This time last year I was in Kerala, with my mum, about midway through our yoga holiday. I was just beginning to get used to the routine. Waking up at 5.30am, for the 6am satsang (an hour meditating as the sun rose over the lake and the mountains, and the lions in the nearby safari park started their distant roars, and then some chanting, which didn't feel at all as stupid as I thought it would. Much like morning assembly, in school). Then hot, sweet chai (tea with milk, sugar, and spices, mainly cardamom) to get us going, and then a couple of hours or so of yoga asanas (the stretching stuff).

Then the main meal - rice pancakes (dosas), various vegetable dishes, pakoras, that sort of thing. Then free time - usually when we did karma yoga, which for me was usually helping to sweep the yoga platform by the lake. Then we'd go sit in the cafe for a while and have fresh fruit juice and Indian sweets, and write postcards or chat. Then every day there'd be a lecture on aspects of yoga, and then more chai. Sometimes I went to the coaching class (I was determined I'd be able to do the Raven by the end of the course - a thing where you crouch down and balance on your hands. And I did get it, eventually). Then two more hours of asanas, then the evening meal. Then after some more free time, there would be evening satsang, and lights out at 10pm.

Oh, oh, oh, it was lovely. It took a lot of getting used to, as this is nothing like my ordinary life. But I learnt a huge amount - what I'd thought of as yoga is actually just a part of the whole. The asanas, the stretching stuff - the stuff most Westerners think of as yoga - are mainly to get the body to a suitable state for sitting perfectly still and meditating. Which was damn difficult. Only once, in two weeks, did I manage to stay still for a full hour - and even then it was nigh-on impossible to get my mind to shut up for even a second. I'd be trying to quiet my mind, to empty it of thoughts, and then I'd become aware that my leg itched, maybe it's a mosquito, and that the person shifting constantly to my left is really getting on my nerves, and dammit, I'm thinking again, om, ommmm, quiet, ooh I can hear a bird...

I came back feeling like I'd been away for months - in reality it was just two weeks. At work, people were surprised I was back already - to them, two weeks had flown past. And two weeks to me at work is the same - it goes at hyperspeed. As did my Christmas holiday this year. I don't know what it was about those two weeks in India that seemed to stretch out and expand - it wasn't boredom; I was always doing something. It was somehow easier to be aware of the passage of time - to be conscious of myself, now, at that moment, and not to be living for a future time when I could go home and relax. Nor was I losing myself in my computer, or books, or TV, or music. I was just... existing.

It also feels like I got a lot done, during that time. Kerala was similar but different to my mental image of India. It had tropical jungle, insane cities (cabs were terrifying until you learned to relax and put your trust in a higher power, i.e. the driver), hippie beaches, serene temples... Everywhere was colours - the women's dresses, the paintings on every possible surface, the flowers - and the smells - jasmine, cardamom, dust, cows, coconut, banana trees...

We had a three-day trip out of the ashram to visit some of the local area. Due to the ashram guaranteeing our behaviour, we were allowed into several temples where tourists normally don't go. We bought saris in the most fashionable emporium in Trivandrum - floors and floors of gorgeous saris, salwar kameez, and all the accompaniments. We did asanas at dawn on the beach (and I set my mat on a bed of prickles - I didn't realise at first, and then I really, really noticed. The mat is still faintly bloodstained).

We saw the 'world's most ancient martial art', including a fight with urumi, or 'long, flexible swords' - which quite frankly scared the crap out of me. We bathed under a sacred waterfall. We walked barefoot through a wooden palace, on a floor made from charcoal and egg-whites. We bathed, pre-dawn this time, in the sea at the very tip of India, where the 'three seas' meet - the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal - and then visited a temple on a tiny island just off-shore.

It was quite an experience - I was totally in love with the place by the time we had to go. I'll go back when I can afford it - hopefully spend a little longer there, next time. Never did go and see those lions... After two weeks there, it was a real shock to come back to London in January. And then I watched Stargate for the first time... *happy memories* 

I come very, very late to most fandoms.

Funnily enough, this year my brother is in India, on holiday with his girlfriend, who has family there. He was there over Christmas - the first time I've not seen him at Christmas, which was... odd. We don't spend a lot of time together when he is in the country, but I still missed him.

Okay, enough wittering. That's got my writing frame of mind switched back on, now back to work.