Vipassana in Pushkar, India

I have attended and completed (!) a 10 day Vipassana meditation course in Pushkar, India. Before going there I was of course looking for information and other people's impressions, so now I'd like to give something back and write about my experience. I will not describe what Vipassana is about as it can be all found on their website (www.dhamma.org). I want to write about two things: the centre I have been to (since myself when going to do Vipassana in India I was very concerned that I don't end up in some shabby place), and my experience in connection with what kind of person I am. Many people write about their experiences and they vary a lot, but it is out of context of what kind of people they are. For someone considering to attend a Vipassana course this context is important in order to appropriately judge whether it is something for them or not.

The Pushkar Vipassana centre

The centre is located close to a town Pushkar, which is in Rajasthan, a part of India that is very popular among tourist. Rajasthan is located a bit on the north side of India, and it is a desert area. That means hot days and cool nights. In January that means warm fresh days and cold nights.

Location. It's not located very conveniently for accessibility, we took a cab there and that was probably the best choice. It's a bit on the outskirts of a town. On the way back we adventureously took a bus to Pushkar (which stops right in the centre), which was an.. interesting experience. But nothing tragic or not even bad :) just crowded loud and shaky. They also can organize a cab for you if you wanna go back by cab.

Facilities. Of course basic, but not dirty. We were supposed to clean the accommodation ourselves before leaving, I kind of left it a bit cleaner than I found it. The bed has a mattress, also thick heavy blanket. Small flat pillow. We got clean bed linen. I needed a sleeping bag in addition to the blanket though (of course there's no heating). They are tiny houses with 2 beds and a private bathroom in each. I was lucky enough to be alone in mine, only two girls out of around 10 had to share a room (how do you share a room when being forbidden to communicate? According to our course organisers "surprisingly easy", luckily I did not have to verify it :p). It's important to note that all the buildings were built with the intention that they stay cool inside. Stone floors, high ceilings, probably isolated roofs, windows pushed a bit "in" so that they get no sunshine.. As it's possible to imagine in January with 9 degrees at night it was not exactly optimal. The meditation hall got enough warmed with the bodies of participants though. There is a place on the door handle to lock it with a locker (if one brought one), there are mosquito nets in the windows, and there is warm water, from sun batteries. There's a fan on the ceiling, electricity, even a power socket.

The meditation and me

Was it worth it? Definitely yes! But I was quite surprised to find out at the end of the course that few people (aka women, as men and women are separated, so I didn't speak to men) shared my opinion. That is what inspired me to write about my experience in the context of what kind of person I am.

Discipline and tough work. The course is difficult. Every day 10 hours of staying focused, interrupted with few breaks. The longest meditation segment is 4 hours, only with 5 minute breaks, which is barely enough to take a pee (drinking water and taking a pee become an issue to be scheduled btw). Getting up at 4am. Such regime is hard both physically and mentally. This meditation is about doing tedious mental job, and it is tiring, and it is not rewarding. You hear all the time "work patiently, patiently and consistently", and yes this is what you do, minute by minute. You need a lot of inner motivation. Determination. I think I am kind of good with that. It's not that it was easy for me, it was super hard, and for last two days I felt like mentally puking with it, but I knew I can make it till the end. Before my knee accident I used to do jogging 10km and I also ran an (unofficial) half marathon twice, and while the first days felt like 10km runs, the 8th and 9th day felt like mental half marathon. And how one other (dissapointed) person put it at the end "Sometimes you do this enormous effort, like climbing a big mountain, you are sweating and sweating, and everything hurts, but then you get to the top, you look at the view and you know it was worth it. This felt similar, except the last part.". Yes that is what I mean about being not rewarding. Do not expect a feeling of achievement, there is no immediate results. If you usually motivate yourself with expecting a feeling of achievement then you may get very dissapointed unless you change your attitude for Vipassana. Actually Vipassana is exactly about not expecting anything, not craving anything. Let me add one more thing, it is not true that being not a super disciplined person makes it useless for you to go to the course. I guess everyone does as good as they can. Also the fact that you are not allowed to speak with other people but you see them doing well motivates you not to give up. You will actually work much harder than you thought you were able to. But at the end of the course you will not be relaxed. You will be exhausted. But it is the good kind of being exhausted.

Perfectionism and overthinking. This would be a big trap for me, but luckily I read about it in some other Vipassana blog post (thank you someone!). Having perfectionistic attitude is very bad when it comes to Vipassana (is actually bad in general ;)). And also, having this attitude plus knowing that having such attitude is bad (just in order to be more perfect) is still not the point :D As Mr Goenka put it in one of the lectures: "If a house lady wants to wash a piece of clothing, she takes a soap, rubs it into the clothes, and the clothes get washed. She does not need to know about the chemical reactions that occur between the dirt and the soap, she does not need to help those reactions happen. She is just doing a simple activity of rubbing the soap, without caring about how the soap works. That is what the soap was invented for, so that anyone can use it". Exactly same with Vipassana. Just follow the instructions. This technique is made for "an average intelligence person", and is supposed to work just by applying it. One does not have to understand it inside out. And next, it is also hard to keep away from the perfectionist trap. Seeing other people, imagining how well they are doing, comparing yourself to them, even comparing yourself to yourself from 1 hour ago - all dangerous. Any act of evaluation of oneself is already bringing a judgement into play, one of the attitudes that should be avoided. It's hard, as of course you always want to know how well you are doing, where you are on the scale of progress. Just like you want to know how much time is left until the end of meditation hour. Patience, patience and tedious work. Not craving anything.

Not being allowed to speak to anyone (except the teacher or the course helpers). I loved it! No stupid small talks like "how are you?", "how was your day?". Seriously, I hate exchanging such superficial bullshit. And because our days were completely filled with agenda items, if we were allowed to talk, such stuff is all we would be able to speak about. For me - perfect! You get a chance to socialise on the 10th day anyway, so it is not that you will not have a chance to exchange your experiences.

Fear of religious stuff. Many people get suspicious when it comes to anything that is connected to religion or spirituality. I am not sure why that is, but since I was brought up Catholic, I have nothing against people believing in things and telling me about what they believe in. I am not afraid that someone will brainwash me. I do not think that it is so easy to influence my thinking, if I did then I would be more concerned about that than anyone religious or spiritual talking to me. Even though Vipassana is told to be non sectarian and totally religion agnostic technique, you do hear about Buddism beliefs as well as other religions during the evening lectures. Some people could get freaked out by this, or just simply shut down. I liked what one girl said "I am not afraid of fanatic people, I just listen to them and I take what I want, and the rest I do not take". I have a kind of similar attitude. Not that anyone was fanatic there, I'm writing it just to make my point. Also the morning chanting could make someone conscious, but same here, I do not see why I should be concerned. When I now think about it, of course it was kind of obvious that we will hear about Buddism, in the end it is not that easy to separate the two, as the technique was invented in the context of Buddism. For me it was actually interesting to hear about this theory. I understandd it as the historical context. In the end if I ever get enlighted by any chance, and see what Buddha supposedly saw, then I can still change my opinion ;)

Listening to the evening lectures. This guy in the video (called Mr Goenka) really explains everything well. Some things he even repeats multiple times. Yet still I get the impression that some people just don't listen. Either they don't listen or they don't understand, or they don't want to understand. Even having read other people's blog posts about Vipassana I already see that some people do not listen to those lectures and fall into the traps that are mentioned there. Please, listen to the fabulous instructions. I know that they are a bit longish and the guy is not the most concise fellow on Earth, but still, he knows what he is talking about. And he is speaking from experience of teaching many people. He knows what mistakes people tend to make. I am a software developer and it a kind of reminds me of people who do not read the documentation and then are complaining about the piece of software being useless.

Benefits

What are the benefits of this whole affair. While some people write about being high or almost out of the body experiences (btw focusing on it is one of the traps), I think that the sensual or audio-visual experiences are really not that important. It is fascinating though what the brain can start doing when left on its own with minimal input from the outside for long enough time.

There are obvious benefits coming already from how the course is organised. Because you are not allowed to talk, read or write, you give away your mobile phone (!), you really have nothing else to do than focus on yourself. And you have all the time in the world for that. It made me realise how little time we actually have for it in everyday life. I would say it is close to zero. So, introspection, forced introvertism. And it is not that you start thinking about situations from 10 years ago, or you remember about how it was when you were a child, no. You actually live very much in the moment, you go to the meditation hours, go for lunch, take a shower, go to the meditation hours. But in the meantime you react to what happens outside you in your typical way (in the end there are still people around). And because there are no other distractions, your typical reactions are very exposed and clear to you. I became shocked to realise my typical reactions. It's making your problems very visible, as long as you are attentive to them and not get washed away with "omg this is so annoying why did I come here". Better pay attention. One can learn a lot about oneself just because of this.

Then, meditation. First three days is practicing Anapana, which is supposed to help you focus. I am a very "multitasking" person, and usually find it really hard to focus on what someone is even saying to me for more than few seconds. Sometimes I find myself having more than 1 train of thoughs at a time (or at least it feels so to me). These three days actually did make a change. The time of spacing out while watching the evening lecture got descreased from my typical 10-30 minutes to 2-10 seconds! Of course now, after 2 more weeks of vacation this effect is almost gone, but that is because I have not practiced it since then (still planning though, once I get into my normal week work rhythm).

Next 7 days we were practicing the actual Vipassana, which is about doing whole body scan, part by part, while keeping certain state of mind. A side effect of this was that I realised how small I am. I realised that being trapped in all my thoughts and projections about what other people think about me, I imaginerily expanded myself way beyond my physical body. When I entered a room I would imagine I take all the space of that room, while most of the people would not even notice me. Realising that you are only actually as big as your physical body takes away so much weight from you. It made me feel much lighter. Smaller. Humbler.

And now to the real effect of Vipassana. This is what the actual point of this meditation is, though I am not sure if I got that benefit yet. Purification of the mind. While you meditate emotions come to you and those emotions feel very familiar. You are supposed to acknowledge them but not react to them emotionally. I am not sure if what I experienced was caused by Vipassana, since every time I had those emotions coming they still came in response to some external event, though right after meditation. It happened twice, on the 7th and 8th day. And yes, both of those emotions were very intense and they brought up really deep negative beliefs about myself. I have been crying but without tears. Yes, I felt those emotions coming in waves. After the second episode I thought to myself "wow, now I feel like I felt when I was 23". I am not sure if those beliefs got eradicated now. When I think about them now they feel untrue to me, but maybe when I am in some very bad mental state I may still believe in them? The time will show.

Armenia and Georgia trip

We have two friends from Armenia, and one day there was this idea: let's make a trip to Armenia! The two friends we know independently from each other, and they got to know each other through me. We also decided to make a trip to Georgia while we were there. Initially I hoped that the main focus of the trip would be hiking, but since I had my knee injury, the focus shifted from hiking to eating. Both of our friends were in Armenia at this time, spending their vacation there. They said they will organise everything we want and show us around. But not everything what they said about Armenia was how we imagined it. I want to write about what really surprised me, and which things i found really awesome. I will also mention something about Georgia, though that was too little time to gain any cultural insights.

Khor Virap

Pride

Armenians are really proud of their country, of their culture, of their everything. That strucked me especially when I compare it to how Polish people think and talk about Poland. I could even say that this is a complete opposite. Also the behaviour of our friends confirmed this, and since they both work in IT field and are rather smart people, I could not attribute this to primitive instinct of belonging to a group (which some poorly educated Polish people show e.g. during football matches). It is also not the nationalistic kind of pride, more like a very strong sense of where they come from, where they belong, almost as if it was something sacred. On one trip we were told that the national identity of Armenians has always been very tightly connected with religion (as this is where apparently the first Christian churches were built), so maybe that is where my impressions came from?

People

People seemed nice. Of course it is a different thing when you are a tourist in a contry and you actually live there (I can say that especially after moving to Germany), but I cannot help connecting those impressions with what I already know about my Armenian friends. It seemed to me that people treat any other people with respect. I did not see any sign of "I am better than you" attitude, even in man-to-woman relation. That may of course just be only a superficial impression, or biased with the fact that I knew some people from there before. It was also visible that people are not afraid of being not perfect, which is again completely opposite to what I see in Germany. A street musician which sounded as if he just started learning to play guitar, or people singing terribly out of tune in Karaoke parties, dancing and having loads of fun there. I would say that this is way more healthy way of living, and I presume that because of this people there must be happier in general.

Visual taste

A hotel covered in blinking lights, making it look like a toy castle for a princess little girl. Casinos lit up with orange and light green colours. Flea market souvenirs with awful lot of flowers and decorations. Many times what crossed my mind was the word "kitsch", but I suppose that this is just the fact that it is another kind of taste that is foreign to me. But isn't it worth attention, that things like taste in visuals can vary between people, but when you think about music, what is out of tune is simply out of tune for everyone. I also learned once that the notes that sound good when played together sound good for everyone, because of how our brains are wired. It is interesting that it is not so when you think about visual art, especially as sight is supposed to be our primary sense. I remember the girls being amazed at one kind of jewerly where real flowers were sank in some kind of solid transparent medium, and I was thinking that even though the idea is neat, I would never wear something that looks like piece of transparent plastic with a dead plant as a bracelet.

The window of a stationery store..

Food

Since my recent idea of being a vegetarian I did not explore a lot of meat dishes, and meat seems to be main type of food in Armenia. Everyone, but everyone would immediately make jokes when they heard of someone being vegetarian, even the waiter. I did try some meat dishes though, and I can say again that the dish called "barbecue meat" is just awesome, and once I tried it, I do not see any point in eating meat prepared in any other way. Luckily, same kind of meat can be found in Munich's Georgian restaurant, it's a little pricy though.

Armenian barbecue at my friend's home

What I liked the most of all the foods that I have tried was a dish called "barbecued vegetables". Well, one of the mistake our friends made when presenting us Armenian foods, was calling the dishes by their name, for example not explaining that "BBQ vegetables" is not simply vegetables that have been put on a grill for some time, but they are special sort of vegetables, barbecued in certain way. And here it is: tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are put in fire until they are cooked inside and burned outside. Then the burned part is peeled off. Here, surprisingly the burned part is just a layer of the width of the vegetable skin, so it is actually not that much that is left out (I was lucky to help preparing it at my friend's house). Later, the vegetables can already be served, or they can also be smashed together, creating a kind of vegetable mash.

Grilled vegetables in Georgia

Does not look very inviting, but tastes just amazing. You can even feel a tiny bit of the burnt taste but without any bitterness. The whole dish is very juicy and the vegetables look as if they were sank in oil, but in fact it is only the vegetable juice. This dish has so much taste, that you could easily distribute it into 3 times the volume. Definitely the best thing I ate in Armenia and Georgia, and the next thing to do is to learn to prepare them myself.

Another popular dish is "kebab", but it has nothing to do with the kebab we eat in Germany (good that this semantic difference was mentioned to us by our friends :P). It can be made from any kind of meat, and to me it felt like a kind of cooked minced meat that is formed in something of a shape of a long sausage. I am not a fan of this dish, mainly because the meat feels very soft and loose, and this is simply not the way that meat is supposed to be. But I know that some other people loved it.

The remaining dishes, like khachapuri or khinkali can be googled of course ;)

Taking a taxi/car

Taxi is the main means of transport, also within the city, and it's cheap. And again, the semantic difference has not been clear to us. Taxi can mean both the car with a TAXI sign on the top, as well as a kind of private car which you order with a smartphone app. I am still not sure if the latter is a legally approved ways of transportation, but it seems that when people say "take a taxi" they mean this. Even the hostel ordered this kind of "taxi" for us to bring us to the airport.

Apart from taking a taxi, you can also take a car. But that does not mean renting a car, which apparently can be quite pricy there and is not popular at all. What it means is renting a car together with the driver. He will take you wherever you need to go, wait for you, and bring you back. And all is very cheap.

That said, it is interesting how getting to a nearby town becomes same kind of affair as going to the other side of the city. When one uses public transport, getting to another town has to be planned in advance, one needs to check the bus schedules, compare it with train schedules, compare the prices. Here you get into a car and tell them where you want to get. Not very environment friendly, but so convinient.

Traffic

At the beginning I did not quite understand what my friends meant by saying that renting a car and driving in Armenia/Georgia without prior experience of the traffic there (or other 'non-paranoidly-ordered' countries) is a sure way of getting into a car crash. Now I understand. Let me try to explain.

Firstly, it is not that people drive in a mean way, or agressively - which one may assume when somoene says that it is tough. They seem to always pay attention to all the other drivers and pedestrians, and whenever the have to slow down and make space for the other to compensate for their mistakes they do it gladly. People watch out for all other participants of the traffic a lot.

And they do it in order not to have to strictly follow traffic rules. The lanes are just a recommendation, the "don't overtake" signs are just a suggestion, moving your car to the side so much that one wheel almost drives on the grass is perfectly normal manouver, so that the car from the opposite direction can overtake another car next to you, on a two-lane road. Logical, isn't it :P Changing the lanes is also simple, you do not have to change them one-by-one, if you see that there is a passage opened, you just quickly drive across, and of course all other drivers will see that and slow down if neccessary. Indeed, huge room for cultural misunderstandings here :D

Also pedestrians.. I have seen two pedestrians crossing a road outside of a pedestrian crossing in the way that they got to the middle of it, and then stood there and waited for an opportunity to cross the second lane. All is good until now, except there was no grass or any other gap between the lanes. They were just standing on the white double line separating the lanes, in the middle of heavy traffic, and no one even bothered. The cars would just pass few centimeters behind and in front of them, and it seemed that this is a very normal way of crossing the street.

I would say this is a lot of trust for other people, and the traffic seems to function as whole, rather than a set of independent units. It is also less dummy proof, of course.

One more think, honking. Car honking is not just a way of expressing anger or strong disagreement, it is means of communication. They have this funny way of barely touching the wheel, quickly two times, which makes a very indecisive short double sound. From what I got, they use it to say hi, or just to say "hey, here I go, please watch out for me now". Even in Yerevan standing on a hill and looking at the city panorama we could hear the double short honk here and there. I am tempted to say it is almost cute :)

Georgia

The first thing we could say about Georgia was that the capital - Tbilisi - at least its center - is very beautiful and modern looking. Of course not without overwhelming amounts of blinking lights, but by that time we have gotten used to it ;)

Freedom bridge

Tbilisi at night

Cafe at the end of the cable car

The freedom bridge made the biggest impression, by its light effects, even despite looking like a huge snail ;) There is also a park with singing fountains and a caste on the top of a hill, with a cable car going there over the city. Definitely a great place to be for 2 days, but I am not sure how much there is beyond that. Also we could see that it is only the centre that has been strongly invested into, of course the other parts of the city look less stunning.

The food, the food is just amazing. It is hard to answer the permanent question of our friends "is the food better in Armenia, or Georgia, Georgia right?", as we have simply tried just a very limited sample of both. But yes, the restaurant we were taken to by our driver in Georgia was definitely awesome. And yes, the wine in plastic bottle I bought there for 10€ was finished during next 2 days :)

And that's it

I definitely want to go there again, both Armenia and Georgia, maybe best separately. The duration of this trip - 9 days - was definitely not enough. I want to go hiking there and sit in the nature. I want to visit some music/jazz concerts, for which we simply didn't have the time/energy. I would like to hang out with some local people, going to some local events or hikes. So simply feel the place, rather than rushing through with a camera in my hand. But for what we had available I think that this was a good overview :)

Mallorca trip

It's the second year I found myself booking last minute short trip in April. Again it did me good I think. The original motivation was to lie down on the beach for two days not giving a shit about anything. I learned something though - now it's still too cold to bear laying on the beach without actually wearing more clothes than just a swimsuit :D But instead I did a small overview of the island, by car.

Yes, the places that have palm trees can look like this too.. 

I don't think I managed to see the best of it (in the end I had just two days, and no time before to do the preparation), but at least I know some places that are not worth to go to.

There is nothing interesting on the southeast side for example, this one I could have skipped entirely. Maybe except a small city on the coast with a lighthouse, called Cala Marcal. I was lucky to see a very beautiful sunset there, with a lot of pink and violet (even though the coast is facing more east than west), but I guess that was just luck. The city seemed quite nice too.

The natural park Mondrago is on same side of the island, but the area around it consists of a net of very narrow roads with private properties around. Maybe navigating towards the park's tourist information office would have been better idea than brute force using GPS location of the geographical middle of the park :P I never got to the park, but it didn't look too promising, with all the fences around.. later I read on the Internet that it is actually almost completely privatized nowadays - well, that makes sense now :)

Mondrago natural park..

Cove de Drac - a cave. Oh yea, there are also caves on eastsouth side (acually many other sides too). Many of them you access from the water by boat (ahh that would be too much hassle for me), but that one was accessible forom the land. It was okay, at least it was warmer there than outside. But the classical music concert inside it, played by musicians floating gently by on a lit up boats.. that was a bit over the top..

Next stop, Castell de Capdepera. Just because it looked nice from far away :)

I forgot that looking nice from far away, will not look same once I'm there. But the panorama was ok too ;) And weather got a bit nicer, finally.

Next, I decided to check out the viewpoint marked on my map, between Cala Mesquida and Cala Torta beaches. And also check out the Cala Torta beach, as it seemed that there is no road leading there, only hiking path. On the way there was actually the first nice view of the coastline.

Cala Torta

Hiking trail markings

I also saw, for the first time, the real trash thrown by the sea..

The beach itself turned out to have a connection with the road (not marked on my map grrr), and actually there were surfers in the water. But almost impossible to stay on the beach without full clothing, because of wind, and well still not so high temperatures.

North side: Can Picafort and Alcudia. Finally the touristic places. Few years ago I we went on vacation with my mother and sister in Can Picafort, and I was struck by how much it felt like German speaking place not Spanish. Plus there was literally nothing else besides the main promenade along the beach and restaurants there (German speaking), as if the regular inhabitants of Mallorca didn't live there, didn't need to go out or simply have a beer somewhere. So I was curious to check out the nearby bigger Alcudia.

There is a lake in the middle of Alcudia, and actually it did look nice (if you didn't look at the shore that was full of seaweed).

The city was more Spanish sounding.. it's bigger, but still, of course touristic. It is dirtier. The food in restaurants is cheaper and there is more choice (maybe it seemed cheaper because there was more choice;)). There is more of those big hotels complexes with all inside, parks, minigolf, shops, restaurants, outdoor pools, slides, karaoke bars, etc.

I actually stayed in one such big hotel complex, as the last minute price for one night was the cheapest in the area. And that was, a disaster. Fist, no heating, as of course, this is for summer season, when all you could wish for was air conditioning. But not when the temperature at night is around 10 degrees Celcius. Second, dirty. They didn't even bother to clean it properly. Third, everything was old. Like 10 years old at least. Mouldy bathroom. White paint on the door became yellow already. Outside it was beautiful, but inside I had to struggle not to puke. Now I think that Airbnb is far better choice for Mallorca. It those huge hotels they can simply afford not caring.

The promenade looked a bit more modest there as well, though it was painted blue, which gave it an interesting effect.

To compare Alcudia and Can Picafort - Can Picafort is a bit of an artifical place, but it has high standard. It is neat and clean, and a bit overpriced. All you can do there is go to the beach and back, or buy an overpriced meal or drink at the beach. And everything is in German. Alcudia is more of a real place, but also loud and dirty. I think it would be best to stay in Can Picafort and travel to Alcudia from time to time (it's just ~10 km distance).

Ah, and in April the beach in Can Picafort was completely not maintained. I did not know how a non maintained beach looks like before, but now I can say: well it would not be possible to swim there, even for me :D

This is how an unmaintained beach looks like.
Full of.. something that looked like scobs mixed with seaweed.

Far the Cap Formentor - this is the place that is a must see, best during a sunset. About 30 km from Alcudia, it's a piece of headland that goes very high and very far into the sea, with a lighthouse at the end of it. There are many other lighhouses around the island, but this one is located in a realy good spot.

I did not make it to the lighthouse before the sun was gone, but I presume that the view on the lighthouse (well, direction of the lighthouse at least) must have been better than the view from the lighthouse itself. There was also one path up from the place where I took the photo, to some kind of fortification, and I think that place must have had the best view - but it was simply too late at the time I arrived. It was actually funny to see all the people arriving late and running towards the viewpoint, hoping to see at least a bit of the sunset. Many of them were too late :P

The way up there is not the easiest, it's rather steep and on the way back I saw a rock falling off the cliff right in front of my car. But it was definitely worth it :) Pity I didn't arrive a bit earlier.

West side and Sóller. I read on some webpage that Sóller is the home for hikers in Mallorca. And I should have probably arrived there ealier. Many hiking routes start from around there, and they are actually marked, marked in the way you would expect a hiking route to be marked :D It was crazy to park the car there, apparently the infrastructure does not follow the people's interest in the place fast enough.

Coming back from the hike, some cars have gone

The views were cool: mountains plus sea next to it. Plus those funny kind of trees that made the mountains look as if they were covered in some kind of green cotton wool pads.

I managed to do only 1/4 of the whole route as the day was ending and I had to return the car. But I am sure the views would be amazing from top. As it turned out later, I was also doing this hike with ruptured cruciate ligament in my knee. I was happy to get into the car where all I had to do with my lelt leg was moving the foot occassionally.

I am actually happy I did this trip, there will be not many trips now, after the knee surgery :D

Iceland

It's my friends that wanted to go. Bare rocks never appealed to me, and things like ice, snow and lack of people I have already experienced in Finland. But I said I'd join. In the end it's a place that everyone should visit at least once in a lifetime, I thought. But it was worth it, I already know :)

We have planned a nine days road trip around the island. Well, one could say eight days, as last two night we plan to spend in Reykjavik. Today is the 5th day of the trip.

What surprised me is that Iceland can be green in some times of the year and in certain locations. There are actually quite a lot of flowers growing in the summer in the Skaftafel national park, which we could see in the movie watched at the Visitor's Centre. As we came here a bit too early, the grass is just  starting to change colour from beige to greenish. But I imagine that with the green spots next to black rocks it must look striking.

Actually, for a person who has never been in Scandinavia such trip could be a pretty good overview of how the nature can thrive, how contrasting places there can be, how beautiful our Earth can be. Iceland seems to be a combination of black rocks, black sand, blue sea water, gray lakes with white and blue sparkling ice, spots of green and reddish moss, green trees and colorful flowers. And many times you see almost all of those things mixed right next to each other. That's unique, indeed.

Car rental 

What was the new thing I learned was that they explicitly asked us to watch out for the doors, not to be destroyed by strong wind when opened. So we should always hold the door while getting on and off and not leave them open. Also we should try to park against the direction of the wind, so that it does not open the door but closes it.

The woman at the car rental place also told us that the weather in Iceland tends to change rapidly, from a sunny day to a snowstorm. For that reason, every day in the morning, before setting off, we should check a special website for the road conditions and weather (it's also possible to call a special number, in case we don't have access to the Internet).

We asked whether the woman was Icelandic and she said she's Swedish and lives here since 1,5 years, because of a relationship. But she does not like the weather. "It's too windy", she said.

First impressions

We landed in Reykjavik, and our trip started there, we were going to the south and next to the east.

During first two days we could not get rid of the impression that we are on a different planet, something like Mars, but less reddish perhaps. The ground and the sand here are always black. Around us we could see gray and brown hills, with rocks and stones of different sizes scattered around. Also light conditions are very typical for Scandinavia, which means that the colours appear very vivid and they are of high contrast. Also the sun is shining at a lower angle, so everything casts a shadow, even the single small stones. All that gives the impression of being on another planet, indeed.

Lava fields

That's the Mars in the full version :D 

We found it surprising that there was absolutely no place to pull the car over. For a few kilometers all we had in front of us was a narrow elevated road with black fields of rough stones on both sides. We were not sure how risky it would be to simply stop at the side of the road, letting the car stand half on the road and half on the stones. Finally, almost at the end of the lava field, we found a short segment of a side road, filled with the very same stones. Very carefully we drove in there. But as soon as we got off the car it became clear that the stones are very stable. They are really rough, and have very irregular shapes, so when they lie on each other they hold together really well. They were so rough that they quickly made the skin on my hands rough too, just because I was touching them.

The spaces between the rocks were filled with the black sand.

But the nature is already taking over. You could see bunches of moss and other unidentified plant like organisms, trying to  grow in the rocks.

The thing in the middle is just rubbish though :P Probably blown over from some farmer's field.

Seljalandsfoss and other waterfalls

The Seljalandsfoss was a waterfall that was.. well, like a waterfall. A big one. A lot of tourists walking around, taking uncountable number of pictures, selfies, photos of each other, photos of the waterfall, photos of the fields surrounding the waterfall from behind the waterfall.. Oh, as it was possible to walk behind the waterfall, and even though the way there was covered in thin, perfectly slippery layer of ice, all the people, in all kind of shoes were slowly walking there and back. I was really surprised that no one fell into the water, including myself.

That was not the interesting part though. When I took the path leading from the big waterfall along the mountain, I ended up at the front of something that looked like a cave. And inside the cave was another waterfall, maybe a bit smaller than Seljalandsfoss, but still looking impressive, and it was possible to come very close to it. And the ground was not slippery, only wet. And, most importantly, there was no crowds of people around.

Besides that, there's a lot of waterfalls in Iceland..

Recently I understood that I do not need to wait for anyone to start living the life I want to have. Just like I do not need to wait until I retire until I start travelling and enjoy my life. It's just an illusion that at some point in life I would meet some special person who would allow me to be myself and do what I want to do. First of all, almost no one ever meets such fitting person, second of all, I do not need such person to start living. Maybe now, soon at the age of 30, is the right time to actually start?

Another thing is, why have I been stopping myself from being myself until now? In many things most of the people I find so different from me and at the same time so alike (similar to reach other), that in some strange way I assumed that everyone is forcing themselves to be who they are - and I  tried to do the same. But, the heck, why? I still don't know how many people are actually forcing themselves and how many just are who they are, but that's not relevant, what is relevant is that I don't have to be like the most of the people. Understanding the meaning of these trivial words gives me so much power, so much inner motivation, and so much of the feeling of happiness.

Rainbow gathering - The astrologist

I was just heading home. I decided to walk, since finding out which car will go first was impossible. "Yes we go" "When?" "Soon". "Sorry we decided we go later". So I was walking and after maybe 40 minutes someone stopped, a van. A woman and an old man inside, both very happy. The woman immediately got off the van, and got back in in the back, saying that it's too cluttered to let someone in there. So I sat in the front. I learned that the man is from Belgium and the woman is German. They both lived in Portugal since years. They were constantly switching the languages that they spoke: Portugese, German and English. Sometimes they would switch the language in the middle of the sentence, another time they would just insert an expression from another language in the middle of the sentence. They asked if it's fine if we stop for a coffee at the coffee shop, that was separating the 5km country road leading to the camp from the main village road. I said yes and soon they were ordering something which I think was coffee with milk. But there was a lot of milk in it, the fluid was almost white. I went to toilet and when I went out they were no longer at the counter. I went out and I found the German woman sitting on a bench in front of the shop, talking with those men who typically sit in front of village bars. In fact, the coffee shop looked a bit like a bar also. I sat on the bench next to her.  She was talking with the men and laughing, again switching among the three languages, as it turned out that the man sitting next to her is also German. She sounded as if she knew them for years but they just met. Then came the man and started talking to me. He said that this year the gathering was too confusing, there were too many people and too many new people coming just for short time, thinking that it's like some kind of festival, without trying to understand what rainbow is about. So also there were less workshops, as it was difficult to get the people organised. He said he would usually give an astrology workshop, asking people about their birthdays, and ordering them on the ground according to the places where their planets currently are. And then next day he would move the positions of people a bit, according to how the planets moved. He said that people can then observe how they influence each other, who is standing closer, who is standing opposite, and can make a connection with how they feel about those people, whether they get along or not. I thought that's a very interesting idea.

We then continued but first after we got in the car the man would be finishing off making his joint. The woman yelled "let's go let's go let's go" and the man silenced her by saying "Are you in a hurry?" with the tone of voice suggesting that being in a hurry would be a very bad thing to do. The woman then excused herself saying that it's just coffee that made her hyperactive. After few minutes we drove off, with the old van, that was making all strange kind of noises, and we were going 40 km/h.

The man asked me what I was doing in life. That turned out to be difficult to explain. He kept on asking what do I actually do at work throughout the day, and he could not understand how one can manage to spend more than 1h at the computer daily. He said that after one hour he feels sick and is done for the rest of the day. And that he loses all inspiration in front of the computer screen.

We were approaching the town they were supposed to leave me. Then the man said I could actually stay at their place, few kilometres further, and take a bus from that place the next day. Because he sounded so confident about the bus I took the risk and said yes, but soon I realised that we were definitely not on the same page. It turned out they don't know exactly when the buses go or how often they go. Soon it also became clear that we were talking about two-three buses during the whole day,  rather than a regular connection. And still I had to change buses two times on the way. So when they realised I'm going to Faro the next day because of a flight, they got a bit worried and started to think how to help me. For example the woman strongly advised that I hitchhike, as there was some event in Faro the next day in the evening. "But her flight is at 2", said the man. "But she could easily get a ride of she waited till the evening", the woman replied. Next she offered me a ride but on Wednesday, while my flight was on Tuesday. That did not feel good at all. A weird idea crossed my mind and I asked "Do you maybe have Internet at your place?" "no, Internet we don't have". We stopped at a gas station to ask about the time of the morning bus and luckily it was 7:20. In such case I could even hitchhike, I thought. Then came the second question, as after three days of rolling in the mud I really need to make myself look decent enough to be let inside the plane: "..and do you have a shower at your place?" "well, not really. . It's a kind of solar shower. . Which means if you're lucky the water is warm and if not then it's really cold."... "ok great", I thought. "What did I expect, going with two hippies.. a living room and big TV set?"... i started preparing myself mentally for a freezing cold whole body shower. "It does not matter I have been freezing for last three nights in the tent, no..", I tried to convince myself.

We got to the place. It turned out that "our place" did not include the woman and she came only for a tea. besides that the place was.. a house with potential. A country house with big veranda with walls made of glass windows, so that in the end it looked like a greenhouse. The floor inside was just soil and/or cement and there were two big wooden tables. And an old sofa that has been used by the dog a lot. And chairs, of course. The man said the first thing I should do is to take the shower, while the water may still be warm. We got in the yard and I was presented the solar shower. Among the hens walking, there was a wooden plate, one meter in diameter, directed in the way that it was facing the sun, and a garden hose, convoluted into a spiral, fixed on top of the wooden board. "Even if the water is warm there's not much of it" I thought. But I undressed and prepared the shampoo. I opened the tap a little so that the water ran very slowly. As soon as I realised that it's warm I spontaneously decided to start from my hair and to worry about the cold later. But the cold didn't come. I finished washing my whole body and the water was still warm. Even more, it was hot. It was just right temperature for a hot shower! I finished but of course I had no towel with me. I looked at the dog who came to me, I was standing there naked, and he wanted something. He wanted to play. He brought a big cone with him, apparently his toy. He made it so obvious that he's asking me to play with him that I could not say no. I was dressing up, throwing the cone every few seconds, and the dog was running after it to bring it back. I even tried pretending that I'm throwing something to see if he still runs but no, he saw I did not throw anything and was looking at me with the "wtf" face expression. Once I also threw the cone against a tree and after he didn't find it on the ground he started looking up at the tree, to see if it got stuck there. It was a very smart dog!

After I finished dressing up I got into the house. The woman was still there but soon she decided to go home. The man asked me if I want a joint also, I asked for a short one and with less tabaco.

While having smoked a bit of weed I observed a very important thing: the mind remembers shitload of things and makes connections between them. I don't know why, but it seems that if I smoke, I become much more aware  of these connections. Such various thoughts run through my mind that it's amazing that the mind has connected those things, as me myself would never think of it. Many memories were crossing my mind that I would never think I still remembered. And when I was aware of those connections (it was something like 3 thoughts per second), then the mood of the current situation, my perception of it were becoming really clear. And also clear became all the projections. And I saw that there's shitload of them, shitload. And I bet everyone's mind is doing it. Just subconsciously. The brain is like super sensitive computer, constantly gathering information, and then replaying everything that can be in any way relevant, that is in any way connected. Probably this is also how the dreams work. But one thing I understood is also how much we are influenced by the past. There's still so much to learn, to be able to recognise such mini projections on daily basis, without smoking anything. I bet it's possible.

We started cooking. At least we tried. soon it turned out that there's no gas anymore and we had to use a small camping gas cooker. Also there was no tomato sauce. But in the end we managed to prepare something that tasted pretty okay. Also at some point some people came into the house with their children, they were sometimes speaking to us, sometimes just doing their stuff. They cooked something for themselves too. The man asked if I wanted him to check my real zodiac sign and it's characteristics, that is based not only on date of birth but also exact time of birth. Of course I wanted to. I asked my mother via sms about my time off birth. He said he needs to open the android application, where he can see how the planets were aligned at this time. He asked me where I was born and instead of searching the coordinates he just put them out of the memory in the input fields. I was shocked. "How can you possibly know the coordinates by heart?!" "I can. I was a ship captain". He said he knows the coordinates of the main cities by heart. And that's how it was easier for him to learn about astrology later. He was completely distrusting the things like horoscope, until he got one of astrologist telling him about his sign. He said he fell off the chair then.

Rainbow gathering - The guy with parmesan

That was the second food circle, but it already got late at night. And cold. I was freezing, and considering to skip the whole thing, until i heard that that evening they had pasta. Pasta, warm pasta, after eating sprouts, half raw wheat and salad all the time. I didn't even know that it was allowed to eat pasta. I forced myself to wash one plate and started to look around for a place to sit, even though I didn't feel like sitting on the cold ground at all. And then I saw him - a guy sitting next to a candle, on a blanket. I didn't even hope for the blanket, but sitting next to a candle would give me at least a bit of illusion of warmth. But then he invited me to sit on the remaining half of the blanket. "But, is it free?", I could not believe. Yes it was free. It was so much warmer on this simple thin blanket. I was already feeling much better, it was like little tiny light in the tunnel of desperation, desperation because of the cold. The guy said he was from Germany. Like most of the people he didn't wear shoes. I asked him how he is not cold. He said he feels the cold but it does not bother him. That I should learn it. That it all depends on your attitude. If you tell yourself "I'm so cold", then you will be cold. Instead you should think "now I want to get warm", and you will get warm. And indeed, all the people around were dressed almost same like in the day, and most of them were barefoot. And no one seemed cold. But I know that it was freaking cold on that night. Maybe between 5 and 10 Celsius.

The first dish arrived, the salad, and I saw the guy taking something out of his pocket and cutting pieces of something into his dish. "Ginger?" I thought.  "Maybe some special root?". I looked closer and it was. . simply cheese! "Cheese?!" "Yes, parmesan, you want some?" "Oh, this is cheating:p" "no, this is not cheating,it's enjoying life:p The blanket is enjoying life as well". That was such a nice accent, a bit of normality among the weirdness of the whole thing.

The next day I took a closer look at the guy in the daylight. He was wearing a gadabout style hat, with kind of long hair braided in thin parts, with different sorts of beads on them. Colourful and lively. Very strong and consistent image. And very positive.
- "..and so sometimes I don't understand those people. I ordered the coffee and the man behind the counter was like 'but you have to pay. NOW' - as if I was going to grab the coffee and run away with it. What the hell. So I paid and I saw that there's kitchen and a sink and some glasses. So I go inside to drink some water and then someone stops me, and says I can't enter there. They call the manager and he says 'you have to leave this place, you can't enter this area without shoes' 'but, eee I'm waiting for the coffee I just ordered' 'then can you please wait outside' well so I asked 'can I have a takeaway coffee at least:D'". Someone else added "Yea exactly, and can you imagine you actually have to pay to pee? Who invented that?? If you don't have money you can't pee or what?" "Yea every time I go through the gates I feel life there's a camera watching whether I paid 50 cents for my peeing, haha:D I always smile and do a stupid face to them:D". Someone else added "Where do they want me to pee if I don't have money? Shall I go there and pee in front of the door, if they don't let me in? :p".

The only time the cigarettes contributed to my health

As it turns out, cartoon boxes are very good in isolating the cold from the groud when you try to sleep in a tent withuot a sleeping pad, when it's so cold that you are able to see your breath. They saved my life :)

Rainbow gathering in Portugal

No, it's not about gays and lesbians, it's more like hippie style community gathering for few weeks to live together in the nature. I have heard about them by accident and since then I knew I have to check this out. I had no idea what to expect..

The camp was located deep in the middle of nowhere, in Portuguese countryside. If you didn't have a car the only way to get there was a lot of walking and hitchhiking. First you had to arrive to a small 5 000 inhabitant town, then find a car that would take you to a tiny village, then from this village you had to continue 6-7 km on a country road, and muddy roads, to end up in the valley.

The camp consisted of few bigger tents, many of them were actually just the tent roofs, with a campfire underneath, and the small tents of people. There was a tea tent, chai tent, healing tent, children tent, and the kitchen tent. In the middle of the camp was the big fireplace where people gathered two times per day to sing, om and then eat together.

First thing that surprised me was that it was not allowed to use soap. Or shampoo, or toothpaste. Nothing chemical, unless it's some special biodegradable solution. And of course I did not bring any such with me. But there were replacements. I didn't know it before, but ash works with dirt exactly like soap: it binds particles of fat, and dirt is basically fat. So there was a process for cleaning everything with ash: from doing the dishes to washing your hair. Since the ash was used for cleaning, nothing else than wood could be burned in the fireplaces. For brushing teeth one could use coconut oil.

The people could walk around naked. Some people were always naked some were never some were sometimes. When people showered then they were naked of course. After a while it feelt very normal, and I noticed an interesting phenomenon: after looking at, speaking with the person who is naked, you get a fuller picture of this person in your head. I realised that clothes make us all look very similar. They hide big part of the body, they hide the body shape, the skin colour, the skin facture, they hide for example how the skin around the stomach ripples when people sit down. When you see the person naked you see the full person, it makes up a consistent whole. Also, when people wear clothes they sometimes wear clothes that don't match them. Or they don't feel comfortable in. But the body always matches the owner, and therefore it is always beautiful. There is no ugly bodies. We made ourselves such a matrix with this obsession about how we look, unbelievable!

And kids, there were also kids. Of various ages, even a mother with a 1 year old baby. The children really seemed to have a good time there, they were constantly running around without having to do anything specific.

Alcohol was not allowed there, also no synthetic drugs. Having stated that it's worth mentioning that marihuana is not considered drug but a medicine ;) Also, all the meals were vegan, often raw, often with oatmeal or soaked grains, with a bit of sand or dirt that you could often feel between your teeth. But I agree that it's not a bad thing to have contact with dirt sometimes, to be more resistant to various allergies for example. Also, while at the beginning it was difficult for me to eat this food at all (it felt like eating grass), after a while I realised that it keeps me full even though the portions were small. And I even missed this food after coming back home! 

About the people - there were all kinds of people. Just like in society there's all kinds of people: smart people and stupid people, kind people and jerks, people with personality problems, and finally people who did not completely fit there. Also many people with unsatisfied need for belonging somewhere, I think such groups attract them. Also people with low self esteem who like to present themselves as expert in something, in order to compensate for their low self esteem. And appearing as expert in paranormal stuff seems easy for them I think. No one can prove then wrong. But I think you can still spot them easily, by amount of 'I' and 'me' in their sentences.

What I really liked was the quality of human interaction. There was no empty meaningless behaviours. If someone didn't feel like speaking to you they wouldn't. They didn't care to "make new friends", to appear social, they didn't care about none of those superficial things. They wouldn't ask a question about which they're not interested to hear the answer. And they were always smiling at you and they were always ready to help you. And find you a place to sit among them, share their food, offer you tea. Another thing is that I never felt judged by where I am from or how I look, which I feel that normally happes a lot.

At the last day what struck me is that all those people seem to be at some point of a process. I am talking about magnitude of years here. Some are just starting some are pretty far. Some will never get there :p This process seem to be transforming people. And those transformed people - they are all so different from each other! like completely different style, different way of speaking, of dressing, of everything. I never saw such variety of people. I never knew people can be so specific, individual, yet each is different. As if each of them was a different character from a different children fairy tale. Each bringing a different mood, but specific only for this person. It's amazing what civilisation did to us. We all became copy paste.

They call the people from the city, and the city itself, civilisation, they call it Babylon. And they differentiate strongly between "we" and "them". But it's not the racist style differentiation, it's indeed a huge difference in the way of thinking and in the realities that the both groups live in. And it's not that there is some hate or dislike (except some pathological individuals of course). It's like two parallel worlds, and people from one world cannot understand how the people from the other world can at all live there. But it came to my understanding that both groups are valid. Maybe one is significantly smaller but they are equally valid. Let's start from a simple example: there's many people who cannot imagine that they would ever go camping. Because there's dirty. Because there you sleep on the ground. And there can be bugs in the tent. And some people are even more scared as believe you can actually die from being bitten by a beatle or an ant. And some people cannot imagine bathing in a cold river. Because it's cold. You can get a cold and die. We go further: it's not possible to live outside for long time. Because there's no heating, no electricity. How are you gonna cook? Eating only bugs or plants? Impossible, you would die of some disease. Drinking water from the spring, without cooking it? Impossible, you can die from it, it's not been processed properly. Not using soap? You would get some disease and die. And slowly, slowly we are coming to a conclusion that a human is not able to survive in wilderness. That we are not able to survive without factories, plastic, and chemical industry. But wait, didn't we come from wilderness? ... such a paradox, such an illusion that we live in. Oh and it's so true! I trust much more something that's been processed than something coming from the nature. But wait  minute - what the heck, why? Isn't it... silly? 

Isn't it silly to work 8 hours per day 5 days a week to later be too old to enjoy whatever you could do with the money you earned.. There's so many contradictions we don't notice. We work to earn vacation, so we spend a lot of time to earn a tiny bit of time. We do this all thinking we exchange it for security, but it's false security. I have health insurance but it can happen there will be no place in the hospital, or the doctor will mistreat me, or even kill me if they can get the organs - dead people don't speak anyway. Do I trust the health care? No I don't. I put my money in the bank, can I trust the bank? No, there can be another crisis. Or the bank can be a false bank. I pay for my pension, can I be sure I will get pension at all? No. So what kind of security is it? Imaginary, I guess;) Illusion.. Food, can I have food without working? So much food is getting wasted nowadays. We have too much food around here. I spoke with one guy who said that it's not a problem to find food. And he was not even skinny. He has a shelter - a tent. He finds fresh water in streams. And he needs nothing else. Why is that we do need more? And who is happier? As indeed, all those people were always happy.