Back in Mysore!

Wow. It feels great to be back in India! It was great to walk out of the Bangalore airport at 3 in the morning, after a 22+ hour trip, and be greeted by Kantharaj’s familiar face.

We arrived in Mysore early that morning and I had time to take in the neighborhood. So much has changed since I was last in Mysore, but some things have remained the same. The old man up the street, “Namaste Guy”, greeted me with a very warm welcome. He’s adding a second floor to his house where his son’s family will stay. The family across the street from PHRII, Akash, Arun, Deepthi, and their mom, Divya were around that morning as well. Deepthi is stuyding engineering at a one of the best universities in the state, Arun is studying hard in college and working until 9pm every night, and Akash is dominating other 15-year-olds in shuttlecock (he won 2^nd place at a regional tournament and took home a money prize!). The folks at Vikram Hospital canteen, where I ate 90% of my meals last trip, were surprised to see me back. One guy looked at me and said, “Two eggs and toast!”, which was my breakfast almost every morning (and in India, this is a very unusual breakfast). It felt great being back in the neighborhood.

PHRII blew me away, it’s grown so much! Two years ago, there were about 10 people, now there are close to 25 staff members, not including interns! This is great to see; I’m happy that Purnima and Karl’s hard work is paying off. It was wonderful to see several old faces Satya, Poornima, Fazila, Rani, and Bhavana. Everyoneis doing great!

Since I didn’t get to travel that much during my last trip to India, I’m hoping to get some destinations checked off my last list ASAP. I also have a lot of work to do during this summer (my to-do list keeps getting longer), but I hope to strike a healthy balance between the two. I’ll try to do a post for every trip that I make and scatter some work-related posts in between.

First, some pictures of Mysore.

Devaraja Market – the huge open-air market that takes up a large portion of the downtown real estate. It is such an exciting, vibrant, mesmerizingplace to visit.

Gokulum – My ‘hood and also the place where ALLLLL the yoga people are. People come from all over the world (literally) to do yoga here. It’s pretty neat, but it was so odd at first, seeing so many white people in India. I promised myself to try yoga again one of these days…..

My house - Four rooms and two bathrooms all to myself. You know I'm not going to get any furniture either....

Puppy dog friend! – The neighborhood dog that I see almost every day. It breaks my heart that he’s so skinny. I’m hoping that I don’t find a vet, otherwise I may vaccinate him and bring him back to the States.

Stay tuned, Kerala pictures coming soon…...