On Sunday, we came down to the beach in a place called Varkala. Overlooking the beach are red cliffs, atop which are perched a series of small hotels, restaurants and and shops. At any given time there are 4-5 eagles riding the air currents above the cliffs. The water is the perfect temperature, and I spent about three hours in the surf.

In the group are Lee (an American Doctor), Pema (my meditation teacher in Dharamsala), Champa (another Tibetan friend) and Marc (a British student of Buddhism). On the second day we all walked down to go for a swim together, and discovered a fish washed up on shore. Pema put him back in the water. Then we noticed lots of small jellyfish lying on the beach, and Pema began to scoop them up in hand-fulls of sand and shuttle them to the water. He told me a story about a man who finds thousands of fish washed up on the beach. He begins to throw them back into the water. Another man tells him that it won’t make any difference, since there are so many. The first man picks up another fish and puts it in the water and says, “for that fish I made a difference.”
At the end of my second day swimming, my ear became plugged with water. It hadn’t cleared by morning, so I decided to go to the hospital. Our hotel manager gave me the name of an ear, nose and throat doctor, and Lee and I headed off to the hospital. When we arrived, I was led by a young man to the registration area, where I was taken to a side door, thus skipping a long line. Next I was whisked away to the doctor’s office. The doctor was waiting for me, and looked at my ear immediately. He wore a reflecting mirror on his head to give him light. He told me that it was blocked with wax, and sent me to another building. Here I was told to wait outside a door marked “Operating Theatre”. Minutes later I was brought in and placed on a table. With the help of five nurses, he began to scrape away the wax in my ear. It took about 10 minutes, but in the end I could hear. He sent me home with eardrops to ensure against infection.