Yoga Teacher Training - Pavahari - 4th April 2014

I took these photos of this women as she pulled weeds from a patch of dirt next to our tent high above Gupta Kashi in the norther state of UK in India, in the higher hills below the mountains of the Himalaya.  
Her name Pavahari, a name from the Bhagavad Gita, she proudly told me...I later found it in chapter 9 verse 30.  I wanted to take her picture and at first she angrily refused, only it seems, long enough to use her scythe to cut some 'weeds' and a small leafy branch from a nearby tree to quickly fashion a wreath of flowers...to then stand proudly so I could take her picture.  Of course I must note that I was 'In Silence' throughout this period.


Location: Guptkashi, Uttarakhand 246439, India

Popular posts from this blog

An Ascent of Sunanda Devi (Nanda Devi East)

Image
Climbing past the gendarmes between Camp 1 on Longstaff Col and Camp 2.  I am climbing in the middle distance ANZAC Day always bring back all kinds of memories, some good and some less so. Just recently I had some old slides scanned which arrived just before ANZAC day. It was ANZAC day 22 years ago today that I received a call to get on an immediate flight to India to join a Defence cooperation exercise in India which was to involve an ascent of Nanda Devi. The mountain stands at 7816 metres is it protected by a ring of peaks of which 12 are over 6,400 metres. The first ascent was by Bill Tillman and Noel Odell who were able to enter the Nanda Devi Sanctuary via Rishi Gangi Gorge. The ridge between Nanda Devi and Sunanda Devi The peak has a colorful history which includes the attempted installation of a nuclear powered monitoring device for Chinese nuclear tests. Turned back by bad weather, the device was lost somewhere on Sunanda Devi and was nev
Read more

Three Days in Lisbon are Not Enough!

Image
Lisbon definitely falls into the shabby but chic category. There is a real sense of dynamism here which seems to be a combination of entrepreneurial spirit, to start up costs and supportive government policies It should not have come as surprise to us that three days wasn’t enough time in Lisbon.  Both Lisbon and Porto have been Monocle’s poster children for urban gentrification and progressive local government.  This was combined the features of a one of Europe’s oldest but now faded trading empires: a beautiful port with a hilly shoreline; elaborate and still solid buildings constructed with the wealth of derived from international trade routes to South America, Africa and India; and finally a mix of ethnic groups that came to call Lisbon home. Lisbon is built on seven hills above a pretty harbour and this was a great opportunity for Kate and I to train for Corsica.  The narrow streets were home to lots of
Read more

Back in Beaune - Rock Climbing in Bourgogne

Image
Fixin, by French standards it was a little hard to locate the routes and route finding on some was interesting I had two weeks work in Paris with my last meeting in Nuremburg on a Friday.  Kate and Ada were in Melbourne and Lucy was on the Gold Coast so I had two weekends free in Europe.  Needless to say, my thoughts turned to climbing. My first option was a return to Beaune, where the family and I had conducted an unsuccessful and very cold reconnaissance of the rock climbing during Easter the previous year. The problem with Europe is finding a climbing partner if Kate is not with me; however, I had recently discovered that one of the team working with me, Jeremy, was a keen climber.  So I suggested a weekend climbing trip to Bourgogne and made the necessary bookings a few weeks in advance. French countryside.  The view from a restaurant in Fixin while we were enjoying a post climb drink. As with Chateau Verte, I had forg
Read more