A day in the Life

Yesterday was beyond annoying. Although IndiaRail is the number one employer, not in customer service but number of employees, in the world they are surely not the most efficient. Taylor and I have had to make certain arrangements in order to ensure seats on trains two week from now. Our haphazard way of train travel may be at the end of it rail, at least for the holiday season. Everyone wants to travel and in a country with over a billion people things can get kind of tight. So here is the plan for the next little while. On December 15 we take a 6 hour bus to Ahmedabad from Udiapur. I will let you in a few things about buses later but for now imagine bumpy roads, no bathrooms, and keep in mind what I wrote previously about traffic laws, or rather, guidelines. Moving on, later on the day of the 15th we take a night train to Diu which is an ex-Portuguese town on the coast. Our first taste of beaches. From there, on the 22nd we head back to Ahmedabad for two days before heading to Mumbai to meet up with friends, Sarah Williams and Kristina, for Christmas.
We have to do it this way because we cannot get from Diu to Mumbai. In the next 2 weeks we have more than 65 hours of travel time but it will all be worth it.

So yesterday was not super fun. Getting all this organized via Internet was a hassle. We have to find the trains, find availability and do 10 other things at the same time in order to book tickets. It all worked out. Last night in order to make up for the days' blandness I decided to drink 5 kingfisher. Delicious.
I have been doing yoga for the past two mornings'. Yoga always makes my life better, ever since I started doing it about 6 months ago. I plan on doing much more and taking it quite seriously but that is another post on another day. Yoga makes my life much better, You should try it. So, back to what I was saying. This morning I woke up at 8 a.m. to make it to a 60min yoga class that began at 8:30. I followed this with the usual street breakfast and Chai. The breakfast consists of a Samosa crushed up with a nice hot chili curry sauce poured on top, served in a leaf bowl. This, with Chai, costs a total of 10Rs, the equivalent of 25 cents. I came back to the hostel room to read a bit and figure out a game pan from the rest of the day. It was only 10 a.m. at this time. I read till about noon and then decided a nice massage, having never head one before in my life, would help me figure stuff out. So for 800Rs, about 15$ I got an hour massage. As relaxed as I was I did not feel the need to shave myself so I went to get a shave. I have not shaved myself since I arrived in india. A straight razor shave done street-side is 30Rs, another 30 cents. It is clean, cheap, smooth, and they massage your face and head to boot. It is incredible. Tonight, after writing you this blog post, while feeling extremely relaxed and refreshed, I plan on watch octopussy, the Bond film. Normally I would not be watching an american film in India but I am Udaipur now and part of the film was shot here. Feeling good!