Sivananda Ashram, Madurai

I was looking forward to gettign to the ashram and it did not disappoint!  What a great place to deepen a yoga practice and have great food at the same time!  It had been a while since I woke up daily at 5:30 for meditation and followed it with a full 2 hours of yoga...not to mention 2 more hours in the afternoon and often another meditation.  I arrived right at the end of a Teacher Training Course and got to join in on some of their classes which was a challenge... 

I had classes with a wide variety of teachers, learning much each time...  It is great to see how different people can change the emphasis of a class and make something different in the same format...

After 13 days I decided to head out as the heat was unbearable... The whole day, pretty much the time between the Asana classes it was too hot to be outside or inside... I would try to find some shade for reading but it was quite crazy!  I met someone who said he was going somewhere cold with mountains and hiking so I headed off with him...

The day we met we had headed into Madurai to use the net and see the temple which was quite impressive.

We took off the day the new TTC started, after seeing the morning Puja, where the newbies were initiated...it was a neat Hindu purification ceremony led by the priest...

The trip to Ooty required a long train ride, a night at a hotel and then a special train ride up into the mountains...

It so worked out that the Gold Medal Olympic hockey game was to be played at 1:30am the night we were in the hotel!  I looked through all the channels and found it on ESPN very blurry but visible!  I actually felt like an American as I couldn't see the puck!  So I had 1 hour of sleep that night and then woke up and watched 3 periods of hockey...It looked like the game would finish just in time for my train but alas it was tied up right at the end!  For a while I was worried but we scored 5 minutes before I had to leave for my 5:15am train!  How perfect!The only imperfect part was the announcer for the game! He was British and had no idea about anything to do with hockey...It was a laugh and my roommate was British but he slept through the game...otherwise I would have been shitting on the announcer to him non stop...After the first period he said how they had played a great half!  Man oh man!
Pics and more to come soon!