The synchronicity of the world constantly amazes me. Yesterday I wrote about traveling to India, and today I receive an email from my friend, Dorothy, who hails from Edinburgh, Scotland. Dorothy and I became fast friends when we both attended a very special Yoga retreat in a remote area of central India a few years ago.

Dorothy strikes a Yoga pose on a deserted beach

We ended up in adjacent bunks but we shared more than a bedroom – we both came down with a case of Delhi Belly and kept each other company from our sickbeds. Here’s what she sent me as a reminder: Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, India! Just saying the word conjures up images of the Taj Mahal in the soft light of dawn, camels trekking across deserts, worshipers bathing in the sacred Ganges, mountains of spices in marketplace stalls, and women wrapped in luscious silk saris. India also means being exposed to filth, poverty, masses of humanity, beggars on the streets, incessant touts, and bouts of “Delhi Belly.”

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Nowhere else in the world are these contrasts so evident as in Mother India, and many visitors arrive on the sub-continent wholly unprepared for these incongruities. I saw all this and more when I traveled to India a few years ago. In areas of Mumbai, shanty towns constructed with scraps of scavenged wood and cardboard stretched as far as I could see. Here, people lived in abject poverty, clad in rags and defecating by the side of the road. Garbage was strewn throughout the streets and the overwhelming stench of sewage permeated everything. Homeless wraiths curled along the edges of the sidewalks in front of my hotel each night, yet inside everything was luxury and staff in starched white uniforms. Fortunately, I was forewarned. I had a friend who had been to India and he Read the rest of this entry »

As I drive from the southern border of our great country to the northern, I am painfully aware of my carbon footprint. Although I am somewhat comforted that my car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and that when I am home in Sarasota I walk everywhere, it doesn’t change the fact that travel is not an environmentally friendly activity.

Someday, we will have the technology to reduce fossil fuels; Virgin Air is currently testing a jet engine fuel that contains a high percentage of biofuels, and numerous manufacturers are bring electric vehicles to market. One of the latter, the “soleckshaw,” is a motorized cycle rickshaw that can be pedaled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

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