Svecha gorela na stole

After finishing up the trek, we are briefly in Almora before ending up the program in Syat. Even though we were in a lodge in Munsiari just a few days ago, the technology and buildings here feel so much more foreign. Is it because the trek is over and I know I won't be back in the woods tomorrow for an undetermined period of time? Is it because the program is coming to an end? Because I've been to Almora before, so this is a familiar place with technology and not another new exciting destination? Who knows?

I woke up at 5 of my own volition and decided that it was a great time to get up and get on the Internet, much to the shock of my roommate who insists that it is unnatural to get up before it is light out. Well, I have had a fabulous hour taking care of business, googling Russian poems I have been craving, and watching the sun peek out from beyond the haze over the hills.

I won't have Internet that much but it shouldn't cost you anything extra to text me, so I would love a "hello" or an update!

Chedabagar

I am channeling my blog through my father because as I had warned, has been spotty at best (read: five minutes per month IF your day in town happens to coincide with a day that the power is on). Anyway, when you’re in Himalayas, who needs facebook? All my worries about a sense of permanence and being distracted from the now were swept away by a very strong physical sense of the great distance the airplane covered before it dropped us at New Delhi. Eight thousand miles is comprehensive! The landscape here is so vast and the mountains so much greater than you that together they act as a vacuum cleaner and sponge, sweeping away your worries and absorbing them into their mass. Last year I felt I was learning so much about the humanity and the tiny role I played in it, but this year the dominant discovery has been how much I have yet to learn.

Instead of thinking about how this experience will let me take knowledge and awareness back to my “other” life, I realizes THIS is becoming my life, and I can work instead on constantly being the person I’m out here because that IS who I am, not some alter abroad ego. Life is so rich with meaning, the air is thick with it. I think that if you really find meaning once, it becomes easier to rediscover it in the seemingly mundane things you do.

That meaning is personal and highly individual, but you are lucky if you can recall a time when you felt inspired, in awe, and full of purpose – wouldn’t we all be much better members of society if we could approach everything we do with complete reckless commitment? Anyway, dusk is descending and with it the hum of cicadas above the Ramganga river, trees glowing eerily perched above the hilltop, and fireworks going off in the distance to celebrate Deepwali in a smooth transition from the daytime blasts of dynamite that would jolt us out of our haze every so often. I am off to enjoy this in-between stage before night sets in.