Hassan to Sirigiri

We are really enjoying South India. It is much slower paced and has a calmer energy than the north. We had alot of downtime too. It has been a great time to get school work done and just relax. We stayed in a super nice hotel for 3 nights and I will admit that I literally sat in bed and watched movies for 2 days straight. I just needed a break from India. The trip is two-thirds over but there is still a month to go. It feels like a really long time to be away from home. I know I will feel differently when we get to the beach in Goa. We are all excited about getting to the sand and the ocean. Yesterday we had a six hour bus ride from Hassan to Sirigiri. It was super bumpy. I swear I got half a foot of air at one point when I was lying down in the back. India is so weird with their roads. There will be random streches of pavement and I start thinking "this is nice" then a minute later it ubruptly turns to gravel and potholes again. At one point we drove through a washed out part of the road. We were in this huge bus and literally driving over a river. It was kind of crazy. Sirigiri is a very rural area. The place we are staying in is not even in a village, nevermind a city. I managaed to get a ride into the village today to check emails and get out of my room for a few hours. Our rooms are full of bugs and the power is out more often than not but the food is great and there's a really nice space to practice yoga. We are staying in the residence of the Swami of the Lingiate community. I'm not sure if I spelt that correctly but I will try and find a link sometime later. The coolest part is that the Swami has an elephant! And, yesterday evening we got to ride it! It was awesome! I had been thinking all day about how much I miss my pony and going riding but I guess riding an elephant is the next best thing. It was really warm and prickly and wrinkly. It was such a great experience to be hugged by an elephants trunk. She was huge and beautiful. We fed her little bananas and she just swallowed them whole. Then we gave her coconuts and ran back before she threw them to the ground, smashing them into pieces before expertly scraping the meat out of the shells. I hope I will be able to see her again while we are here. We will be on the road again on Sunday. In the South we are not staying in one place for as long as we did in the North. I think 5 days is the longest we stay anywhere from here on out so time is going to fly by.