It is our second full day at the ashram…or maybe it’s the 26th day?  It’s hard to tell in the lassitude created by heat that presses on the body like a hot steamy X-ray blanket, or the hours of meditation, the already-endless lentils and sweaty yoga.

Or maybe it’s the cockroaches in my room that have me feeling like these last two nights have felt like they’ve lasted forever. I am all for the idea of live and live…unless it’s going to bite me or creep me out…then? The only good cockroach is one firmly crushed beneath my Birkenstocks.

Apart from the aforementioned? We’re actually having a lot of fun. The food is actually very tasty and quite the contrast from the (will that be cheese, or cheese & ham, or just a ham sandwich?) that seemed to be the only lunch choice in Wales. Though I suppose here, it will be (will that be lentils or lentils or perhaps lentils?)

Last weeks’ four-day monsoon wiped out a lot of the ashram lights and power, so the WiFi is not working at all meaning my laptop has become a paperweight. There will be no photos until it’s somehow cranked back up again.

Meanwhile, we have this little computer room with fans going overtime to try to move that heavy air and quite lovely computers to boot. Susan Anne is in a room called Surrender. Viola Ann’s room is called Beauty. Karen Ann’s is called Confidence and my room (guess you know my middle name is Ann by now?) is Generosity. (I’m thinking I got the generous portion of cockroaches as the other Ann’s have none.)

It took 7 hours to drive here from Delhi…a distance of around 250 kms. Our driver was calm, confident and smooth as he wove and dodged trucks coming head-on, cows, potholes the size of donkeys and water-buffalo-drawn carts.

All in a day’s work for him, and a much better job than the women we watched moving the road-building dirt in baskets on their collective heads.

We are so blessed.