Sweating out Grumpistan

Rajasthan has some outstanding sights but in and around them, the tourist mayhem is not what I associate with my time in this incredible country.  I have found wonderful corners of this country where you need to be a bit Indian yourself in order to survive and those are the places I have loved.  Here in Pushkar, I can’t even find an Indian restaurant and although it’s homely to eat an overpriced salad, surely these guys want to try something local that doesn’t have “(mild)” next its place on the menu between pizza and pancake?  I am having the Hampi feeling again, it worries me that I have become a travel hermit, or worse, a backpacking snob!  Couple this feeling with managing weightwatchers points (its coming off because I need to get into my home clothes!) in the constantly 40+ temperatures that India is now churning out daily and it leaves me on the brink of grumpiness.

Hot, tired, confined and ever so slightly
grumpy in my sleeper bus compartment

Oh and did I say confined
...or GREY for that matter ..I'm shocked!

Once the sight I am in town to see has been hastily photographed, I retreat beneath a fan somewhere with wifi (a Rajathani bonus), dreaming of icy chicku¹ milkshake as I force down one of the 4 bottles of water I am consuming a day …interestingly I don’t visit the bathroom any more regularly than when I was on 2-3 bottles a day so I am effectively sweating more than a litre daily.  A lot of the sweat that I notice comes from really unusual places such as elbow pits.  If I open my toes, I can feel the inter-toe sweat evaporate as the fan whirls and every plastic chair I sit upon induces prolific back sweat.  Should even a finger of unclothed skin touch unclothed skin, moisture blooms.  Facial sweat is about the same as when it was ordinarily hot although top lip sweat does seem to have increased.

All of these factors have led me to sign up for another Vipassana course, smack bang in the middle of this roasting state.  Not only will it alleviate my burgeoning boredom with the tourist scene, it will refocus me on what matters, the many personal insights I have gained, and re-instill some (rather too much) self discipline and routine before I return.  As well as deserving a medal when I achieve another solitary 10 days inside my mind, I will treat myself to spending my last 3 nights back in Hotel Kumbha Palace, Udaipur before flying back to Mumbai to maximise my 40Kg baggage allowance and catch the flight home.

I will be entirely out of contact from 14th to 24^th May and if anyone wants to know what this is all about, go back to my January posts and read The pain of Vipassana followed by The Pleasures of Vipassana.  My ten days in May will be very similar, however, as an “Old Student” I will spend more time in my pagoda cell and will not get the little evening snack that the New Students receive …good for weight loss I-know-not-what for the mind!

¹ Chicku is a fresh fig-like fruit.  It peels like a kiwi, tastes of fruity caramel and has the texture of pair.  I ate a lot of Chicku until I got to Rajasthan where they unfortunately don’t seem to be in season.