One Week to Go -- Some Logistics

Before the logistics, some fun stuff. Here's a link to a series of photographs on Flickr, showing people practicing ashtanga. The pictures are a mixture of the primary series (what I'll be doing) and more advanced stuff (which I won't). You can also see Guruji (the older teacher, who passed away in May), his grandson Sharath (the current leading teacher in the world), and Saraswati, a woman who will be teaching me:

Ashtanga photos from Flickr

I fly out on Monday, October 5, traveling through Chicago, Frankfurt, Germany, and on to Bangalore, where a driver will pick me up to drive to Mysore. It's over 17 hours of air time from Chicago, and I arrive in Bangalore very early on Wednesday morning, October 7 (Banglaore time). Bangalore is 9.5 hours ahead of Louisville.

I will take Wednesday to try to adjust to the time change -- something which will undoubtedly take more than one day. I hope to be able to register at the yoga shala on Wednesday, and with some luck can start practice on Thursday morning.

I should have easy access to e-mail and the internet. I'll be carrying my Blackberry, which will have the international package activated. I'll be able to receive both work e-mail and my personal, Google mail (gmail). In addition, I'll be carrying a small netbook, which I hope to use to post updates on the trip,and on practice, via this weblog.

I am doing the blog for two broad groups: (i) friends and family; and (ii) local yoga people with whom I've practiced ashtanga for the last 5 1/2 years. I'll try to identify clearly those postings which tend toward technical yoga stuff, not of general interest.

In the past, when traveling, I've tended to send e-mails home from internet cafes and the like, and I thought that by putting them in one place -- a blog -- they would be relatively easy to find for non-yoga and yoga friends. I promise not to overindulge in excessive, trivial, self-indulgent detail.

Finally, here's a Google-based map of Mysore.

Mysore map

Jim

Cloudy with a Chance of Vegetarian Meatballs

The Mysore Palace, when the weather is nice but the sun is down.

The Mysore weather is here:

www.wunderground.com/global/stations/43291.html

A bit rainy at the moment.