The last few days in India and a smooth return back to London

I’ve now been back home in London for over a week and have fully acclimatised to the weather and fortunately jet lag was not bad at all.

Some of my friends stayed on for the whole month of January so I’ve been getting continued reports about yogic life in India.

There was not much time during our final few days in Pune to finish my blog and find time to go to Starbucks to post it so here it is. (Also, they were charging Western prices for a mediocre coffee).

On returning to Hotel Ketan at lunch time on Thursday the hotel staff were making dosas for us as a surprise. This was so kind of them but it meant that our tuc-tuc driver Amin had to sit and wait for us outside. We had booked him to go for a final bit of shopping at Either Or. As if we didn’t have enough luggage already! Amin said he didn’t mind but we made sure that we paid him quite a bit extra.

We had dinner at Gather for a second time. We joked with the waiter when we arrived that we had only come back for their delicious ice cream. A few minutes later he brought us the delicious ice cream. We felt obliged to eat it before ordering our main course.

On the Friday, our penultimate day, Abhi taught pranayama which was very welcome. Raya’s class in the afternoon led up to Urdhva Kukkutasana. Raya’s execution of the more advanced poses is amazing and he manages to speak all the way through and sound absolutely normal.

Our final session of the celebration was taught by Sunita and we started off with pranayama. Little did we know that this was going to turn in to a very dynamic session of standing poses, sitting poses and backbends. At the end, photos were taken starting off with the people that had been there in the seventies, then the eighties and so on until the whole group were posing for the final photo.

The evening was spent at RIMYI for a theatrical performance by the children’s class followed by a keynote speech by Prashant. The children were amazing as they told stories, danced, had sword fights and performed yoga poses. They were so confident and really looked like they were enjoying themselves. There must have been 200 people in the main hall and we were all sitting very close to each other on the floor. After the first hour and a half Rachel and I were fidgeting a lot as our feet were going tingly and numb. There was huge relief once we could stand up and head out for Samosas in the courtyard. We mingled for a while before returning to the hotel four our final sleep at Hotel Ketan.

We were picked up by our taxi at 6 am on Sunday morning. The drive to the airport in Mumbai was quicker than we had expected. There were no queues at any point in the airport, there was no turbulence on the flight and we landed early at Heathrow. A very smooth journey.

This was such a memorable and enjoyable event. It was full on and I can see why they refer to these events as an ‘Intensive’ because they really are. At least for me this one was.

Guruji/BKS Iyengar/Mr Iyengar

Geetaji Iyengar

Abhijata Iyengar

Prashant Iyengar