July 13 & 29, 2003 Netala to Haradvara to Bombay to Coimbatore (and a lecture, and an early morning visit to a quiet Murugan shrine) to Trichur (and a week of oily Ayurvedic massage) to Tripunithura, for a visit with astrologer Ramesh Nayak. Omens are the most fundamentally important astrological tool, and on this day a belligerent drunken laborer provided the perfect omen for the day's most important question.

Before proceeding to Sri Lanka, on July 7, Rose & I stopped over in Varkala, a lovely little hamlet north of Trivandrum, an alternative to the over-commercialized beach resort of Kovalam which is further south. Varkala, which boasts an ancient Vishnu temple, was rewardingly quiet during the monsoon, and readied us for our Lanka visit, the most significant portions of which involved expeditions into the forests of the southeast, where wild elephants were much in evidence, and we had a close encounter with a bear. One notable moment: the security man at the Trivandrum airport inspecting our hand luggage to ensure that we had no bottles of oily, spicy Indian pickles, which apparently have "exploded" (or could explode?) in flight, raining their chilied contents on innocent passengers like an ethnic grenade.

From Colombo to Bombay, then Pune, and its Ganesha temples, and the Munier home, and then I flew off to London, where Swami Anantananda returned to me the my toothbrush & tongue scraper that I had thought forever lost, and where as usual I enjoyed a pleasant walk along the Thames at dusk (though rather less eventful than last walk there, in June, during which a lone duck quacked at me prolongedly as it paddled downstream and another loner flapped its way along the water's surface at take- off, as a pack of dogs sped by me with mayhem on their minds). Back thence to Texas, and some days of rest before my next departure..

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