I said goodbye to Warner and took the 108 to downtown SF. From there the 80 would take me on a 2,5 hour ride to Santa Rosa. When the bus stopped and I stepped inside the bus driver looked at me and said: “Okay, we have a problem.” Perplexing me, he told me it was my luggage. “This is not the greyhound.” Well I knew that, but nowhere did it say I couldn’t bring my bags inside the bus. Officially he wasn’t allowed to take me on the bus, but I was glad he did. So my journey continued. Another guy stepped into the bus with quite some luggage and was told the same.
After 2,5 hours I reached Santa Rosa and got off the bus. The other guy got off the bus too and in real American fashion he nodded at me and we started some smalltalk. He asked me where I was going and told him to a monastery. He looked surprised and told me he was going to a monastery as well. But he was going to Buddhist monastery. We exchanged our reasons why, he was taking a semester off school, and I was taking a semester off work. He had to jump on another bus so we said goodbye.
It had started raining in the meantime and I was wondering where they would pick me up. I saw Gurunistha, a friend from Finland who lives at the monastery now, walk up to me. Now this is for real. We passed by Agnideva’s restaurant and used his restroom. We did some grocery shopping too and then continued the traveling by car for over an hour. I arrived at Audarya around six o’clock.
Above you see a picture of the yurt I’ll be staying in for the four months that I’m here. If you click here you can find the album which I’ll update every now and then with more pictures. (right now there are some pictures of SF and audarya, have a peek if you like)
I woke up at 4.30 this morning which was a little too late as the program starts at 5. But I had no trouble getting up because the jetlag is still nicely assisting me. It had been raining all night and since a yurt has a roof like a tent it felt like I was out camping and woke up a few times. The sun is shining right now, but I don’t know for how long. the weather forecast is about rain the coming days so we’ll see how this works out. I brought my rain jacket, too bad I lost my sailing jacket.
I’m very happy to be here. Even though it is a bit cold. the morning program, seeing Citta Hari and Gurunistha milk a cow with their hands, yes no frisian milking machines here, they have about 13 cows, not all of them are being milked of course, only one at this moment i think. All this is worth it to spent 4,5 months here. Gurunistha is going to teach me how to make halava and chapatis and more in 30 minutes, so I better hurry up and get dressed in devotional clothes. (for all you people who know Gurunistha; who would have thought that after his tofu skull, he would be teaching me indian high cuisine!!)
Also my cell phone doesn’t work here, and I don’t have a phone in my yurt, I do have internet access as you can see.
(btw it is raining again)

Also, thanks everyone for the comments on my posts, it is nice to see people are actually reading all of this.

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