celebration

The Yoga journey is still on

If you have been reading this blog, it has been going all over the place.. to July 2024, then finally to other things.. There are a few things that don’t get mentioned which are reasons for all the anachronistic posts.

Last summer San and me knew there was a 9 day anniversary trip. Still we had signed up for a 60 day challenge. T-shirts make you do things I guess! For me it was a no brainer. The earlier two week trip in February had made me skip signing up for the Winter 2024 challenge. I haven’t missed a winter challenge in years! So the family knew I will sign up for the summer challenge. Given a 10 day miss for travel, we started doing doubles every day in the hot July summer. The first 22 days saw us do 44 classes.. mostly back to back. San had never done doubles before, so I was really impressed and proud of her effort. Then we went on the trip and came back to finish the challenge ahead of time. It was good we finished it ahead.

Just two days before the challenge end date, my mother called me to show my dad in Apollo ICU in Chennai. The prognosis was that he would’t make it by the time I left here and reached him. It was a timely call as I was booked for a business trip first thing the next morning. Cancelled that trip and flew to India.

By some miracle, my dad went from ICU to general ward and back home in the week I spent there. The doctor’s told me that at this point, his condition is expected to be the same for weeks or months. He was home though. My mom was relieved that he was home. Even though the room became a hospital room, he had pulled through. So with happy tears I flew back. Right after coming back we did attend the 60 day challenge party. It was a great way for me to take my mind off everything. Went right back to the regular yoga routine. I was even more determined and sure that if I did this yoga regularly, there might be a quick and painless death instead of a prolonged debilitating disease. No one knows what is going to happen or when, but one can always do some preventive maintenance.

There was no blog posts .. not just about yoga.. There was simply no mood to write anything for the rest of September and most of October till my dad stabilzed to a new routine. Then we had a planned trip to the grand canyon to hike the south rim and that brought me back to Facebook , blogging and a social routine.

Went back searching for the videos of my speech from that challenge but could only find these two pics.. (one done before my dad ended up in hospital) and another from the challenge party. That was my 15th successful challenge out of 17 attempts.

Then it was January again before we knew it. This time my MIL had informed me that she will visit us from Jan to March just to join me for the 60 day challenge. She wanted to do another challenge (having done it once). The two of us had signed up and I signed up San, given she joins me most days. Initially she was hesitant and did not want to do it. She did not even do the stickers to keep track (I was keeping track for her). When there were only 10 days left and she had to do just a few doubles, she got enticed by Michele to complete. The T-shirts were back! They had the right size too apparently! All three of us finished this challenge.

My goal for this challenge was to do a 1000 classes in trying 60 day challenges. Had already done 900 in the 15 good attempts and in the two failed attempts there was another 93. So by class 7, the goal was done. Still the challenge teaches us something about how to carry on when your brain goes on strike and how to overcome adversity.

We did go to the challenge party this time and got to share the experience. You can see the video highlights reel..

One more T-shirt got added to replace the worn out ones..

After three weeks of not being able to go do Yoga much because of nosebleeds, finally made it last two days. Plan to get back to going everyday. Yoga makes me happy and peaceful. It is a reflective time and a meditative time to let go of things that don’t serve me right. It is a great way to reset.

That said, every day, learn something new. Even this morning in class Michelle tells me “Sundar, nothing should happen with the standing leg. just move the hands and the other leg!”. This was while doing a balancing stick pose where I was instinctively rolling forward on my ankle to compensate for the imbalance. Not doing that made all the difference in the second set. Have to remember that in tomorrows class. As we form good habits, bad habits have a way of creeping up as well. Constant attention to detail with a watchful set of teachers helps me fix them over and over again. To all my teachers at BYSJ, especially Michele, Matt and Sarah, who by now know my every move and even pre-emptively correct me , a heartfelt and sincere thank you!

Thank god for teachers!

The best part of this challenge was doing it with my wife and MIL. Hopefully someday, the kids will do a 60 day challenge. One can always hope.. and screw Parkinson’s disease.. Hope they find a cure for this shit so in case I do end up with it, there is some relief. Even if I cannot avoid the physical eventuality, the Yoga practice will definitely help me handle anything mentally down the road. That much I am sure of!

Pena Palace and Cabo De Roca in Portugal

The previous post in this series is here..

After Sintra, we drove to the Pena Palace. This was a humongous palace. There was a garden on the way to the castle and we got to walk a bit through it with our guide.

The guy who built the palace for his wife did not get to enjoy it with his wife. A staggering amount of money went into building this in three different styles and connecting them. The artwork, the architecture (columns, staircases, ceilings, arches) are all very distinct and different in these three parts. This is a must see for any architecture fans and architecture students.. just fantastic!

This is one of my favorite photos from the entire trip. Had asked her to go and peek from that turret structure.. she came out with such a beautiful smile.. while this is all I got on camera, the rest is in my head.

Another favorite.. this was the closest to a “bench photo” for this trip!

These pictures and videos don’t do enough justice to this palace. If you are visiting Lisbon, do NOT miss a visit to this palace.

We met a couple from New York and another from New Zealand and had great conversations with them throughout this day trip. We also took photos for the other group. After the walk through the castle, we sat at the Palace souvenir shop and got some sweet popcorn. Then off we went back to the bus for a visit to Cabo de Roca.

This is the western most point in continental Europe. It was extremely windy and we spent a good hour here walking to the monument and back.

A landscape gallery

and a portrait gallery

a video highlight reel of this leg of the trip

Then it was time to head to the last stop in the tour.. Cascais.. that in another post!

Vienna - a sampler visit

The previous post in this series is here

We left Budapest by train and reached Vienna later that evening after an almost 3 hour journey. We watched a glorious sunset on the way. The first order of business after reaching Vienna was to move our return to a later train. There was no way we were going to do every stop on the bus tour in Vienna and be back to pick up luggage at hotel and come back for a 5PM train the next day to leave Vienna. So we found the ticket place and moved to a 7PM train. We also paid extra to get a first class ticket. We were celebrating our 25th anniversary and after a very short discussion we both agreed that the extra money for losing the earlier ticket and getting new tickets was worth it. We were tired and running around all day. So why not get the extra leg room!

Once that was taken care of, we walked out of the massive train station wondering how long the walk was going to be to the hotel and would we find anything to eat. Just as I was about to pray to Lord Ganesha to give us some food, lo and behold, he was staring at me in the face in what appeared to be a psychedelic dream!

We got some naan, daal and rice to go and walked to our hotel which was 4 blocks away. The roads we walked on were deserted but the hotel MOOONS (with 3 O’s) was very nice. The staff were courteous and helpful. We told them we are going to crash, wake up, check out and leave luggage there and will pick it up later that evening and be off. It was going to be a day in Vienna. The receptionist said “I am not sure you can see what Vienna has to offer in a day!”. We told her “we will at least see all the main spots from the outside and get a feel for the city. If and when we come back, it will be great!”

The room was nice and the breakfast spread was great. We walked a half mile to get an Uber to the first stop of what would be an all day hop on hop off bus tour of Vienna.

We covered every place there was in this bus tour. There was no time to go into the museums. We did get tickets and go into the main palace and we walked with a self guided tour and finished it in under an hour.

There is a Public service warning to tired guys like me. There is two routes on the bus tour map. A Blue Bus tour and a Red bus tour. Here is the kicker. ALL THE BUSES ARE PAINTED RED OUTSIDE. IT ONLY SAYS BLUE OR RED LINE IN A SMALL INSET IN THE FRONT OF THE BUS!!!”. At one point we got off at a stop and when we came back I boarded a red bus (they are all red, duh, except I didn’t know it) and we were on the blue route. This cost us 30 precious minutes on a busy day. The buses also don’t operate like clockwork. There are more red than blue line buses and we waited for 45 minutes at one stop. We complained to the representative at the end, not that it made a difference. We took Ubers at two spots to go from one stop to another just to save time. Hindsight being 20/20, maybe we could have Uber’ed more.

There were lot of pictures from Vienna. It has taken me ages to process and select them.

This is what “happiness” looks like!

here are two galleries in portrait and landscape format.

A few Panos..

In the middle of the tour we realized that one of the stops was the train station! so some good happened out of that bus mixup. We changed our plan. There was an Indian restaurant a 10 minute walk from one of the stops. We would finish seeing everything important, go there for a late lunch (we found they were open.. again Lord Ganesha came to feed us), then get back on the bus and finish the rest of the stops and on the last bus get out at the train station. We rush to the hotel to pick up our suitcases and run back to catch our train!

My wife is brilliant. When she said it out loud, I thought she was crazy but I love it when she goes nuts like this. A million things can go wrong on such a tight plan, but surprisingly nothing did. We did exactly as we planned in-spite of losing 45 minutes at the last stop before lunch. There was some running from the Hotel back to the train station with the carry on baggage, but we had a good 15 minutes to spare before the train showed up!

Then we were off to the next stop.. we got treated to yet another amazing sunset. The ticket upgrade was totally worth it. They served us hot cocoa every hour ! We left Vienna with a smile on our faces!

A video highlight reel of the day in Vienna….

Did everything we wanted to in a day!

One of our biggest takeaways from visiting Vienna was the change a single woman leader brought, not just to this country but to Europe at large by getting girls and women qualified and into the workforce and giving them equality. Maria Theresa did wonders for the world! We have a lot to learn from history!