Eight Days a Week

The next voice in our celebration of India comes from Kalyani who has been our assistant in Florida for the past three years. She is a remarkable young woman and entrepreneur who has not only owned her own yoga studio, but also worked counseling children with autism and their families. Without further ado...

Eight Days a Week

- by Carlee 'Kalyani' Cohen

I've been in India eight days so far, and - amazingly - my fiancé back in Florida has managed not to touch the block of cheese I left for him.

This bears explaining.

Jeremy works at a local theater, and he and his work friends have this theory: When your significant other is away, you're allowed to sit around in your underwear and eat a giant block of cheese. I've told him more than once that this reasoning is flawed, but before leaving I couldn't help but buy a small block of cheese (French no less!) and leave it in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.

A couple of days ago, though, something happened that made me change my understanding of what constitutes a giant block of cheese:

how does one store a kilo's worth of cheese?

I'm an avid photographer so I've been taking lots of pictures on this trip, snapping pictures with my digital camera but also glad I brought along my film camera as well. (Remember when the word 'film' was implied by camera?) So much is different here. I mean, have you ever come across a mountainside chai stand in the Rockies?

Radha, Gary and Allanah talking with the owner

As you might guess from this picture, there are dogs everywhere in India. Dogs and mosquitoes and cows and goats and horses roaming the streets, which I think is really, really cool (except the mosquitoes, of course):

cars use this road, too!

I really liked this one because he's distinguished-looking, like a chocolate lab:

Sometimes I see things that remind me of home. Jeremy, for example, is obsessed with Converse One Stars and has about a ten pairs tucked into various nooks and crannies around our apartment. When I saw these hanging in a vendor's stall, I couldn't help but take a picture:

What I love about this photograph is that you can see other pairs of Converse in the background, and the shoes are basically strung up like these prayer flags across the Beas River:

how did they do that?

The Beas is the second holiest river in India (after the Ganges), and it runs through Kullu, where we spent a couple of days earlier in the week. This river is so powerful I could feel the energy washing over and through me as I sat to meditate. The sound was immense.

We also took some amazing hikes, which reminded me of this past summer in the mountains of North Carolina (see photos here). The mountains here are waaaaay bigger though, and Gary took this picture of me at one of the overlooks:

I don't remember if the view looked towards Kashmir or Tibet, but it was absolutely breathtaking. There also patches of beautiful marigolds growing in various meadows and yards:

One thing India doesn't have (or at least the areas around Kullu and Manali) is real coffee. Since a person can only drink so much chai in a single day, I've been drinking Nescafé instead:

This is just a snippet of my first eight days in India, and we're back in New Delhi now. The rest of our group arrived last night, and we spent this morning on a short tour that included Gandhi's memorial as well as a local mosque. We have the best tour guide in the world (named 'Luv' – how cool is that!) and leave tomorrow morning for Agra. I can't wait to see the Taj Mahal, especially since we're going to be there for the full moon!

Thank you for allowing me to share part of this adventure, and I hope to write more soon. Peace.

for more on Carlee 'Kalyani' Cohen and her company
Breathe, Release, Repeat: click here