Since you were all wondering, here's my Georgia Nicols horroscope to start the year off right:

You are starting this year off a little bit low key. You're overwhelmed by other things and working behind the scenes a lot. This is going to be a powerful year for you because you're going to learn something extremely valuable and important. This might come about by meeting a teacher or a guru. Something will occur that deepens your faith and our need to explore your spirituality or your religion much more. Possibly, you will become a teacher to others. Your idealism and your desire to help others are definitely aroused. Your view of the world is changing. You see now that we're all in one Big Soup together, and what is done to one, is done to all. You're like the Zen master ordering a hotdog: "Make me one with everything."

Bring it home, Georgia! One big soup? I think you mean subji, sweetheart.

Ah Varanasi, Varanasi, soon our time together will end. Tomorrow we hop a train to Agra. Taj Mahal! Taj Mahal!

What I can't figure out is how the train ride is supposed to be 9 hours yet we leave at 5 pm and arrive at 6:30 am. That's like 13 hours, by my count, and I know my math is bad but come on. I am so thrilled it's one train with no connecting trains.

I was in a panic, as you can see, about missing trains here. But then, perhaps I should pass on this other traveller's tale:

I sat next to a woman from Waterloo (Go Canucks go!) at the bank in Bodhgaya, who missed her connecting flight from Kolkata to Chennai. She was quite concerned and said to the airline employee - "What am I supposed to do, this other flight (same company) arrived so late!" so the airline employee crossed out the old information on her ticket in pencil and hand wrote the next flight info on it (flight number, time of departure, the very neccessary details).

When she got to security, they asked her "Why is this written in pencil?" and she told them about her missed flight and the other employee. They shrugged their shoulders and let her on.

Her comment to me was "You know, my son was late once at the gate in Calgary by 5 minutes and they wouldn't let him on the flight, he had to wait for the next one."

For my money, I wouldn't fly Air Canada or Air India. Did I mention the meals on Singapore Airlines?

I had my second yoga class with Siddhartha today. Just like the roof top class, I did moves I've never done before. No, it's not the being in India that's doing it. There's no major warmup to the move, the insturctor just put me in the posture, "like this, like this and this goes here."
One of those pretzel maneuovers I could not explain if I tried, only I could sense that my knee and elbow really didn't want to go "this goes here" way.

Thank goodness my reflexes are not being held up by my ongoing psycho-somatic influenza/malaria, or when I fell out of that one position I would have a concussion.

"Slowly, slowly" Siddhartha said.

One should be moving with control, grace, poise, not floppping around like a gasping, asthmatic orangutan.