November 10, 2007
David's mentioned our visit to the ashram, and I just cannot tell you how nice it was to be somewhere we weren't constantly being buffeted by the sound of horns and screeching tires/brakes. And the air was better and we could see green stuff like grass and trees! I felt better after just an hour, so you can imagine how chipper I was after six days. One of the disappointing aspects of the ashram's location, though, is that guests and residents are not allowed to wander in the foothills at random. As committed hikers, David and I were a little nonplussed by this. David joked that India has so many people it has had to shut off its mountains, as it has with some of its beaches. (Trust me, you don't want to swim in raw sewage.) We would have been even more upset, though, if we'd been allowed to camp in the foothills. I know, that sounds weird coming from us, but India, as it turns out, does not have a camping culture, so we left one of our big packs (for the record, I should confess that it was mine) full of our camping gear and a few other "unnecessary" items at Uma's, and have been traveling with just the daybags and David's pack. We feel so much lighter!
Anyway, as part of the program we took at the ashram, all 32 participants and several volunteers got to take a short hike up to a place where one of the streams created several pools. We had a lovely few hours getting wet and eating lunch. But, it turns out the real reason the foothills are forbidden walking territory unless with a guide is because of the elephants. Sometimes male elephants experience something called musth during which village people have been killed. And here I always thought of elephants as peaceful. Much to our disappointment we didn't actually see any elephants. Or tigers. Not that the tigers were a possibility, since they don't live in that area, but wouldn't that be neat? We would both really like to see tigers and elephants in the wild, but since camping in the national parks isn't really on, I think we'll just have to content ourselves with the specials we've been watching on the Discovery Channel. Ah, satellite TV--the only plus to having to stay in hotels all the time.
