preliminary itinerary

im gearing up for departure (23 days and counting) and wanted to make available some information regarding where i am headed: 

the first two nights i will spend in agra (आगरा), so that i may be blessed with a view of the sunrise over the taj mahal on valentines day. i am staying at a house recommended by the lonely planet travel guide to india. from there, i think that i will make my way back to delhi to fly to mumbai to explore ganeshpuri for a week. i am looking forward to visiting gurudev siddha peeth as well as the area's hot springs and other natural attractions. i am also very excited about visiting the caves on an island off the coast of mumbai - apparently there are some amazing sculptures!

next i will train it to pondicherry (possibly stopping once in the middle of the country on my way there) for my 1 month stay at the mother's house. you really can't beat $6 a day for a private beach front room with a balcony and bath! also, complimentary yoga classes every morning accompanying the sunrise over the sea. 

mid march and my booking runs out at the mother's house, and i have just under 2 weeks to make it to kannur, where i will be studying ayurvedic massage and pancha karma therapies. check out the center's website: www.ayurvedaacharya.com.  i hope to get out and about in kerala, i am most excited about visiting quilon/kollam, as one night a while back a had a dream that seems to match exactly the images and descriptions i have been coming across since deciding to travel to india.

my training ends on the 2nd of may, and for the remaining weeks in india, i plan on visiting hardiwar (हर्दिव) and dharamsala (धरमसाला) (actually, McLeod Ganj) in hopes of catching a teaching of HH the Dali Lama. I do not believe that he will be in residency at the time i will be there, so perhaps i will save that visit for a future date. after the sun and sand of the south, i know i will be looking forward to the mountains and rivers (and relatively cooler temperatures) of the north, most especially the ganges. i hope to leave before the monsoon breaks, but of course i doubt that any adventure in india is complete with out at least one dousing by mother nature, or should i say Indra? (इन्द्र)

truth

i find it fascinating that we rarely (or at least i rarely) look up the actual dictionary definition of common, everyday words. i recently investigated truth, and this is what merriam webster has to say:

1 a archaic : fidelity, constancy b: sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 a (1): the state of being the case : fact (2): the body of real things, events, and facts : actuality (3): often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b: a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true c: the body of true statements and propositions
3 a: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality b: chiefly British : true 2 c: fidelity to an original or to a standard
4 capitalized Christian Science : god
— in truth : in accordance with fact : actuallity

in contemplating truth, and the dictionary, i am struck by how beautiful language is and just how amazing it is that these words we use everyday have arrived at a common understanding (at least amongst general cultural confines). true, for example, follows this etymological path: from sanskrit: daruna (hard), daru (tree); to old irish: derb (sure); to old high german: gitriuwi (faithful); to old engligh: treowe, to middle english: trewe. i don't quite understand the jump from old irish to old high german, yet even if there isn't a jump the path of understandng or other ways of thinking about a given word illuminates the exact qualitative characteristics of the word and hints at the extent of depth it possess. of course, i am not an etymologist, and this is from the dictionary (merriam webster), however imagining that true came from thinking about a tree and its qualities is quite extraordinary. just imagine yourself, sitting under a mango tree with your back leaning against the trunk. you think to yourself, the physical sensation of my body against the tree has these qualities: hard, solid, firm, constant...

in my musings of truth, i am taken by the constant quality, or consistance, that truth implies. however, this is not always the case, as many things that we have said and believed to be true were proven otherwise by either time, empirical observations and logical questioning, or simply more information. it seems as if the designation of something as true or possessing truth attempts to create a lasting impression on or molding of reality: our attempts at holding onto something, whether tangible or not, in this ever changing universe? or are we trying to get at something deeper, some quality/element/aspect of life and existence that is actually, at its base essence, consistant?