Travel Day 975 – Sivananda Ashram, Kerala, INDIA
It was already day three in the Sivananda Ashram and when we were getting up at 5.20am again, I was not only feeling quite sore from two days of yoga and carrying wood, but I felt also bored and tired of the daily schedule…
Walk around the Sivananda Lake
In order to mix things up a little bit, I packed my Tabla and brought it to the morning Satsang to play along. This seemed like a great idea because I not only got to practice a little bit, but also I felt more engaged and included in the chanting which had become a bit old since it was always the same. Luckily once we were done with the music, we learned that something else wasn’t quite the same today: We actually had some free time to ourselves…
Apparently every Friday the Sivananda Ashram allowed all the people to use the day for their own business. There were still the basic classes scheduled, but attendance seemed optional. For us this felt like a great blessing and our first thought was to take a bus to the beach in Kovalam. On a second thought we then rather decided against this idea, simply because we came to the ashram to do some yoga and it felt wrong to now just go the beach…
So we had our usual 7.30am chai, we joined the somewhat empty 8am yoga class, had our 10am brunch and then had some time off until the 3.30pm Asana Yoga class in the afternoon. So we decided to get an exit pass and leave the ashram for a walk to the close by Lions Park. We usually heard those lions growl during the morning meditation and now it seemed a good idea to go and visit them on the other side of the lake…
Walking to the Sivananda Lions Park
Naturally our first stop was the big lake itself which was literally 20 meters away from the ashram and we were stunned when we realized at what beautiful location the ashram was situated. Since we had initially arrived at night, we had obviously no real idea about the surrounding landscape and considering the hot weather, the lake looked extremely tempting for a little dip…
But we had decided to see the lions and so we didn’t want to get distracted and rather followed the boiling hot road around the lake. While we were walking, some buses were already passing by and they were displaying the Lions Park as their destination. Confident that we were on the right path, we continued our sweaty walk until we reached the big entrance gate to the park, but here we were unfortunately in for a big surprise: we were not allowed inside…
As we learned at the gate, the ticket office was located in the 3km far away town and it was necessary to board the bus there to the drive through the park in the bus. This made no sense to us because we were already standing at the gate, but this being India, logic was no good here and we had to reach the 3km far away ticket office first to then come back here again to the same spot by bus…
Swimming in the Sivananda Lake
So it took us a walk back to the ashram, a rickshaw ride into town, even paying for an entrance ticket to go to the ticket office and then purchase a ticket for the bus. Unfortunately after all this trouble the guys in the ticket office appeared to be complete idiots as they smilingly told us all the buses were booked out we needed to wait two hours while they continued selling tickets to local people. Admitting defeat and realizing that we should have never left the ashram in the first place, we walked all the way back to the ashram and tried to make the best out of this crazy day…
And the best be could think of was: skipping all the program and going for an extended swim in the lake! It seemed to be the best thing we had done since we had arrived here and it actually started to rain when we reached the lake, but the cold rain as well as the warm lake water made for the perfect relaxing afternoon we had been looking for all along. The second really nice thing we did was some music playing after dinner until we got yelled at by three different people…
As we thought today all program was optional, we had to learn the hard way that the evening Satsang was pretty well enforced. Well, even if our fun came to a somewhat rude end, we still had a very interesting day at the Sivananda Ashram…
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