I have two back-to-back tours in India taking place January 2018. Both of the tours are led by Arvind Singh, organized by Kelley McHenry, and both tours offer daily Hatha yoga, which I will be teaching. In today’s post, I am sharing my favorite photos from my last trip to South India. We will be revisiting the places below in the January 2018 travels. I can’t capture the entire trip with these few photos, but hope to give you an idea of the beauty that is INDIA (in this case, South India). I hope the photos will be of interest and lure you into considering joining me in January. Or perhaps the photos will offer you an opportunity to do some armchair travel!
South India Tour with Daily Hatha Yoga takes place January 2-January 18, 2018. I am happy to announce that this trip is definitely happening. Registered participants are already purchasing their flights. Registration is open through the end of August 2017. View Full itinerary
Periyar Park is a reserve for the Asian elephant. How I love this park and the elephants living there! In the evening, the elephants in the park gather at the edge of the lake to get their fill of fresh water. We watched them from our boat, from the middle of the lake. In this photo, a baby is coddled and protected by two females. The next day, we visited the park again in the early morning. Three naturalists from the park guided us on a walking tour. I never imagined I would walk in elephant territory, but my group and I did just that. We got pretty close (at least I think we were close!) to these massive and lovely wild creatures. Seeing them was thrilling!
The photos in this blog are not in chronological order of the tour. The photo below was taken in Mumbai, at the start of the trip. Mumbai is not considered South India, but it is where we fly into and is a short flight to two of our destinations: the UNESCO World Heritage historical caves of Ajanta and Ellora.
Mumbai is vast. It felt like a cultural center to me, lively and thriving. I loved visiting the Taj Hotel and the house where Gandhi lived for a while. I was fascinated by his personal library, which still sits intact in his home.
The people of India are bighearted, friendly, beautiful inside-and-out, welcoming, and the children, in particular, are adorable. Seeing the children and their proud, loving families is a great joy to experience in India: 
Below: School kids enjoying Shiva’s Butterball (as this boulder is called). You can see a path worn on the stone surface where the kids are playing. The worn path is most likely created from thousands of years of kids sliding down, as two of the school girls are about to do.
When I think of South India, I think of the numerous ancient stone carvings of the temples. Mahaballipuram has impressive stone carvings, as do the caves of Ellora and Ajanta. It is a singular and unforgettable experience to walk among such massive carvings!
During the journey, we stayed in some wonderful places. The most unique overnight stay is on the houseboat in Kerala. We relaxed and enjoyed being rocked by the waters. The rooms are deliciously cool thanks to the air-conditioning (I don’t really like AC, but so appreciated the comfortably cool boats!). In the afternoon, we got into smaller canoe-like boats and floated along smaller river ways to see the many houses and people living along the banks of the river.
We attended Kerala’s signature performance and classical form of dance, drama, and music called Kathakali. It is an art form that is more than 400 years old. Below you can see one of the Kathakali performers. We had our own intimate and private performance. On this day, we all wore our new colorful Indian clothing. In the second photo below, you can see our festively dressed group gathered around one of the actors from the Kathakali performance.
PART II is coming your way next: Rajasthan!
