Crazy Kundalini -- Devon, England

There are guests at the B&B. As this is the low season and it's tipping rain all over Devon, guests seem to be a rarity. This couple in particular had been preparing a trip to Combe Martin for the last three weeks but kept postponing due to the inclement weather.

I suppose even the English don't like rain. They just compensate for all the bloody dampness with their excessively dry sense of humor. 

There are guests at the B&B and guests need to be fed. At our team meeting on Friday, Katherine asked who would like to be in charge of cooking breakfast. My hand rocketed into the air.

I can make omelets or pancakes or frittatas or...

But omelets or pancakes or frittatas were not to be. Katherine pulled me into the kitchen and introduced me to the breakfast instruction manual, wherein I was told everything from how many teaspoons to put on the table and how much butter to use whilst scrambling eggs.

"Now, only one of them wants the full-on breakfast. The other just wants muesli and yogurt."

Muesli and yogurt. By far the most unoffensive, boring breakfast food. I bet that even Turkish people might be able to wrap their tastebuds around muesli and yogurt for breakfast. 

Full-on vegetarian English breakfast includes two sad looking rehydrated textured wheat protein sausages, some canned beans, four mushrooms, a tomato, three eggs and toast with butter. 

I just wanted to make pancakes. Fat, fluffy American pancakes. 

So I scrambled the eggs and teaspooned the table and served up English breakfast for two.

These are the most depressing sausages I have ever seen. 

Cooking vegetarian food has been a challenge for me. I'm accustomed to using lamb, chicken, bacon and all the goodness that comes from the sea. Being suddenly reduced to lentils, chickpeas and walnuts has forced me to expand my repertoire dramatically.

At least the spice drawer is full. Turmeric, how greatly I've missed you. Hello coriander. Long time, no see. Is that saffron I spy in the corner? Garam Masala, my beautiful darling, where have you been all my life? 

A well-stocked spice drawer compensates for a multitude of lentils (although I daresay nothing can cure my bacon cravings. Not even fresh cardamom). 

I whipped up some divine dal and smokey socca (a French pancake made of chickpea flour and olive oil). Michael sat quietly drinking tea. When my dirty dishes began to pile up, he slowly set down his mug, casually inched towards the sink and methodically turned on the hot water.

Michael's spirit animal is a three toed sloth. He's remarkably efficient about whatever work he does around here, but one or two jobs per day are more than enough to keep him busy. 

Asking Michael if he wants a potato:

"Michael! Do you want a potato?"

".................uh......... hmm... yeah. No worries."

Darrell's spirit animal is something like a falcon. Watching falcons and sloths interact is nearly as hilarious as watching shy Japanese students and New York "mamas" talk over tea/Guinness  in Ireland.

"Darrell! Do you want a potato?"

By the time I've finished asking this question, Darrell has already stabbed the potato in question, plopped it onto his plate, smeared it with butter and taken his first two bites.

"Thanks, mate."

Katherine took me into Barnstaple for the afternoon. She had some shopping to get done (Katherine always has shopping to get done), so she dropped me off near the High Street (which is what main streets are called in the UK) to have myself a wander.

Barnstaple is the largest parish of North Devon and is built along the Yeo River. It survived through the centuries primarily as an importer of Irish wool, but now seems to survive primarily off of weekend tourism.

It felt bizarre to walk through the quiet streets and have cars slow down for me. Stop, even.

They... they aren't trying to hit me. I don't have to skip, hop across to avoid getting squashed. 

Barnstaple Market

The Yeo River

Chocolate doesn't ask silly questions. Chocolate understands.

It also felt very surreal seeing all the kebap shops. They offered hamburgers, pizza and kebap. The true Turkish food served under one roof.

We returned just in time for Stewart's Kundalini yoga class. Kundalini is a style that delves into the spiritual element of yoga much more than my very westernized style of Vinyasa. Through Kundalini, spiritual energy is awakened (which results in a tingling, electric shock to the spine and an increased libido) to restore Divine Union to the practitioner.

Stewart was all dressed in white and his aura was looking very fine indeed.

According to wikipedia, the side-effects of Kundalini Yoga are:

• Involuntary jerks, tremors, shaking, itching, tingling, and crawling sensations, especially in the arms and legs
• Energy rushes or feelings of electricity circulating the body
• Intense heat (sweating) or cold, especially as energy is experienced passing through the chakras
• Spontaneous pranayama, asanas, mudras and bandhas 
• Visions or sounds at times associated with a particular chakra
• Diminished or conversely extreme sexual desire sometimes leading to a state of constant or whole-body orgasm
• Emotional upheavals or surfacing of unwanted and repressed feelings or thoughts with certain repressed emotions becoming dominant in the conscious mind for short or long periods of time.
• Headache, migraine, or pressure inside the skull
• Increased blood pressure and irregular heartbeat
• Emotional numbness
• Antisocial tendencies
• Mood swings with periods of depression or mania
• Pains in different areas of the body, especially back and neck
• Sensitivity to light, sound, and touch
• Trance-like and altered states of consciousness
• Disrupted sleep pattern (periods of insomnia or oversleeping)
• Loss of appetite or overeating
• Bliss, feelings of infinite love and universal connectivity, transcendent awareness

I didn't feel bliss, infinite love, extreme sexual desire or whole-body orgasm, but after two hours of intermittent breath of fire --

*Sniff, sniff, HAH!*

-- I did experience a massive headache and a wee bit of mania.

I woozily wandered into the kitchen to warm up my tagine.

My aura's ass is officially kicked. As are my biceps. 

It was Kayla's last night. After six weeks spent drinking liver cleanse, doing coffee enemas and staring at eerie pictures of George King, she's gone off to Croatia to spend a month on the beach with her boyfriend.

We will all miss Kayla. Her extraordinary bubbly, optimistic personality reminded me of my little sister. Which made me remember that my almost eighteen year-old little sister isn't so little anymore.

Which made me melancholy about the life I left.

This is where Kayla (bright red) and Rosie (other red) make websites and newsletters happen.

Rosie doesn't believe in mornings. I believe she's secretly part Turkish

This is my sister's smile.

We watched Midnight in Paris on a projector in the living room. I made popcorn in coconut oil and stretched out in one of the beanbag chairs, repositioning every which-way to relieve my gurgling tummy.

Damn those garbanzos. 

I interviewed Kayla. She's such a vibrant, playful person and I wish I'd had more time to spend with her. Rosie leaves on Tuesday and then it will be Katherine, Stewart, Darrell, Michael and me.

Guess that's a sad side of travel. Budget travel, anyway. You meet some people with whom you really connect and you can't afford to move together. You meet some people with whom you share nothing and you can't afford to leave. With budget travel, you've simply got to find a way to make things work.