Life & travel scribbles

:Post-course afterthoughts: Vipassana meditation  I decided to dedicate 10 days of my life to find out what is this all hustle about with so well known, and spreading everywhere in recent years, meditation. I didn't know much what I was going to experience there, what should I expect or whether to prepare myself somehow (physically/mentally). I didn't take much care about arming myself with any above mentioned information or preparations whatsoever, just to go with the flow, experience whatever it was going to bring. And endure the entire 10-days period without talking, which seemed to me the most challenging and incredibly unthinkable thing to surrender myself to. Considering my short-tempered and impulsive personality there was something to be worried about, most of all because I didn't want to ruin someone's meditation while couldn't resist to say a word. Or from the other hand, and more likely to happen, I didn't want to burst inside out during t...

Dekan Plateau & The Arabian Sea We decided to visit Ajanta caves, but the plan changed when, once we got 4km away, somebody told us the following day the caves were closed.. Well, so Ellora caves then. Even better because they're meant to be, between those two, more interesting and prominent ones. So nothing lost, we decided to head towards Ellora the day after (just about 120km in our S direction), the fate watched over us again wanting us to see the better caves at the end :)  In a nutshell: those mighty caves were made between 350-600AD (that's how long it took to carve them into the steep rock, downwards: from the surface of the slope to the foothill!). There're 34 intricate and fascinating caves dedicated to Hinduism, Buddism and Jainism. I loved the Buddhist one which resembled an interior of a medieval church with semi-circle naves from both sides, the difference makes a big rock-cut Budda in the middle and the dome-alike ceiling with ribs facilitating ...

Saylana What we decided afterwards was to finally start going downwards, towards the South. Our next destination point on the map was: Banswar, simply because it lies on a way to Ajanta caves which we were going to visit next. But, as it happens quite often,it turned out to be a fairly big city, not much people spoke English there though. Yet if they did, it was not very useful, the prices they were wishing for a room for one night were not corresponding much to what we expected, hence.. we just passed Banswar and carried on going hoping to find something reasonably cheap on the way. And as it usually happens once we started losing hope, a 'little' town came along. So since we had already stumbled in we decided to be consistent and look for a place to stay defintely this time, as the sun was already setting down. Despite the worrying problems in communication, again, after quite a long while, we found a boy (or he found us, is better to say) who brought us (on his scoot...