i say kathmandu he says oh then you have to change bus in a a few hours.
By that time we had been in the bus for 10 hours and it was freezing and impossible to sleep because of the bumps on the road .And yet we got lucky because the bus wasn't full and i got to lay my legs on my seat.
I manage to sleep for a couple of minute when i'm woken up :''hey sister, sister,we go down here''
But we were not in Kathmandu and i had to change bus .I manage to get some money back from the contractor to pay for the other bus because; i had paid a full fair to the capital,and i had no Nepali currency.
so we wait in the cold with a couple and the wife's brother .I am so greatfull to them and lucky that they were there .
We took a ''micro'' as they call it (it's just a van ) but there wasn't enough space inside for all of us to sit in so we drove for 5kms on the top of the van 5 of us .it was quite an adventure the landscape was amazing a blue river and the mountains.I thought i was going to die of course .They were driving way to fast and i didn't have clothing warm enough for this kind of trip . but anyway we eventually got in the car and drove to kathmandu well not quiet actually .There was a strike and big traffic ahead of us.so we had to get out of the car and walk i was still with the couple and brother they were carrying a baby, a 50kg bag of rice and 2 big bags.
But we made our way throught it and they guided me to get another bus to go to the center and they paid everything for me.
I slep all afternoon i was exausted but i made it .
So now i'm going to eat and have a beer probably.
taddddddddddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

We escaped one of our homestay owners trying to charge ten times the price of a bus for a ride in his car to Mysore and ended up here- where kitsch and zen collide.

We cruised along a 16km beach in a local fishing boat. We actually burned that day, but cooled down by swimming once in a while. We stopped at one point and had coconut milk and thalis on the beach, brought by some villagers

That's one of the clearest sunset we have seen in India, since all the other ones were faded by the pollution. Here in Madikeri the high altitude makes the air more breathable and a little ride up the mountain led us to this very nice sunset

The unique, the tallest in the world, the exceptional Shiva meditating on a tiger's skin carpet (killed from his own hands they say). The god of destruction sits next to the waterfront in Murudeshwar with his 43m. It's quite impressive. Unfortunately this is the only attraction in town, but it's worth stopping by.

We pretended we were Santa Claus for a while and here's one of our helpers packing our boxes full of presents for Christmas. But seriously, to send a box back home you have to bring your box to the tailor and have it sewed before taking it to the post office. So hopefully it will arrive on time back home !!!

Happy birthday!!!!! I swear inside of me I was happy but a stomach ache in the early morning makes me look this way I had a great day and a wondrfull flower necklace, which ended up in a shrine for the glory of Ganesh the elephant god.

This is the first day of our 3 days hike.Lunch break at the top of a mountain.We thought we were going to be rich that day since we were close to a stone mine, but we only found small little piece of what will transform into ruby if we wait 10.000 years.

What is this? It's coffee of course!!! Pur arabica they automaticly add some kind of sweetener when they serve a fresh cup of coffee so we didn't get to have the reall taste of it.Coffee plants are not native from India but has been imported during the british Raj. A bag of 50kg is bought 1200rps (20euros).

It feel strange to see it for the first time but you get use to it after a while. In India the swastika is considered extremely holy. Facing right it represents the evolution of the universe, facing left it represents the involution of the universe.The term is derived from Sanskrit svasti, meaning well-being.

Rice fields in the coorg region.It's beautifull to look at,but's such a hard labor.75 rps a day (1.50euros) for a women wages and a 100rps for a man.

Once the rice is picked up. in the small villages buffalos turn in circle walking on the rice sticks to separate the rice from the plant .We have seen in wealthier places tractors doing the job of the buffalos.

Do not think that it is hot everywhere in India.We are in the cool season and in the mountains, so we are actually freezing while crossing the river ,but it was worth the adventure because we ended our walkfor the day after crossing.And washed ourselves swimming among 50 fishes per meter squar(and i'm not exagerating )We couldn't eat any for dinner though,the villagers keep them here for the gods.

...20 days old little veal can enjoy the confort of the hay and the sun.

kids and......

Come on you can do it Jay !!!!!Climb a little bit more